richardh

This is my first attempt with having a fish tank. My 5 year old daughter has wanted one for awhile and she has been saving her money for the past 5 months to buy it. I told her once she hit $30 that I would pay for the rest. We have had the tank for 2 weeks now. It is being cycled right now with SafeStart. Has 5 fish and 2 frogs.

Took awhile to get some decent photos! They like to move!

aquarist48

http://www.fishlore.com/Articles/CuringIch.htm
Hello Richard. Yours and or your daughters tank is beautiful. Beautiful fish and great photos as well! Some of your later photos have me concerned. It appears that some of the fish may have ICH. The above link will give you some good information on it. If indeed it is ICH I do not recommend using salt as stated in the link. Please keep us posted.
Best of luck and thanks for sharing!
Ken

Butterfly

Welcome to FishLore! Congrats on the new tank. Those are wonderful started fish and Platys are very hardy fish. Thanks for the pics.
While looking at your fish starting with the third pic (red Platy) I noticed the fish all have white spots on them that resemble grains of salt. This is symptomatic of the fish disease called ICH. The clamped fins also indicate something is wrong Sorry.
To get rid of ICH you need to turn the heater up to about 84F, leave it for 14 days and do extra water changes and gravel vacuums. Please keep us posted as to how things are going and let us know if we can help in any way.
Carol
We were typing at the same time Ken LOL

Diggly

He cant do water changes as he is using tetra safestart and it may mess it up, turn the temperature up and keep an eye on the white spots, if after 7 days there is no improvement, do water changes and gravel vacuums and make sure the water you introduce to the tank is a similar temperature to the water in the tank.

Good luck!!

Meenu

do you have a professional camera? wow!

edit: sorry about the ich.

Butterfly

It's been two weeks since he used the TSS. You can do water changes after seven days.

The water changes are important to keep the warmer water(warmer water has less oxygen) oxygenated and the substrate vacuums to remove ICK spores that might have dropped off.
It's important to keep the temps up for fourteen days.
Let us know if we can help.
Carol

Shawnie

id rather ruin the tss than have a fish pass from ich and stress of cycling..you can keep them safe with water changes and some prime or amquel+ but leaving them be for a week without any water changes, and have them further infected with ich and ammonia poisoning, isnt what id want to do either ...2 gravel vacs a week to get up the ich spores is needed also...good luck and I hope things look up soooon!!

richardh

Thank you everybody for your comments and the information. I am glad I posted the pictures because I did not know what the white specks were or even thought they were a problem. I am new at all this.

Here is the History of my tank.

We buy a starter tank, filter, etc from wal-mart. I knew that you should not put fish in it right away but we set it up and the instructions say to add fish in 3 days. We wait 3 days and since the fish looked pretty sick at WalMart we went to Petsmart and bought the 2 platy fish (the Orange and Red One). The red one has not been near as active as the orange one and noticed right away that he would not eat as much. He just seemed a lot more mellow than the Orange, Mickey Mouse Platy. Not sure if we made him sick or if he was sick to begin with. 2 days later we bought the other fish.

The day after I added the other fish, I then find this web site and learn about the whole cycle thing, which our "complete kit" booklet never mentioned. I check a few stores in the area and nobody seemed to carry SafeStart so I had to order it online. While waiting for it to arrive I have bought an API liquid master test kit and have been doing 50% water changes daily. I just added the SafeStart Yesterday. So the SafeStart cycle just started.

So right now I am in the position of having SafeStart in my tank for a little over 24 hours and now learn the my fish have ich.

Now I am wondering what I should do. I will have to buy a new heater since the one I have is not adjustable. It has a fixed temperature of 74. I can go buy one that is adjustable so that is not a problem.

I now understand the reasons why you should do a fishless cycle but wondering what I should do at this point.

I would hate having to abandon the TSS since I had to order it and wait so long for it to show up but if that is what I need to do, I can do it.

I can buy a used tank, filter, heater, that is not in use right now and transfer my fish there and do daily water changes while my main tank tries to cycle with the TSS.

Not sure what to do. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

-Richard

Shawnie

not that you can visually see the ich, the entire tank is infected so id not move t hem to another tank....you are going to have to start with daily water changes and some prime or amquel+ to help save them from the ammonia ..add an extra bubble rock for more air with the warmer temps have less oxygen....the ich is too bad to let it go any longer so raising the temps to 84 and 2 gravel vacs a week for 2 weeks, is what is needed at this point but they are your fish and you need to do what you feel is best...I just dont think they will make it for another week of cycling without doing the other changes ...

Lucy

Hi Richard welcome to Fish Lore
It's sad that no one says anything about fish less cycle when you buy your first tank. Been there, done that. Our poor guppies never stood a chance.

You can transfer your fish to the used tank, up the temp to 84F leave it there for at least 2 weeks, add an air stone to make up for less oxygen in warmer water.
Do daily water changes and thorough gravel vacs to pick up any ich spores.
Use Prime as your water conditioner, that'll detox the ammonia for 24 hours between changes.
Your frog is really cute, ADF's don't handle an uncycled tank very well. From the pic, he looks pretty good though.

Problem is, with TSS it's designed to use with fish. You can try to continue to cycle it using an alternate source of ammonia like fish food.
Not sure how well that'll work, see what others have to say.

Sorry you're having to go through this. Best of luck.

Edit: I see Shawnie responded before I posted. She's got good advice also.
It maybe best to stick with what you have and do the water changes.
Moving fish is stressful to them and since they're ill, the added stress won't be good for them.

aquarist48

Hello Richard. Increasing your water temperature will also help to speed up the cycle along with helping to cure the ICH. I suggest not adding any medications to your tank for ICH and especially not while your tank is trying to cycle. If you add medications chances are it will destroy the TSS and what cycle has already started. The high temperatures should be enough. ICH cannot multiply in temperatures over 82 so it dies off within the 2 week period.
Best wishes!
Ken

peacemaker92

WELCOME TO FISHLORE!

Great advice and info above Congrats on the new tank and beautiful fishies you have. So sorry you're going through this ich problem just after you got your new tank. Hope everything is resolved soon and everyone in & outside the tank will be happy Best of luck and hope you enjoy your stay here in FL.

richardh

Oops! I read your post a little late since I went and bought some stuff that is suppose to help with ich last night and put it in. I also bought an air pump to see if that helps. If it kills my TSS cycle, I will get some prime and just do daily water changes for the next month until it is cycled correctly.

Today my red platy has been very active swimming everywhere.

It was a little harder to take a picture of him since he is swimming around so much (not sure if that is because of the currents created by the air pump) but looks like this today.



I could not see any white spots on his right side like you can in the picture I took of him yesterday, but it does have 1 tiny white spot on his other side. The guppy still has some white spots.

Todays reading

pH 8.4 - Crazy high. wonder if it was the ich medicine or the TSS
NO2 - 0
NO3 - 5
Ammonia - 0.5

Nutter

What meds did you use?
It is important that you keep the meds, higher temps & gravel vaccuuming up for a few days after the white spots have dissapeared. Ich can still be lurking around in the tank & on the fish even after all of the spots have gone. It's better to make sure that you get rid of it totally rather than end up ruining your cycle again because of having to repeat medication.

richardh

I used this stuff - Jungle ick clear

http://www.petguys.com/-047002625660.html

I am going to buy a new adjustable heater so I can make the tank 84F for a couple of weeks to try and kill it all.

speed0factory

wow your tank look so nice, and all the photos that you capture look so professional.

Would you mind telling me how you can capture such good photo when your fishes are moving so fast?

because i had problem on captureing them, everytime i span a shot the fish moved and my photo become blur.

aquarist48

Good morning Richard. The difference in the Platy is amazing. No clamped fins! Great.
Your photos are wonderful! The ICH medicine you've used doesn't say anything about whether or not it will harm the bio cycle. I've never used the medication you've mentioned myself.
Keep us posted and good luck!
Ken

richardh

You just take them out of the tank and lay them down on a piece of glass to shoot them. That way they don't move as much. Just Kidding!

I have a Nikon D60. I had to crank the ISO up to 1600 which gives you a lot quicker shutter so the fish are not as blurred but gives you more noise in the photo but is fine for just posting photos on the web.

I shot 100+ photos just to get those ones. I had a lot of bad shots but not a big deal with digital since you can just delete all the bad ones. Also it is best to use manual focus since the camera gets confused with the glass and other objects behind the fish and can't keep up with the fish swimming all over the place.

speed0factory

ok thank you so much this really help mi alot, but i do not have such a good camera as yours.
mine only a canon IXUS 80 IS, but luckly it still have the function to adjust the ISO to 1600. i'll try this when i get back to malaysia this weekend.

richardh

It looks like my ich treatment worked. I can not find a single white spot on any of my fish since I did the treatment 3 days ago. I did not do any water changes since I started cycling my tank with SafeStart 5 days ago.

I am really tempted to do a water change but want to hold off as long as possible to give the safestart a chance to work cycling my tank. Not sure if the ich treatment I used affected the safestart. I know you are suppose to ignore any testing for 7-10 days after you add safestart but since I had to treat my fish only 2 days after adding safestart, I want to make sure sure TSS is still working and my levels don't get to high.

Here are the levels the past few days.

PH - nitrite - nitrate - Ammonia

Day 1 - 7.6 0 0 0.5
Added TSS right after testing on Day 1
Day 2 - 7.6 0 5 0.5
Added Ich Treatment
Day 3 8.4 0 5 0.5
Day 4 8.2 0 5 1
Day 5 8.4 0 10 1
Day 6 8.2 0 5 1

My Nitrite levels have never been over 0 but I am afraid of my Ammonia levels. I really want to give the TSS a chance to work but how high should I let my Ammonia levels get before I give up on TSS before it has had the full 10 days to do its work.

Day 4

richardh

Here is a pic of our guppy. He has cleared up really well of the ich he had a few days ago.



One of the Orange Platy.

bolivianbaby

Great pics and beautiful fish! Thanks for sharing the photos. You did a great job taking them.

Meenu

I know your circumstances are unique, but once you put in the TSS, you aren't supposed to test the water for 7-10 days because you'll get wacky readings. I would leave the water alone until day ten of the TSS and keep my fingers crossed that it worked and the ich is gone, I think.

mr.fishy

Nice community tank

Dark_Rider2k3

very beautiful photos and fish!

richardh

2 days ago I did a water change after having the TSS in there for 10 days. Reading the next day was

pH 8.2 -
NO2 - 0
NO3 - 5
Ammonia - 0.5

I have never seen any Nitrite in the tank.

Yesterday though I noticed our Blue Guppy is missing. I have no idea where he went. We have no other pets so the other thing that could have got him was another fish. When I did the water change, I did move some gravel around and wondered if I accidentally buried him. But I am pretty sure I saw him after that but now I am 2nd guessing myself.

Thinking about moving all the fish to a bucket and doing a deep search in all the gravel.

Any ideas where he might have gone?

iloveengl

I had that same old ruins decor and I was always "losing" a guppy in there. They like to hide at the top of it. He's probably laughing at you from inside the ruins; I'm know that's what mine do when I'm freaking out thinking they've gone missing.

richardh

I know what you mean. One day I could not find our Red Platy and he was in there hiding.

I have pulled out the ruins decor though and no guppy He has been missing for about 48 hours now.

Jackie Frost

Sorry about your guppy. I hope he's still in the tank somewhere.

I have a five year old daughter too and I also purchased a fish tank for us to enjoy. I also knew nothing about the nitrogen cycle until it was too late. One of the fish sucumed to lack of cycling , but the other one a Black Moor appears to be a survivor and I've been doing all I could to help her. I hope you have better luck with your fish.

richardh

Well I found the blue guppy and he is no longer with us.

I put this decorative hand blown glass flower (my brother makes them) in the tank.



The guppy went into it all the way down where it meets the gravel. Guess he could not back out.

The flower is out of the tank now and I will be filling up the flower will silicone. The flower looks really good in there and I feel bad I made a little death trap.