06 August 2019

tanks update

I haven't had time to take and upload photos, but here's a bit of update. My betta still has popeye, on one side only. I gave him several epsom salt baths, no change. I increased water changes on his tank, and was more careful about cleaning out food he didn't eat. His appetite has come back and he is not as lethargic, but still spends lots of time resting in a sheltered spot under edge of windelov driftwood, or hiding behind the anubias. I don't know if he will ever recover from the damage of going through the tank cycle, sigh.

I had two groups of black skirt tetras going through quarantine. It was almost two weeks, then up came a family vacation (bad timing on my part, I shouldn't have got new fish so close to a trip). One group of tetras looked great, I put them in the angelfish tank. Other group had signs of ich and fungus. I returned those to the store. Came home from trip and the tetras in the angel tank look well- good color, alert, super eager to eat. But on closer inspection a few of them had specks of ich on fins. Either they had it and my QT wasn't long enough, or I somehow cross-contaminated even though I use different siphon hose for each tank, and wash hands between. Dang. Angelfish doesn't show spots but yesterday was definitely looking irritated and flashing, scraping on stuff. Looks like it's in her gills. I have to order meds online- the stores don't carry much anymore. Meanwhile am raising the temperature- it's 82° now and so far all the fishes doing fine with that- and doing a 50% water change every other day- glad of the bare bottom, hoping I can physically remove a lot of it.

My shrimp bowl is fine. While I was gone, instead of eating some older anubias leaves mottled with algae I had clipped off and left drifting, the shrimps picked apart the elodea stems. I removed what was left of that. Buces and mermaid weed are doing great in here, the flame moss I tried tying onto a rock all turned yellow and looks dead.

Paradise fish is doing great. Tank is nice and green with summer. I replaced some of the older sweet potato vines on the back with new cuttings. For some reason smaller crypts on the left of the tank are doing poorly- had a lot of leaves turn white and melt. Also the crinum is looking sad (no new growth, tips dying off on older leaves), and salvinia minima floaters have a lot of dieoff. I don't know if all this is from only having one fish in the tank instead of two now- less food input so less plant nutrients? or something else. Flame moss died in here too, but the fissidens remaining on the mesh is looking great. I'm hoping to move some of that onto a rock soon. A lot of the vals have died off too, but the few left are finally growing taller and I hope they send out some runners.

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