Shambhalove_

What are people using for sick fish/quarantine tanks since canada banned all the good meds? Seems strange even the dewormers have been pulled. Does anyone have experience getting the banned meds from a vet? I'm assuming they are much more expensive that way.

Depends on the size, 55 and up will probaby need it. Better to damage some plywood than your hardwood floor.

The stud finder may not work through the floor but you can find a wall stud and follow it down. Even if the room was packed with people it would be fine, it's going to be extremely difficult to collapse a floor like that.

You'll be fine, people don't really start adding extra support until 125+ gallons. Also you said it's split into 4 parts? So the weight would be more spread out than a single large tank footprint. Moving/jumping around won't help you determine much, you may be suprised how much force you can create with a heavy object moving only a couple of inches. Do your best to spread the weight evenly across the floor joists, if you can't see them from below you can use a stud finder.

Awesome, apparently it's pretty easy to get a live culture going as well and can be done in a 5 gal bucket. I think I'm going to try that soon.

Yes you can break up the cubes while frozen, put them in a bag and give then a whack with something, then you can defrost smaller portions as needed.

Microworms, baby brine shrimp, daphina. These are all tiny and the last two can be bought in frozen cubes, microworms are really easy to culture.

Hornwort, anacharis, wisteria, duckweed, frog bit. There's a lot more I'm sure. Hornwort grows like crazy in calgary's hard water and loves nitrates. I think frog bit probably looks the best.

That is cool, don't see a lot of people using different lighting or shaded areas. The fish must love it too.

Welcome!! You will fit in just fine here lol

No problem! You can keep a qt tank cycled by adding pure ammonia like you would for a fishless cycle or leave a few fish in the tank. Unless you plan on stocking your tank and and going through a qt for a few batches of fish in a row it's probably not worth it to keep the tank running. I have had good success by using cycled filter media from a mature tank, adding a product like stability and then dosing ammonia. I can usually cycle a qt tank to be lightly stocked in about a week. I have 2 large canisters on my 75 so I can easily take some of the bio media out when I need to jump start a tank. Some people keep bags of extra bio hidden in their tanks/filters, use an extra sponge filter, even sponge squeezings, mulm etc can all help. I won't comment to much on big als because I just don't know. Ours shut down in calgary so you must be up north. If I had to guess I would say they "qt" new arrivals for a couple days to maybe a week. The real purpose of this is to reduce the shipping stress and I'm sure they can take that time to look for any very obvious diseases or dying fish. You wouldn't want to bring home a fish that just got shipped overseas, plopped in a lfs tank and then bought the same day! I'm sure after being in business a while you learn who the healthy fish suppliers are and stick with them, every once in a while something is bound to happen though. Buying stuff from breeders / hobbyists can be easier than going to the lfs! The buy/sell here is a great place to start. You can make an ad with what you are looking for and you'd be surprised who has some for sale. The quality of locally bred fish vs. Lfs stock can be stunning. There's always free classifieds like kijiji, I swear there is new fish/equipment every hour in calgary. I personally haven't had any fish shipped, at least not on an airplane so I feel your concern on that one. Fish are shipped all over the world everyday so I'm sure it's just fine, there a chance our fish made a journey before we bought them? There's some nice people on here that may be willing to bring fish back and forth for some gas money depending on their own personal life and travel, you can also make an ad for that.

You will get just as many opinions on quarantine as everything else in the hobby. I would quarantine any fish, plant or invert. For plants and inverts it's more about the water that comes with them, a single drop could be all it takes. I like to treat all new fish with prazipro, levamisole and metronidazole prophylactically. This I partly why the quarantine can take so long, I like to give them breaks in between different treatments. It's important to follow through with a complete course of meds for whatever you are treating to avoid any potential resistances. What store is this? I wouldn't believe that, it doesn't make much business sense either, I do believe quarantine comes down to the end user. The fish store can do their best but they are there to sell fish, the good ones will stand behind their fish usually and provide some sort of warranty. To be honest anything from a lfs I would definitely quarantine. Buying things from breeders or other hobbyists usually ends up in healthier fish as well. I feel it's important to mention that a quarantine procedure has to be realistic. Things can be different when you only have one smaller tank with less expensive fish...is it worth it to spend all the extra money/time on a new tank, equipment, meds when you could replace the fish and sanatize for cheaper? This may sound cruel but this last paragraph is probably the most important one here

What about more frozen foods? My bows sure like the blood worms and brine shrimp as well as krill, daphina and mysis shrimp. There's a few others I still haven't tried yet too.

I will just reply here to keep things simple Quarantine needs to be much longer than a couple days, there is almost no point of a quarantine that short. There are many nasty things won't show up in that short of time. This can be a touchy issue for folks but I personally quarantine for 1-2 months, minimum is 1 month usually most end up going 6-8 weeks. I also quarantine new plants, they just need to be kept away from fish for a good month. Like I said it's a touchy issue and not everyone agrees here, usually it's only after spending the $$$ to medicate a large aquarium or a wipe out that ppl start to quarantine, that was the case for me. I would cation against using malachite green without knowing what the issue is. It is fairly strong, will dye everything green and will harm your beneficial bacteria. All that and it may not even be the correct cure. If it's something like columnaris you will know pretty quickly, it spreads and kills very fast. Keep an eye on the area for necrosis and if it is getting "deeper" into the flesh. On the other hand an injury should heal quite fast with clean water and you should see it getting better in a couple days.

Have you added any new fish/plants/inverts lately? I would agree with the other thread with no pics, it does not look like ich. Ich will look like little white pimples and is very easy to identify, it can be easily treated with heat and salt, which is safe for plants and most inverts. It could be a scratch or some minor injury? I would wait for it to get worse or spread before medicating, some extra water changes would help it heal if it's just an injury.