Add More Fish During Cycling?

[juicebox]

i guess you will keep having to treat him. his ick might have come back from the stress of the new fish. one of my bettas had a white fungus on him and i used "jungle fungus clear" to get rid of it; it worked very well. his swimming problems sound like he's having trouble with his swim bladder. i've heard feeding unshelled peas helps, though i've never had a fish with swim bladder problems so i don't have any experience there. maybe you should try fasting him for a day so his digestive tract can clear up.

it looks like you're on the right track. i probably wouldn't try treating everything at once though. i'd say keep treating him for ick, feed him one or two unshelled peas and then fast him for a day. once the ick clears up you can treat him for the fungus.

as for the corys, i think you'll be fine with three. bristlenoes plecos can be kept alone. they may fight otherwise, especially two males.

good luck, i hope your tiger barb gets well!

 

[ab420]

i guess you will keep having to treat him. his ick might have come back from the stress of the new fish. one of my bettas has a white fungus on him and i used "jungle fungus clear" to get rid of it; it worked very well. his swimming problems sound like he's having trouble with his swimming bladder. i've heard feeding unshelled peas helps, though i've never had a fish with swimming bladder problems so i don't have any experience there. maybe you should try fasting him for a day so his digestive tract can clear up.

it looks like you're on the right track. i probably wouldn't try treating everything at once though. i'd say keep treating him for ick, feed him one or two unshelled peas and then fast him for a day. once the ick clears up you can treat him for the fungus.

as for the corys, i think you'll be fine with three. bristlenoes plecos can be kept alone. they may fight otherwise, especially two males.

good luck, i hope your tiger barb gets well!

Thank you very much for you help!

 

[juicebox]

you might also want to do a 50% water change in your main tank to help prevent the disease spreading.

 

[ab420]

you might also want to do a 50% water change in your main tank to help prevent the disease spreading.

I thought of that, but I wasn't sure if it was a good idea, because I'm still trying to cycle the tank... what do you think? Also, I had no choice but to move him back in with the other fish. He is spending most of his time floating near the top, but at least he's right-side up. The whole tank was treated with coppersafe, so hopefully, it won't spread to the others. In a little while I'm heading over to the fish store to pick up some things, and I may look for a small tank to set up for quarantine situations. A 2.5 gallon should be ok for a single Tiger Barb in quarantine, right?

 

[juicebox]

what are your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings? a 2.5 gallon is a little small and in the future you might have bigger fish that need quarantining, so i'm not sure. also, the 2.5 gallon would be completely uncycled and the ammonia might stress him out. you might want to ask in the "tropical fish emergencies" section; i think they can give you better answers than me.

there's also some helpful threads in the "tropical fish emergencies" section that could answer a few questions.

 

[ab420]

what are your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate readings? a 2.5 gallon is a little small and in the future you might have bigger fish that need quarantining, so i'm not sure. also, the 2.5 gallon would be completely uncycled and the ammonia might stress him out. you might want to ask in the "tropical fish emergencies" section; i think they can give you better answers than me.

In my 29 gallon, my ammonia and nitrite are below 1, nitrate still barely detectable. I was thinking the 2.5 would be good, mainly because I could grab 2.5 gallons out of the 29 gallon tank without it doing much to that tank, and then the tiger would be in the same water that he is in now. I suppose I could pull 5 gallons from the 29 if I had to... If I move the tiger out, he's gotta stay with the same water, he's been through too much to deal with a change like that right now.

 

[juicebox]

yeah, that sounds good. i forgot about adding water from the main tank, heh. i guess it's your choice for tank size, then. i hope he gets well soon!

 

[ab420]

So... my tank got a WHOLE lot prettier today! I decided to get rid of my live plants for the time being to make my life easier. I got a beautiful drift wood log with a bunch of silk and plastic plants attached to it. It's great, because it "stands up" on like 5 broken off branches, leaving a small room below with several entrances, and the tigers LOVE to fly in and out of it! I also got some more silk plants of different varieties with weighted bases, and put them in around the tank. I also (finally) got a backdrop for the tank, so overall, it looks 100 times better! The fish seem VERY happy about it, darting in and out of the plants and everything!

Also...

once my cycle is complete, I would like to bring my tank up to 6 tiger barbs and 6 rosy barbs. I would like to get either 3 little cory's or a bristlenose pleco for the bottom of the tank. Would I still be able to get some fish for the top of the tank or would I be too crowded?

 

[juicebox]

fun! is it real driftwood? i'm assuming it's fake if there are silk plants attached to it. my pleco just loves the plastic piece of driftwood i have for him, though i'm planning to upgrade to a bigger piece that's real. i know he'll probably end up never leaving it!

i think you'll be able to get a couple of top level fish.

 

[ab420]

fun! is it real driftwood? i'm assuming it's fake if there are silk plants attached to it. my pleco just loves the plastic piece of driftwood i have for him, though i'm planning to upgrade to a bigger piece that's real. i know he'll probably end up never leaving it!

i think you'll be able to get a couple of top level fish.

It is fake, some sort of ceramic, its funny though... I went to the store and I've seen it there like 10 times, and ALWAYS thought it was real driftwood, until I picked it up to buy it, so I figured, thats real enough for me!

Know of any good small top dwellers that wouldn't mind being in a small pack of 4 or 5?

 

[juicebox]

hm, marbled hatchetfish like to be in groups and have an interesting look. they also don't get too big (2 inches is their max, i think). you especially want to quarantine them for a few weeks - they're prone to ick.

 

[ab420]

hm, marbled hatchetfish like to be in groups and have an interesting look. they also don't get too big (2 inches is their max, i think). you especially want to quarantine them for a few weeks - they're prone to ick.

So... somebody nipped one of the Rosy's pretty hard, and he's been hiding near the bottom since then, and he's been breathing heavier too, hopefully he will pull through! These barbs are crazy fish, I swear! One second there best buddies, and the next they snap on each other.

 

[juicebox]

haha, barbs to pick on each other a lot! i'm sure he'll heal up quickly and join his friends again. i wonder why he's breathing heavily, though. are any other fish breathing this way? maybe he just got a little shock from being bitten so hard.

 

[starrynightxxi]

ich has a free swimming stage so it is best to treat the whole tank, even if other fish aren't showing signs of it at the moment. Also, I don't know much about hatchet fish, but i'm not sure if they could withstand the barbs' tempers, and cories should be in groups of at least 4-6

 

[Majjie]

I agree with starrynightxxi - although it seems a shame to break into the chat that you two (ab420 and juicebox) are having - the hatchet fish won't thrive with boisterous tiger barbs. You could get a group of five or six of the smaller danios (zebra or the leopard form). I have those in with my tigers and they enjoy the rough and tumble.

What might be better, though, would be simply to get more tiger barbs - you could mix the dark green and albino (gold) forms. Tigers don't stick to one area of the tank - they go all over. I 've never felt happy with corys in my tiger tank - I'm not sure they'd get enough to eat. Healthy tigers do their piranha impression at feeding time - they thrash about at the surface, zoom around catching any sinking bits and then frantically sift the substrate for ages afterwards looking for the very last morsel. They can detect a sinking catfish tablet a mile off and once it lands I get a rosette of frenzied tigers around it. Not that I want to put you off or anything

I also agree about the white spot. Treat the whole tank. Waterlife's Protozin is very good and it will also treat any secondary fungal infection.