Tears & Tanties ....

[BettaBetta]

At my wits end, and I mean it! First question, why in heaven's name don't the RSPCA make it bleedin' law for lfs & aquariums to hand out care sheets (especially explaining about cycling) when selling to newbies - as if they couldn't tell straight off the bat that someone has zero experience.

So, in two weeks I've dealt with finding out tanks need to be cycled AFTER the fact & after serious distress to the critters has already been wrought, I've dealt with deaths, fish coming back to life from the brink of death, finrot, useless chemical cocktails, and NOW the 80L tank containing 1 x Betta, 10 x Neons, 2 x Platys & 2 x Albino Corys is infested with velvet.

I'm literally spending 20 hours a day testing water twice daily, water changes to match, running from lfs to lfs, caring for them, checking them &, mostly, reading & researching the web trying to learn but, alas, my brain has turned to sludge & I've got serious burn-out ... like I'm waking up during my 4 hour kips & rushing to see my prize boy floating in a bowl of green goop with 50% of his lucious tail gone & a white spot of fungi or whatever on the side of his face.

So, the Ich, Velvet, whatever the heck it is (a covering of fine gold dust all over Betta) - the whole tank has to be treated obviously. My plan of action is to up the temp to match that of Hades, add salt at strongest dose, appropriate chemical treatment and have clove oil on hand to euthanase as & when a fish shows distress i.e. Corys from salt etc.

Places head in hands & weeps, this is all too much!

[zhong89]

I agree, when I first started keeping betta fish i was told to change their water once a week in a tank no more than 1L (apparently they don't like bigger tanks, the reason that they told me this still puzzles me to this day) no heater EVER needed and the worst thing is they didn't tell me about water ager, salt or any other must haves in the water. I end up having two dead fish only living a couple of months each before they're claimed by some kind of disease and then I realised there's something wrong with the way I'm looking after them.

But the main thing is you know what you have to do now, your fish are in good hands. 1000% better than in the hands of an owner that can't be stuffed to do research and all they will do is give their little fish a "water burial" and they off to the fish store for another one.

Good luck with your fishes, just try your best and pray that they will pull through. Even if they don't, they will know in their little heart that you've tried everything to help them.

[Chuckie]

My plan of action is to up the temp to match that of Hades

Don't do that! It's ok with ich, but not velvet. It just makes velvet kill fish faster (I speak from experience).

Leave everything (water, temp, etc) alone and just add protozin for the minimum 6 day dosage period and all should be fine.

Most LFS staff probably don't know what cycling is themselves (obviously not directed at the staff at reputable stores like Jodi's, Aquaristic, etc). Plus, wouldn't they rather you came back and bought meds to treat the dying fish than tell you up front?

Luckily these days Google is God - we didn't have no interwebs when I started keeping fish! So we can educate ourselves if we are so inclined. I just had to take the verbal advice of morons at face value!

Anyway, good luck. Velvet/ich really isn't a big deal to treat, although I can tell you're at your wits' end by now. :(

[fishbites]

Don't give up ... they haven't waved their last goodbye yet.... Take a deep breath and listen to Lisa and Joan....

Velvet is curable and your fish will thank you for all you've done for them.... Waterlife products (protozin, etc.) really do work well and you obviously care about the fish so get mad and beat that damned velvet ....

Also - use the forum search at the top of the page - there's literally bucket loads of good advice and if you're not sure just ask and you'll get some more good advice... we won't give up on you or your fish... :(

[ninoid12]

oh *hugs* it will be ok

Ive stuffed up right royal at times too. Even in books, they dont tell you everything.

it will be ok, dont give up.

I just lost 4 corydoras to who-knows-what, and i wanted to give up as they were active breeders! But now things have settled down, no more deaths, so it will somehow be ok

Most stuff is treatable. Ask, and experienced ppl here will help :(

[BettaBetta]

Aww, you guys here are the sweetest & best for uplifting flagging spirits

First opportunity to get back in here after running hither & dither buying meds, water changes, testing, Prime dosing to bring Nitrites down, more research re salt dosage/temps etc.

I got Waterlife "Protozin" for the Velvet & Waterlife "Myxazin" for my precious boy with finrot who's been floating in Science brand finrot goop for 2 days (fresh dose daily). I plan on giving him 48 hours to recoup from the Science product & then he's spending time floating in Myxazin if he still has the weird white large'ish' mark on face & tail still has blood type marks - the instructions on Myxazin say leave to leave 48 hours in between treating with other product.

So, I won't put the temp up as hot as Hades, will leave at 26 but may have to cut my fingers off to prevent from turning it to 28 - only 'coz many say it speeds up the cyst breeding cycle so as to fit in with the 1/2/3 & 6th day treatment cycle i.e. if the spores aren't caught in the free-floating, seeking out a host stage they won't be inhilitated by any darn thing.

I also got Clove Oil just in case any of the other weakling fish in the community tank start to lose it. The entire chemist staff were in fits of laughter with eyes like saucers by the time I left there - they all determined never to buy fish without researching first!

On a positive note, my 13L tank seems to have cycled, 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite & 5 Nitrate, PH 7.6. Am now starting to show Nitrate in the 2 x 25'ish' L tanks but Nitrite is giving me grief up to 1 every couple of days, so I give in & x 5 Prime.

My 8L tank is doing diddly squat, 0 of every darn thing despite the fact it's also had the Stability, piece of a lfs's filter medium etc. I can see one of the new Thai boys I take delivery of next week having to hang out in a glass salad bowl for a wee while.

Thanks so much everyone, you have no idea how much your words of advice & encouragement help.

[Anasfire]

Luckily these days Google is God - we didn't have no interwebs when I started keeping fish!

When I read that Lisa, I got a picture in my head of you as an old woman of about 80, with a walking stick and hunch backed saying 'we didn't have no interwebs when I started keeping fish!' bwahahahahaha

So, I won't put the temp up as hot as Hades, will leave at 26 but may have to cut my fingers off to prevent from turning it to 28 - only 'coz many say it speeds up the cyst breeding cycle

Di, I think you are confusing velvet with Ich aka whitespot. They are 2 very different illnesses.

Turning the heat up to treat whitespot speeds up the cycle of the trophozoite (cysty type spots) and they fall off faster etc. With velvet turning up the heat increases the lifecycle and they multiply and spread faster, killing the fish faster also. At least this is what I have found from personal experience.

The website I read about velvet said this

Prevention:

Quarantine new fish for two weeks

Maintain high water quality

Provide fish with a nutritionally balanced diet

It has to be the best advice. Always, always...ALWAYS quarantine new fish, especially if they are going into a tank with a shared water system, eg barracks. I won't use a barracks tank with a shared water system for the simple fact that once one of them gets a disease like finrot, ich or velvet it isn't very long before they allllll get it. My ex wiped out an entire 8 chamber barracks of breeding stock by not quarantining a new fish, which turned out to have finrot. They were all dead by the next morning.

For those who do use a shared water barracks, good on ya...Personally I won't touch them with a 10 foot pole unless it has a UV steriliser and sump set up also... needless to say I'd quarantine all my fish before putting them in anyway.

As a rule of thumb I add salt to all tanks, every water change. I buy sea salt in a 500g bag from coles, it's about $1.30 a bag..I also use this to hatch my brine shrimp when I have fry. I dose it 1tsp per L. And to be totally honest, I've found I've had less deaths and diseases since I stopped using water conditioner. I just use a piece of indian almond leaf instead. I'm not saying to stop using water conditioner, just that has been my observation over the past year.

I'm gonna go now, I'm probably starting to over-load you with contradictory advice and am not helping! lol....

In closing though when I worked at , name of store to be left undisclosed, we always told people buying new tanks to cycle and would even give them a large fish bag full of our tank water for them to take home and use in their tanks to speed up the cycling process. I always made sure I asked if the fish I sold was going into a new tank or an already cycled tank...if it was new most times people would say 'what's "cycled" mean?' and I could inform them. So the stores that treat fish as just 'business' are out there and more common than those who actually care what happens, but they are out there.

[BettaBetta]

Yikes! (bearing the "rude word" policy in mind), you're right, I was confusing the 2 diseases with temperature issue, although some of those Yanks ... anyways, I'll run with u collective Aussies' advice in the here & now 'coz they're Aussie fish - so, what should temp be, 26 degrees or turn it down cooler? The disease was definitely like a 9ct rose gold dust sprinkled all over him this a.m. and now pm (after dosing) it looks like white/silver grains of salt sprinkled all over him? That's using eyeglasses & my trusty huge magnifying glass & massive Maglite momentarily so now I'm utterly confused & pray the med will work for both velvet & ich. More research

Salt, I'm a big believer - so you're saying 1 teaspoon per litre for constant maintenance & prevention (everywhere I've read it says 1 tsp per gallon) and up to a tablespoon per gallon for treatment (baths etc)? IAL's - I've got 100 leaves coming from Jeff, due any day now, I'm down to my last 1/4 of a leaf.

Sounds like you worked in a fabulous fish shop with high principles & morals, should be a lot more of it! Only I fail to see the sense in giving someone a bag of water, there's virtually no good bacteria floating around in that, the good stuff manufacture their own "glue" so as to stick to substrate, rocks, plants real/fake & filter media.

Found a new lfs today & the guy became a fountain of info when he saw me getting teary. Later he was telling me that 15,000 Nemo's died after the movie came out because lfs's were selling tiny tank kits & fish costing $100's altogether & on the bottom of said Chinese tank boxes in super fine print, "Warning Not Recommended for Marine Life", pfft. He said, "If only all hobbyists cared the way you do there'd be a lot of fish spared immeasurable suffering". We crossed swords over getting advice on the internet though, he poo-hooed it & as I said to him, if it wasn't for my betta forum people I wouldn't be here right now giving you $45 for these meds bucko, and you've not argued with their advice now have you?

Re no water conditioner, how the heck do you get around the chloramine issue - I believe it takes a week min to dissipate? Ah, you store water in big drums? I have a water-top-up tank I'm currently cycling so water will be warm & aged at correct PH before being added during wc's.

[Chuckie]

what should temp be, 26 degrees or turn it down cooler

What temp? CONSISTENT temp . Lilli says leave it alone

Chloramine doesn't evaporate AFAIK. You need dechlor if you want it removed. Not an issue for me because I use rain water, but I wouldn't use my tap water dechlorinated, let alone untreated!!!

FWIW I don't use prophylactic anything (including salt), I just add IAL and some shell grit to keep the pH stable.

I have no problem with fish in shared water barracks (just like I have no problem with fish in shared water grow-out) - if you quarantine first and maintain good hygiene there's no issue. I don't believe velvet is introduced by not quarantining anyway - I understood all fish harbor it and they just have an outbreak when stressed (eg by changing the temperature, LOL!). It's the fish version of cold sores.

[Anasfire]

Re no water conditioner, how the heck do you get around the chloramine issue - I believe it takes a week min to dissipate? Ah, you store water in big drums? I have a water-top-up tank I'm currently cycling so water will be warm & aged at correct PH before being added during wc's.

As I said, I use IAL lol. It's also known as "The poor man’s water conditioner". It changes the chemical properties of tap water and releases all those lovely tannins that alter the pH. When I lived in my previous unit (MUCH larger than this one) we used to store water in big 80L roller containers we picked up from Super Cheap Auto, 2 for $20 at the time. We'd leave it to age a few days and use that for WC's, but we'd still add Water Conditioner, coz as Lilli said, the Chloramine doesn't evaporate.

The only reason I stopped using water conditioner is because I ran out, and I had heaps of IAL. Knowing that I could substitute IAL for water conditioner I didn't bother getting any more.

Only I fail to see the sense in giving someone a bag of water, there's virtually no good bacteria floating around in that, the good stuff manufacture their own "glue" so as to stick to substrate, rocks, plants real/fake & filter media

The water is still aged and will have 'some' of the good bacteria in it, giving a new tank a bit of a boost. We'd take the water with a gravel vac and suck up some of the yummy mulm from the gravel as well, where a nice concentration of the good stuff is. hehee

Salt, I'm a big believer - so you're saying 1 teaspoon per litre for constant maintenance & prevention

I dose it at aprox 1 teaspoon per Litre, when I remember to put it in, and most of the time now I do it as a guestimation. But for a newbie I suggest measuring it out for sure. I've been doing it long enough now that I know how much I need, a bit like when I cook I don't need to measure coz I know by sight and feel how much I need of certain ingredients.

1 tsp per L makes it like saline (to make saline you add 1/4 tsp salt to 1 cup of water)

Since adding it to WC water I haven't had a single instance of velvet or white spot, plenty of dropsy though lol.

[fishbites]

1 teaspoon per litre for the salt? It's usually 1 teaspoon (5grams) per 4 litres (US gallon approx) for long term use from what I have done / read.... For brine shrimp I use 1 tablespoon per litre....

[BettaBetta]

I can't figure out how to do multiple quotes so will do it this way:

Fighters4U, when you say "conditioner" is that what I call declorinator (as in Prime for example) or is what you're calling conditioner a completely different type of product again After my experiences, I'm not sure I could bring myself to rely on a leaf to change the chemical properties of water adequately.

Salt - 1 tsp per litre is out for most of my Betta boys because I've also got Mollys, Corys, Neons, Platy's & Mystery Snails.

Just went over to check on the boy with Velvet & he's a mess! His little veil tail is now totally glued together and he appears to have far, far more cysts on him today. His community tank is salted at 1 tsp per gal, room is totally darkened & will not be putting the aquarium light on & have put in airstone on full even though it's filter really disturbs the surface - he's not minding movement/current at all, heaps of places to seek refuge in 80L full of rocks & plants.

Now, I do not wish to appear argumentative, but I went back & checked on the issue of turning temp up specifically for velvet (as opposed to ich/ick) because after reading advice above I thought I truly was starting to lose my mind and/or memory.

Upon searching google again for "Oodinium temperature" virtually every single article talks about turning up the temp so as to speed up & hence shorten the lifecycle so that any meds being used will wipe out the colony over a 3 day period - I've noticed most quality meds are treat on days 1, 2 & 3 & then again on day 6. That indicates to me, therefore, that it's imperative this organism's lifecycle adheres strictly to that 3 day window of opportunity to wipe it out with the meds, bearing in mind it will die within 24 hours if it hasn't found a host and this swimming stage is the only time the meds can be effective in eradicating it. Therefore I'm still :dontknow:

[Chuckie]

Also without seeming argumentative, I never turn the temp up and always see a visible reduction in the gold dust on my fish by day 2 .

[Anasfire]

1 teaspoon per litre for the salt? It's usually 1 teaspoon (5grams) per 4 litres (US gallon approx) for long term use from what I have done / read

I don't know where I read that, but it was a while ago and that's always been the measurement I've used with, as far as I can tell, no ill effects. I have a female HM here that we got in Oct 2007 (apparently she was 3 months old) and she's still kicking. Flaring her tail off at my new HMPK male and I'm half considering giving the old duck a go with him just for a last hoo-rah. I've always put that measure of salt in her water and like I said, she's still kicking. I even cured her of velvet 2 years ago now, where as every other fish I've had with it has died on me. lol.

Fighters4U, when you say "conditioner" is that what I call declorinator (as in Prime for example) or is what you're calling conditioner a completely different type of product again After my experiences, I'm not sure I could bring myself to rely on a leaf to change the chemical properties of water adequately

Yes, water conditioner is basically dechlorinator. The brand I get is Science Products Chlorine Nuetralizer - Extra Strength Water Ager.

The term water conditioner is just a broad term to mean anything that conditions the water, making it fit for the fish to inhabit.

Re: Multiple quotes. I do it using Fast Reply, not Add reply. You just highlight the text you want to quote from the other person's message (or even a previous one of your own), copy it and paste it to your reply. Highlight it again and press the little button (up where the smiley face is) that says 'wrap in quote tags' when you hover your curser over it. Done.

[kandeecane]

I actually learnt a few things from this thread.

I am definitely in need of some IAL. >.< ;;;