Recent content by confused_aquarist

I got a first survivor in weeks! This fry took 3 weeks to hatch and another 5 days to be free-swimming and another day to start feeding. It refused powdered food but ate 4 bbs on its first meal (these definitely have big appetites for their size!). I haven't changed the filter cartridge but what...

Well, mine probably aren't the most beautiful (the picture quality is poor too). They're actually "Nioki Mai-Ndombe", so they do probably come from a river in that town. Actually, I almost thought that this is a mistake because the pair looks a lot more like the A. christyi that appear on google...

That's interesting. Mine would just lay on the bottom for days and I have to move them to check if they're still alive. They're always near the surface after they start to swim, but they all gather to the bottom if I put in a piece of mop. They're from ”Mai-Ndombe" location. I was hatching those...

In the previous hatch of A. cognatum, I had 1 true belly slider, actually because the fry are transparent I can easily see that he doesn’t have a swim bladder and is bent slightly upwards compared to others, probably due to the lack of swim bladder where there’s supposed to be. There’s probably...

That's awfully interesting. Our tap water does sometimes have a strange smell (sort of like nasty plumb piping smell), though I'm not sure if that's chlorine smell. It's rare, but there may be some other things in there that I can't smell. It's very expensive to have water tested where I live...

It's strange since you mentioned that filter needs to be maintained every month, I used to do maintenance every month but switched to every 3 months because others have told me it's BAD to clean it too often. For me though I don't really see much difference whether I do it every month or 3...

For the past few months, I've been breeding Norman lampeyes, clown killies, and A. cognatum, and maybe it's beginner's luck, but out of 50 or so fry I raised I hadn't lost a single one. It changed a month ago, and now I have really taken things to extreme, every single fry dies a day or two...

Update after a looooong time; the flake issue is solved! For me, this was a temperature issue. Raised tank temp from 22 to 24 degrees C and never again any spitting. When one starts to eat they all start to eat, and growth has been much faster, too. I was surprised how fast they would grow in...

I have only been adding antibiotics to treat fish with confirmed external signs of infection, and for ones that do not yet show external signs but are lethargic, I isolate them first (to prevent disease transmission). So, for the clown killies and lampeyes I have tried a range of temperatures...

That is interesting, but how would copper stop an internal infection? One would think that if a fish had no visible infection, then the infection would be internal. I am also not so sure why these symptoms would be diagnosed as columnaris; all of what I have seen so far are non-specific and...

Both passed; the female recovered from mouth rot (tip turns black) and jaw never melted but developed bloat, a lot of coelom fluid and gut was bloodshot. Male never had any external body surface symptom but developed bloat. Surely a case of acute TB. What I tried was a combination of kanamycin...

Discarded the eggs! What happened could be, either infected with a nasty bacteria/virus in the wild, or TB from the seller. From now on, for killies I will only use Ebay to obtain dry eggs from overseas, if that's possible.

Still utterly puzzled by all those killies turning anorexic/floating/jaws melting. The primary trigger is for sure stress-shipping, bullying, adding medicine, moving into hospital tank- things you would never ever expect a healthy fish to fall ill from. It got chased by alpha male -> stops...