Re: 75 Gallon First Timer
Reply With QuoteI ended up having some issues with this group of fish when a couple of them started darting into things and whirling. A couple of fish died pretty rapidly while I tried to decide whether to medicate or not. The experience was pretty well documented on this ER thread: http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showth...ing&highlight= In the end I lost 4 fish, I believe the last one due to poor water flow during meds when my water pump wasn't functioning properly. After meds were complete (metro, prazi, levimasole), the last two fish seemed fine, other than being very skittish due to being down to only 2 fish in the tank. I bought more fish from the same discus store - this time I tried to choose only the better shaped ones. Since they looked great at the store, and I wasn't sure if my previous water parameters had anything to do with he demise of the last fish (questionable ammonia), and I wanted the last two fish to have more discus tankmates ASAP, I added them directly to the tank without quarantine. About 3 days later, I saw one of the new ones scratching, and immediately raised temp and started the same course of medications as before. I do regret that my first two fish will have to go through treatments again, so that's the first and last time I skip quarantine as I start becoming more serious about fish keeping. I think that 3 fish total have shown scratching behavior that I noticed, and after some treatment, I have only seen one scratch a day or two ago. I also recently started running a carbon filter from my tap since we have had a lot of rain and major flooding lately, which really seemed to help two fish that were stressed after water changes. Almost finished with meds, so hopefully everything is good after that. No losses thus far
I am not happy with the Hamburg Mattenfilter - it traps a lot of waste and food and makes a big mess of the water when I take it out to rinse it, so now I am building a wet dry sump out of an ugly 29 gallon tank. I'm planning on keeping the Poret foam from the HMF and cutting it to fit in the sump, but it will also have a layer of filter pad above the foam to catch whatever's in the water before it goes into the foam. I'm currently trying to figure out the best way to make sure that water falls through the drip tray evenly. I'm going to put a bulkhead into one of the side panels of the tank for the overflow since the bottom panel is tempered. The main thing I don't like about this is I have to put it in either the left or right side of the tank, since the back is not accessible where the tank sits in the house. I also added a small eheim canister that I already had in the garage, to help with extra water flow and water polishing, which has been working great. I rinse the filter pad and dump out the water in the canister daily, and rinse the other media weekly, which is the same schedule as the HMF. Waiting for a little more funds to finish the sump, as well as a spare tank to cycle that will hold the fish while the sump is installed and tank is drilled.
Originally Posted by Rapture
