29 Galloners 2: The New Bunch

Well, the metaphorical dust as well as the ich tomites have settled and died, and my 29 gallon is back in business, baby!

First, the casualties:

In the end, only 11 tetras survived. Four of my black neons and 7 neon tetras. All cardinas perished; in fact, they were the first to go, despite a demonstration of being quite hardy as only 1 out of 11 died prior to the outbreak. I moved the little guys to my bedroom, dusting off my old Eclipse tank that I used to keep in the bathroom of my tiny Asheville apartment. I have a timer on the light which wakes me up at 7 am each morning. The tank is also in front of a mirror which makes for a wonderful waking-up effect.

The two giant danios and blue gourami appeared to be largely immune. They were also not afflicted by the heat and salt treatment. They surivived and are doing very well.

Quick note before I go on... I figured out why I had such a horrible reaction to this particular round of heat/salt treatment. I used what I thought was straight Epsom salt but was actually "bath" salts my wife had infused with several essential oils. The oils are INCREDIBLY potent and I imagine they bond very well chemically with sodium.

I'm just glad I yanked the tetras and did enough water changes to dilute the pollutant so they were able to live.

Interestingly, the danios and gourami seemed to be unaffected by the oils. The dying and sick fish clearly demonstrated symptoms of swim bladder failure. This was not the case in the gourami and danios, at all.

Ok, now for the new crew:

I got three green spotted puffers from the local Wal Mart, who, amazingly enough, have shown over the years they can keep fat, healthy puffers better than their franchise live fish competition like Petsmart, Superpetz, etc.

Prior to their introduction for 8 days I boiled the tank at 90 degrees, which the gourami and danios did fine in. I also salted the hell out of it with Kosher salt. Over time I also added crushed coral to slowly raise the pH, which is needed for green spotted puffers as the consensus of aquarium hobbyist knowledge right now states they are brackish and full marine fish at adult size. This may not be the final verdict, however, as I've read and even heard from readers of this blog who have kept these puffers for years in freshwater, high pH environments successfully to five and even six inch sizes.

The three puffers are doing well. I'll try to post some pictures or even video tomorrow. They are very fat and well rounded, with good colors, which is is something I rarely see in their species at stores.

As for the gourami and danios in a very mild brackish/high pH environment... let's just call it a little experiment and we'll see what we see.

Oh, and get this. My local wal mart apparently only feeds the fish the crappy chalk autofeeder tabs, but man, that keeps those suckers in good shape. So far they have not touched my bloodworms, cichlid sticks, or roe, but they loved some boiled chicken I gave them tonight. I've had big trouble in the past with puffers feeding and staying well rounded so I plan to be a lot more creative this time around with the food choices.

Stay tuned for some pics and probably a video of these guys!

Josh
joshday.com

Ich Treatment Disaster

It's been an absolute disaster with this latest round of heat and salt treatment for a major and devastating ich outbreak in my tetra tank. I've lost half the fish.

The two emperor tetras who infected the tank were the first to die. Then tetras started dropping like flies. I'm down to 7 or 8 neons -- all of the cardinals are dead -- and 5 black neons. My clown loach also didn't make it.

This was an extreme outbreak of Ich. It was strange, too. At the outset it was absolutely ich then it seemed to change to velvet, which is smaller white spots which cover almost every part of the fish.

I was out of aquarium salt so I used a combination of epsom salts and kosher salt. Both salts have been recommended NUMEROUS times by aquarists who have successfully treated their tanks, often not losing a single fish.

I may have overdosed as I really added a lot of salt over the period of three days because the infestation was so terrible.

The heat was minimal, only 86-87, which the fish could absolutely take.

What's interesting, aside from the clown loach which is regarded as a "scale less" fish, my fish from south Asia, the gourami and danios, have not appeared to contact ich or velvet and have been untouched. This is pretty amazing as the gourami has eaten probably 5 dead tetras due to the rapid metabolism boost from the raised temperature.

Good news is things have appeared to stablize. I haven't lost any more fish in the last 12 hours. Two days ago I also did a 30 percent water change to reduce the salinity volume.

I'm planning to take the surviving tetras -- I'm wagering on 7-8 -- and making a "work" tank near my computer desk, dusting off the dormant 3 gallon eclipse and setting that up again.

I don't know what I'll do with the gourami and danios yet. But with the 29 gallon I want to remove the driftwood and turn it full brackish and get back into the puffer world again.

- Josh

PS: If you'd like to make me feel better, check out my site at http://joshday.com and take a look at my how-to guide on starting your fish saltwater aquarium. It would make my day if you bought a copy! :)