Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
Somebody please help
- nala (n h)
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I had cardinal tetras, black neons, guppies, platies, glowlights, and a glass catfish. A lot of them I had had for 2 or 3 years, all were doing well.
I bought some new cardinals the other week and within a couple of days noticed an outbreak of White Spot in my tank- something I have never had in it before. I have been medicating the water with anti-white spot for the past week and as I write this, my whole tank has died with the exception of 3 platies.
I did a 50% water change a week ago to try and get rid of some of the germs and raised the temp slightly to speed up the germs life cycle, more fish kept dying so I did an 80% change at the weekend. Still more are dying- I found 4 floating this morning, including one who was perfectly swimming around 8 hours ago.
At this stage I am wondering if they are dying from all the water changes as well- temperature fluctuations, stress and so on.
What am I going to do??? Should I put my remaining fish into a container, strip the tank, blast it with a power hose, change the filter sponges and just start all over again and cycle it all over again? At this stage I am at my wits' end. The fish weren't expensive but that's not the point, most of them had been living here for a long time and now they are all dead.
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- Viperbot (Jason Hughes)
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Jay
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- Fishowner (Gavin fishowner)
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Of course the risk of doing a 80% water change is that you run the risk of re cycling the tank, what are your water parameters?
Gavin
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- Melander (Andreas Melander)
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I hope your fish survives this, good luck.
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- ted30 (Damo Mac an Bhaird)
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Location: Carrickmacross, County Monaghan
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- nala (n h)
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Thats most unfortunate,can I ask a few things. Firstly do you bring the water up to the temperature of the tank when you are doing those large water changes ? Secondly are the fish that are dying still showing signs of the white spot?(I assume you had no carbon running in the filter). I think the cardinals have bought something into your tank. White spot should be easily treated however it sounds like there may have been something else at play here also. Are the fish flicking off the tank decor ? How do they die?
Of course the risk of doing a 80% water change is that you run the risk of re cycling the tank, what are your water parameters?
Gavin
Hi,
1. I do try to keep the temperatures even, I use the hose and also manually pour in warn water myself at the same time. I check the thermostat on the tank and it changes very little during the process.
2. Some of the ones that died were covered in whitespot, others didn't have much. I just have regular green Juwel sponge in the filter.
3. I am also thinking there must be something else at play, I didn't think whitespot could be so fatal to so many fish. I have been recommended to try methylene blue but wouldn't this mean ANOTHER water change since you're not supposed to use it with other medications in the water?
4. Fish are behaving normally, some of them have got very weak before they died and their swim bladders seemed to go. Others were fine despite the whitespot, and then I get up the n ext morning and they're dead.
5. I have done 3 water tests the past couple of days. Everything is fine, nitrites and nitrates are just over 0, there's almost 0 chlorine, my pH is 6.8 and my water is hard. I don't suppose there's a test that can test for common fatal bacteria?
Thank you to everyone for your help, I am quite upset over this, it's horrible to be having to remove their little bodies every day. Feel like a failure.
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- dar (darren curry)
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Check out the angling section, it is fantastic
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- Viperbot (Jason Hughes)
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Jay
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- Ma (mm mm)
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As for th fish, you need unfortunately to start again as you do not want any legacy infections from the fish from the previous setup, if you start again.
What you can do it take em out strip it down and start agian and keep the fish alone for at least 6 weeks and then add more when you determine all is well, seeing as this killed off all your fish I would wash out the filter media aswell, clean everything!! If you need, check out the forum search for setting up a new tank, lots of great help there
I would advise that you never go to that fish supplier again and invest in a quarentine tank, ever a 20litre one as the cost of one and the extra maint is far less than buying new fish to replace the dead and the time comsumed stripping it down and starting all over again.
Mark
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- nala (n h)
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The fish all died in the end, every last one.
I now have the mammoth task of emptying and stripping the tank.
For anyone who wants to know, the fish I suspect carried in the white spot were bought in a large establishment in Clondalkin, and rest assured I will NEVER go there again.
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- Ma (mm mm)
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Hopefully you will be back up and fish tending before long. I would advise you invest in a 20% 35% of main aquarium size quarentine, maybe a €60 expense to save a lot of grief.
Best of luck with a fresh start, dont let it put you off, it happens to many if not all at some point in the hobby. When you are restocking PM me, I have some smalish fish you can have.
Mark
Location D.11
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- Viperbot (Jason Hughes)
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Jay
Location: Finglas, North Dublin.
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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It seems as though recent years has seen a bit of demise in the notion of decent (6 week) quarantine periods….maybe possibly because many people are relying upon medication to solve the problem.
Whitespot is a killer, but sometimes it isn’t always the case that the culprit of a whitespot outbreak is the newly introduced fish.
The new fish could actually be clear, but that the existing tank has whitespot; the existing fish may have built up some immunity to the existing whitespot culture, but the new one hasn’t such immunity: it then will be infected, and such a new over-explosion of whitespot in the tank may even mean that existing fish can not keep up with such an onslaught (immunity, of whatever sort, can only work to a limited extent).
Stagnant tanks and stagnant areas of a tank are well poised for whitespot to get a grip.
One stage of the whitespot cycle needs an off-fish stationary phase…..if that off-fish stationary phase is disrupted (eg by constant agitation of water) then there is less chance of the whitepsot cycle being complete (or at least the population will be under better control).
Keep corners and other ‘stagnant’ areas of tanks cleaned quite frequently.
ian
Irish Tropical Fish Society (ITFS) Member.
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