raising baby fish (oh, yeah, and ich....) (and way too long...)
Thanks for the info & reassurance! Great forum & wonderful helpful folk!
Guess things will be o.k. -- in the 100 fry (gups, mollies, zebras) 55 gal.,
I've got an Penguin biowheel 330 & sponge filter going, some plants. Feeding
w/ liquid baby food (1st wk or two), crumbled tetramin, live new hatched brine
shrimp, frozen baby brine shrimp, frozen daphnia (rotating these last 3) & the
occassional algae tab.
Complicating factor is that I had to treat the main 120 gal community tank for
ich (damn clown loaches), & with lots of plant / water / net sharing & a few
fry flashing figgered I'd better treat the baby tank too.
I read all the internet hoo-ha on ich (very helpful of course), and went with
the reasonable sounding program I found somewhere (skeptical aquarist mebbe?)
as follows:
* Formalin/Malachite green med (Rid-Ich+ in my case) at full dosage (1 t. /
10gal) for four doses at 3 day intervals, each time accompanied by 50% water
change.
* Heat raise to 86 F. sustained through treatment.
* 1 T salt per 10 gal.
* Carbon out the meds & fresh water partial changes & slowly reduce temp back
down after the med had run its course.
Seems to be going ok. Clowns (previously removed to a quarantine tank & over
medicated before I'd done adequate research) all died, lost one neon in the
main tank, but everyone else seems to be doing ok, & the flashing & scratching
on stuff has stopped.
I'd been concerned about this regimen w/ the babies, but they seem to have
tolerated it very well, no losses at all. (I started trying to treat the baby
tank w/ just heat raise & salt, until I saw a couple of the guppy fry flashing
& had to add new-bone mollies from the community tank being treated)
Should I expected long term negative effects in the fry from the med?
Nervous as I was about using "heavy duty" meds, the main community tank & the
fry tank both seemed to actually perk up w/ this regimen.
Now, once this ich treatment has run it's course, I'm thinking about keeping
the tanks a bit warmer than I had been (had been at 76 F, maybe aim for
80-81F?), and periodically doing a partial water change w/ 1 T / 10 gal. salt
instead of strictly fresh water. Having sort of looked over the salt threads
in the forum, seems like an occassional salt treatment might be a better go
than trying to maintain a full time salt level.
Main 120 gal. tank has kribs, cories, zebras, neons, guppies, swords, mollies,
pl*co, b.g.knife, glass cats, hatchets, cherry barbs, angels, pictus.
I would like to add back some clowns, but I'm so snake-bit on them now I think
I have to quarantine them for like 5 years, and by then they'd be too big
anyway. If our LFS's ever get kuhli loaches in again, I may try adding them
instead (assuming the BGK won't think they're spaghetti), since I loved them as
a kid. In another inch or two, the BGK may need to go to a "big fish" tank
anyway. Sort of had the impression that clowns might not tolerate kuhli's,
altho I'm not sure of that.
Sorry to go on so long, but I am having great fun & do appreciate the comments
& suggestions! -- Jim
|