Return of the SPACK - Tank Log

[plankton]

Shrimp don't seem to be fond of meds, I usually half-dose when I've got them.
The lemons should colour up nicely, the red eye stands out from the yellow, and the black lines pop against the yellow when they settle.

[SPACKlick]

Yeah, just got to be patient. Not my forte.

Every review I read said shrimp tended to do well with Myxazin. People were triple dosing and not losing cherries, amanos, bamboos and vampires. Same with snails.

[LookoutTrout]

Shrimp can die for all sorts of reasons. A couple of days after I had eleven delivered I lost one and thought 'here we go', after a few weeks I had dozens in there.

[SPACKlick]

Doing a large bit of gardening in the tank I think I found all 3 bamboo shrimp. I'm not happy with the gardening I've done so I keep diving back in the tank, cutting two leaves and back off. At some point I just need to put the scissors down. What I have done is done the regular introduction of cuttlefish bone for the shrimp and snails. I think I may have left it too long because all of the shrimp came out of hiding and dived straight on it with quite a bit of squabbling.

I'm think the patch on the sick neon is looking more red today. Nothing for it but to keep dosing and see how it goes. It's a new experience for me to have a sick fish that's so happy and full of life. Makes isolating him seem unfair somehow.

[SPACKlick]

Have definitely confirmed all 3 bamboo shrimp are alive. One of whom has planted themselves right at the front corner of the tank by the CO2 Spray bar allowing me to a do a little invertebrate photoshoot.

A switch in focus shows the difference in colour in my Amanos. A gravid female is clearly struggling with moults at the moment and looking a little red.


This lady is nearly ready to drop her berries


This snail has been very active today and as I was framing a photograph something protruded from the shell.


An amano wandering through


The amano, bamboo and an MTS hanging out


And the star of our show

[SPACKlick]

Well looks like the sponge I moved from the QT to the EQT mostly had nitrite eaters in it because the QT had a bit of a nitrite spike yesterday (Did a big water change and put lots of plants in it). But now the EQT is registering about 0.2ppm ammonia/ammonium on NT Labs.

Given that the EQT is at 2.2ppm salt I need to Work out maths and do bucket changes.

Prepost Edit: Well I got it done. 3 buckets, 3 small dishes of salt, prime in a syringe, meat thermometer on the shower. I really don't have things set up for a tank upstairs, that was inconvenient.p

I have just picked up a 2.5L Yidao reactor that might remove the bubbles but it'll be a couple of weeks before I can get it set up. Trying to work out if I should put bioballs in it or not. And I'm going to need a quick disconnet or some other connector to extend some hoses.

[SPACKlick]

Pretty sure the sick tetra is pretty much recovered. I've continued the meds into day 6 because he didn't look 100% cleared up. However his tank is not processing ammonia. I'm feeding 1 tetra crisp per day 5 days a week and I wouldn't have thought that would have cuase significant ammonia production with just one fish in there. However, given I'm going to need to desalinate the tank over a few days I figure I may as well reduce the salt with the water changes for the ammonia. Cannot wait to have all my fish in one tank happy and healthy.

[SPACKlick]

Well, I was wrong. As I lowered the salinity the fish developed a cyst on his lips and the thin bits of his fins went white. Raising the salinity back up distressed him to the point where he lost all colour and I spent the weekend desperately trying to balance enough salt to kill the disease without killing the fish. He was looking in a bad way on Saturday night, troube navigating in current, no appetite, twitchy behaviour etc. and i'd decided if there was no improvement by Sunday I'd have to euthanise. But he didn't last the night.

[plankton]

Sorry to hear.

[SPACKlick]

I'm pretty confident there's no disease in the main tank or the Quarantine tank. Briefly thought there was something going on with the lemon tetras, but on googling it turns out they often have a piranha~esque underbite. They're just starting to colour up a bit and definitely less jumpy at me and Dr Lick walking past. I see very little of the Neocaridina now I've added plants. Despite being bright yellow/orange they are bloody good at camouflage. Having lost a couple I'm tempted to try and breed up some stock in the quarantine tank before transferring them, just to give them a better chance.

The Bamboo shrimp are very mobile, they haven't picked favourite spots. One of them likes lying upside down in the water sprite looking for all the world like a dead shrimp just until I get the tweezers in the tank to nudge the leaves.

The big project for the rest of the month is trying to work out how to get the reactor installed.

• Need to work out the relevant hose lengths, don't want to add too much length but also want to make it easily accessible
• Need to sort fact from fiction on the benefit of adding BioBalls to the reactor
• Might be useful to find a way to label the hoses. At the moment there are 7 lengths of hose, this will add 1 more, plus two for the inline diffuser if I need to swap that in and out.