5 silver hatchet, been with me for 2 or 3 weeks. Very active, almost
too active. One developed a small, white, ich looking spot on his
body, right where the silver body meets the semi translucent anal fin.
No behavior change, no other spots, all other hatchets, and tank mates
check out fine. I watched him for a couple of days, no change, the
spot maybe got a tidge bigger. This morning, the white spot had grown
really big, to about a centimeter in diameter, white, with a dark
round shadow in the center, perhaps one or two mm like a bulls eye.
Looked like perhaps a cyst with something inside. Checked the other
hatchets, one other had an identical thing, cyst with shadow in
center. My hospital tank has been cycling for a couple of months with
a couple of platies and I hadn't gotten around to getting it ready as
a hospital - but it was obvious that these hatchets had to get out of
my 55. I had a big wad of java moss in the 10 gallon hospital tank to
keep the platies happy and when I pulled out the java moss I
discovered a mess of platy fry, big enough to have been born maybe an
hour ago. Really, they were tiny. It took a while to suck them through
my siphon tube into the bucket with their mommies, I gave them plenty
of time acclimating, probably an hour, while meanwhile I chased 5
hatchet fish through a heavily planted 55. It reminded me one more
time why I hate that cross bar in the center of the 55. Whoever
designed that has never chased fish with a net before. 75% water
change (conditioned) on the 10 gallon Rx tank added Kordon's ich
medication and gave the ancient hang on heater dial a couple of
twists, found some water sprite for top cover and all five hatchets
are officially on sick leave. I need to remember to check that heater
in a couple of hours.

Anyone want to tell me what is in those cysts? There's no evidence
that either of them broke open, they were big enough to certainly show
the damage if they burst.

-- Mister Gardener
-- Pull the WEED to email me