Aaaaaaaand here we go again

Wish you all the best of luck. It sucks!

 

Right.

I am halfway through the Paraguard treatment "duration", and it's day three of broiling. I'm not noticing any improvement on the tetras and I am accepting the fact that my particular infestation is treatment resistant. The Paraguard simply isn't working for me and it's becoming more and more obvious that I am wasting time and money. I am going to prep the 60L and start Malachite Green plus Formalin, and additionally methylene blue if the former don't work.

It is decided. It's a job for the weekend however and so there's today and tomorrow for the Fates to pull finger and smile on me for a wee bit.

The question now is do I risk only treating the tetras, or should I treat the lot and keep feeding the PG to the empty main tank in the interim in the hope of clearing out whatever ich might remain? I am NOT looking forward to catching the barbs in this warren of hardscape and plants.

I could also opt to treat the main tank (methylene blue excepted) but I think this will be more tail-chasing - I simply don't know what's going on in there for the PG to be so ineffective, if there is interference from plants or substrate or whatever.

Two more weeks of this shit. And daily water changes. Life is grand.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237179902_Effects_of_Parasiticides_on_Nitrification#:~:text=The therapeutic use of methylene blue in,sodium chloride had no effect on nitrification.

 

@LilMissMurder , how is the fish this morning? Please tell me you are winning and there is some kind of improvement?

 

All the CTs are fine and active and don't seem to be bothered by the heat (or the ich) at all, but tonnes of spots and no sign of improvement. Barbs are clear - but the bell has tolled for this treatment regime.

I've started prepping the HT setup and I could use some shamelessly solicited gratis advice and some echo chambering goodness for whether my reasoning is sound.

This is the 60L tank and dinky stand I got for HT - but I've added a shelf at the bottom to take the 30L toilet. This is where it will stand in my bedroom, but there is a door with tap and drain right outside so it will make my life easier for the daily WCs. I don't have a lot of space above the toilet but I'll manage.




The plan is to split the fish, the barbs at the top and the tetras at the bottom. I plan to treat the Tetras with MB in addition to the MG, and only MG for the barbs. I'll be continuing the Paraguard in the empty main tank, but I've started reducing the temperature to more sane levels - there has been a persistent and quite substantial bacterial bloom since I raised the temperature and right now my fear is a sudden bacterial infection and not ich. The Riccardia has started melting too and doesn't like the heat at all.

I cut sheets of glass to make internal sumps for both tanks, but if I don't treat the 60L with MB then I could use Messrs. Penn & Plax to do filtration duty, and grab a compartment's worth of floss from the canister to dump straight in there which ought to help with the ammonia load. And if I'm going to be vacuuming the bottom of the 30L every day it might not be necessary either and I can just run the small Sobo hob I have with some clean floss.

 

All but one rummy nose tetra is accounted for thankfully. And that single one was a survivor from a batch I bought 2 years ago so hard to say if it was age or sickness. Tanks not very pretty though with algae

 

So a funny thing happened on the way to the Krusty Krab this morning.

The water temperature has been back to 24.5'C for 24 hours, and there is a TREMENDOUS improvement visible on the CTs.

The bacterial bloom has also subsided dramatically and so now the second guessing begins all over again. Is it actually Epistylis presenting as ich? I'm still dubious that it is - perhaps the lower temps were a trigger for the trophonts to detach? I just don't know and it's doing my head in.

And it throws a spanner into the wheelworks now because I'm now also second-guessing whether I should postpone the HT transfer I had planned today and see the 2-week treatment through while possibly sparing myself and the fish the aggravation. Aaargh!

 

I've decided what I'm going to do. I added a third capful to the morning dose, and will dose two this evening for five capfuls today. If the fish don't respond badly I will do six capfuls tomorrow and for the remainder of next week. If I can klap this thing while it's mostly off the fish then I might be making progress.

 

Continued slow improvement on the CTs. Some are still sporting Guinea Fowl Chic, a couple of them are completely spot free . I've done some reading up and it appears that high temperatures can cause the trophont to encyst on the fish almost indefinitely and prevent it from detaching. I'm also pretty sure the strain in my tank is treatment- and temperature-resistant because I witnessed continued reinfection over the course of 96 hours at temperatures hovering between 30 and 31'C and a double dose of PG staggered over 12 hour intervals. I'll be tripling the dosage from today onward, two capfuls at 8 hour intervals.




I've yet to experience the efficacy of elevated temperatures firsthand, but nevertheless I won't do it again in the main tank. Everything just shuts down trying to survive and where the parrot's foot and Riccardia in particular are concerned, I brought down the temps in the nick of time. Everything is coming back to life and in particular the Hygrophila are opening up once more. They make these huge parasols and I find it very attractive. I'm injecting a bit of CO2 to give everything a boost, and I did some sorely needed maintenance last night. I also removed all the duckweed I could find.

There is no sign of GHA in the tank whatsoever, the chlorhexidine gave it a huge knock and the PG seems to have been the final nail in the coffin for any that might have remained. And the ramshorns also survived the holocaust!

I don't know whether we're out of the woods yet- the next week will tell. But Plan B is waiting and for the first time in weeks I could sit for a while and simply enjoy the tank.

 

plants are nice and healthy and so colourful!

 

Thank you. I could write a long, opinionated treatise on my experience so far - they're the least painful (read: not at all painful) part of fishkeeping - for now at least. My substrate is ultra-cheap and low-tech and I'm already starting to run out of space for them to grow and the fish to swim. Plants will probably always be the sole reason for me to develop MTS or upgrade to a bigger tank.

To think this is what I started off with in December:



The Riccardia is looking grim though and I hope it recovers. The rotala were throwing off endless numbers of growth tips after the temperature reduction but I can already see new ones. Plants are survivors despite my tender ministrations.

The two pots of riccardia were twice the price of the 10 CTs - that I didn't even pay for... the things we do for love

CTs are looking VERY good More and more are completely spot free. The six capfuls seems to be working and the fish don't appear stressed by it at all - or it could also because the dosage is more frequent as per @hotdog83 dosing pump method... my purse is already cringing.

 

loving the hang on front trend!

 

I wonder if different species get affected by different strains of this parasite. I had a outbreak once in a specie specific (Imported Neon Tetras) tank. It was the longest outbreak I had to deal with. Took me two to three weeks to clear. On all other fish I saw improvement within 2-3 days.

 

It's definitely the case in my opinion. The barbs would get a spot or two and a couple of hours later it was gone. They've been largely unaffected. If the research I've seen is to be believed, cyprinids are resistant to it, salmonids and characiformes less so if at all. And of course it goes both ways, if costia was what murdered my other fish - the barbs were the first to go.

There's also a growing body of evidence that resistance to MG and copper in particular is evolving in ich.

 

I am going to say something now that I wanted to say for so long but felt it is not my place. I would personally not touch a tank smaller than this for anything. Sometimes i might use a 1.5foot for something but know so many big fish keepers that wont even touch a 1.5foot. We all, and most of the newcomers to this hobby think this way, let me buy a 1 foot and if I can make it work Ill buy a bigger tank. What i saw in cases like this is that the newcomer experience so much issues that they give up and walk away forever.

To keep the water parameters stable in a 1 or 1.5foot is pretty difficult, the slightest changes causes spikes and contribute to stress for the fish subsequently leading to diseases and ailments. I wish LFS's would stop selling these tanks and stock a minimum 2 foot tank. Adding a couple of fish to a Nano scape can crash the whole ecosystem imo. Adding 2 this week and 2 more two weeks later can work, but adding 6-10 fish can have a serious effect on the tank.

On A few occasions i was in different LFS's when newcomers were purchasing 1 foot starter kits, In all but one case, I could convince them to put it back on the shelves and walk out with a 2 or 3 foot tank. Only slightly more expensive but so much easier to make an success of it. The salesman did not approve of my interference but I don't really care. I am certain the fishkeeper had a better chance of making a success.

 

The 33L 1.5 footer on the bottom shelf was my childhood tank for many years. I kept guppies and tiger barbs with a UGF in it of all things and didn't have much of any issues apart from plants not wanting to grow. Thing is, I had no test kits back then and have no idea what the water quality was like - which I think is a major problem for most neophytes regardless of the size of their setup. I do remember having constant pest snail issues that drove me insane. The guppies also never bred (as far as I'm aware - the barbs could have cleaned up any fry without me ever noticing). Before I moved over to the ada, I had ten neons and six barbs and with the canister running it was cycled with zero ammonia and excellent plant growth - so it can work if the rest of the setup makes up for the small size - but of course nobody is going to go home with a starter kit and a honking big canister plus API test kit.

I'll use it for QT, the 60L I'm still deciding whether I'm going to keep it for HT because it's big enough to manage the fish load in my ADA (and I am NOT going to be adding any more fish to it, ever) - or set it up as another planter. I'm more interested in getting a greater variety of plants than getting more fish. I'm awaiting delivery of a cheapy 60cm light off Temu, kinda looking forward to seeing how that turns out.

What annoys me most about these cheap tanks is that the glass is thin, the silicone job is really bad, plus they're odd sizes like precisely 61x31 in the case of the tank I got - which makes duplicating the cabinet like I made for the ADA a pita.

 

I also got a 5.2L food storage container that I'm going to try and Heath Robinson into a canister filter. It's probably made of PP or PE so I'm going to have to get creative - assuming it's watertight enough.

 

Your so quiet?? How is the fish doing? are you out of the woods yet. You must indicate when you go on a two month world tour so we don't have to wonder what happened to you...

 

Still a few spotty CTs, and I'm unsure whether there is reinfection. I have started reducing the dosage slowly but I have no idea how long this is still going to go on. HT is not out of the question just yet.

The CTs' behaviour has changed too and they've become light-phobic and lurk at the back of the tank the whole day. Unsure what the story is but possibly the 6 capfuls stressed them. They only come out in the evenings when I turn off the main light and switch to the 12 watter.