Couple Of Gourami Queries....

[-germ-]

Ha! Back, no tff for a week and i've suffered for it fish-wise and entertainment wise, stupid computer. Anyway....

1)I'm wondering what the 'wild' in wild dwarves actually means?
Are they simply farmed(?) dwarves of a wild colouration or should they be truly wild caught dwarves, or does that depend on your ever reliable and honest LFS?
Would this (their being wild) make them less vunerable to the diseases/issues that are commonly associated with farmed gourami at the moment?
2)3 of my gourami (2 wild, 1 farmed) have got Ich;
My first fish related illness i'm using protozin(?), any hints or tips, i sadly can't quarantine them due to my smallest tank having 2 minnows in (i had eight) that are, i think, a hazard.....
Just a case of following the med instructions and keeping my fingers crossed?
3)In fact the minnows symptoms were a sort of discoloured (paler than normal) saddle mark, running up either side of their belly, appearing literally overnight and resulting in death a couple of hours later.
Any ideas what this may have been? The 2 that are left seem fine, have shown no symptoms and have outlived all the others by 4 days or so. Could they be carrying something that they themselves have developed an immunity to?
Thanks in advance

 

[sylvia]

1) It depends on the LFS unfortunately but, normally, it refers to color - not origin. As such, they are just us susceptible to disease as any other intensively farmed fish.
If they do happen to be 'wild', they'll probably be labelled as 'wild-caught' and, once settled, are very hardy fish. Having said that, like most wild-caught fish, they are sensitive to new conditions so can suffer from pH/temp. shocks etc if conditions are significantly different to what they are used to - but once they're used to it, they are very healthy fish.

2) Isolating fish with ich actually doesn't help much. Ich has a complex lifecycle, including a stage where it is not attached to the fish, and only the invisible stage is treatable. As such, you need to treat even after all symptoms are gone (the med. should say for how long after but 2 weeks is usually about right).
One suggestion would be to increase the temperature in your tank very gradually as this speeds up the ich's lifecycle, making the treatment shorter and potential damage to fish less. However, this must be accompanied by increased aeration (though not really for the gouramies as they breathe air) and it must be done very carefuly as it can shock or stress some fish and can make them more susceptible to bacterial infections. I personally wouldn't do this since the gouramies are dwarfs but it's worth mentioning for the future perhaps.
Many people add salt to tanks being treated for ich (marine salt) but this cannot be done with scaless fish like cories.
One crucial thing is water changes. The more you do, the more likely you'll be getting rid of the ich as well.

3) Sounds like columnaris. It's caused by the same bacteria responsible for finrot most of the time and is easy to treat with an appropriate anti-finrot med. Unfortunately, it'll often come back. Keeping the temperature of the tank under 76 deg F (should be feasible with minnows) reduces the risk of a relapse. Often fish with columnaris will recover on their own if the water is kept clean. IME, under good conditions, it isn't particularly contagious so it would make sense for some of the minnows to not have contracted it.

 

[-germ-]

The strong behavioural differences in the farmed (what is the correct way to say this?) dwarves and the 'wild' dwarves has me thinking they are true wilds. They only had two in the LFS on delivery rather than the 10+ i expect with farmed. Plus they are extremely shy, although improving daily.
Water changes aren't an issue, if anything i do too many? Once every 2-3 days, is that too much, the parameters are well matched? I'm doing daily changes for my Butterfly Hillstream Loaches so it seems selfish to ignore my Gourami.
Thanks in advance Yoda!
I mean Sylvia......

 

[sylvia]

Lol

The water changes shouldn't be a problem. They are more than most people do (most people go for once a week changes) but, if you have to do them for the hillstream loaches, you may as well do the gouramies as well as you say. So, yes, that sounds fine.

I'd call the farmed fish 'cultivated' varieties but it doesn't really matter And you may well have wild fish from what you describe. Do you have any pictures?

 

[-germ-]

I'll get some taken over the weekend, although based on my luck so far i wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be baby giants....
You should see them eat they're settling in really well now, the two females confidence has gathered to the extent they are no longer scared when i come to the tank the male, germ, is still a li'l bit jumpy but his colours are mind-blowing; terracotta to bright red on his body and his ventral (? the bottom one) is such a bright blue its almost unnatural. He hardly ever goes back to silver so i'm assuming he wants to breed?
Maybe once i've dealt with the minnows i could clean, then use the quarantine tank to breed them in, they aren't related either! Got the 2 females originally for free when i took an angel back and got germ a fortnight later in a different shop when he caught my eye.....

 

[sylvia]

Sounds like they are doing very well

Permanent bright coloration means a healthy fish. Whether he's interested in breeding or not is another matter - usually adult males are happy to breed all the time (seems that's the case with almost all animals ) - but it also depends on how the females feel about it lol

The 'bottom' fin I would assume is the anal fin? The one behind the two feelers (those are the ventrals) under the body, just in frnt of the tail?