why does everyone think my angel had columnaris

[p0tluck]

Sounds like you got all the advice you needed!

For your last question though, yes, a hospital/QT tank should have a cycled filter on it. What I used to do is keep an extra filter sponge and biobag in my filter and that way when the hospital tank went up (I took it down unless I needed it as the BF didn't like having an empty tank in our living room) I had cycled filter media to put in the filter.

Omega one is a great food it sounds like you are doing good. However, though some fish cannot handle high protein diets, some require them. A general "tropical flake" is suitable for most fish. But if you have piscivorous fish you would want to do a high protein pellet. The best color and growth I got out of my fish was when I was rotating foods like so:


M: Omega one color enhancing (has more vitamins) tropical flake mixed with hikari micro pellets
T: Omega one veggie flakes and hikari bottom feeder pellets and a hikari algae wafer broke into quarters and spread to different sides of the tank
W: Fast (water change/tank maintenance)
Th: Same as Monday
F: Hikari frozen blood worms and mysis shrimp
S: Same as Tuesday but blanched veggies or home made snail/bottom feeder food for the pleco/snails
Su: Fast 3 x per month but once per month live black worms

I fasted twice a week after I target fed the bottom guys because those were heavy food days and it seemed like I always had to feed a little extra to piggy little loaches those days. I worked at PetSmart and when people would return food (because it "smelled too fishy") rather than throw it out us employees would take it home for our fish, so I had quite the variety of flakes and pellets to try all the time. It was quite handy!
For this specific feeding regime I had 3 golden banded zebra loaches, 3 angelicus loaches, 8 rosy barbs, 6 scissor tail raspboras, a rubber lip pleco, 3 mystery snails, and a juvenile senegal bichir. But I have also done similar regimes with my 10 white clouds, 6 nerite snails, 2 L10A catfish, and 10 golden neon tetras. However, of course I couldn't do the mysis shrimp with the littler guys.
There are some great nutrition articles on MFK and there might be some on here if I remember right. But its actually fun to play with their food and make your own too.

here are my fish

2 angels
3 odessa barbs (getting more soon or might stay away from barbs and rehome them)
2 turquoise rainbows
1 panda garra
1 calico bristle nose
3 columbia tetra
2 black phantom tetras
3 glo lite danios
2 red eye tetra
1 bumblebee catfish
2 BA tetras ( these will probably get rehomed as well due to aggression)

I am re homing a few of my odd balls / aggressive fish to make room for the schooling fish i need to add more of so they are happy.

as i stated before i was never told i needed 6+ of like every fish i have in my tank except the angels so i have schooling fish not in schools ugh

my weekly ritual
M.) feed with omega 1 veggie
Tues.) feed early in the morning with cobalt tropical flakes with probiotics
Tues. cont.) 25% pwc with 50% gravel vac
W.) feed omega one veggie /inspect fish and let them relax
Th.) same as tuesday
F.) same as monday , but add 1 algae wafer for my panda garra/BN pleco broke in 2

the third tuesday a smaller PWC with filter pad cleaning (in old tank water) and blanched zucchini ( no longer than 5 hours in the tank) the zucchini comes before the PWC.


on the QT tank could i put an old sponge filter in my tank and let it run to build up BB for the QT/hospital tank as it stands right now i dont have a lot of money as to bills and a family emergency (nothing major) so i dont have the 50 bucks for the aqua clear 50 i want for my 30 gallon mbuna tank im setting up for my nephew and another 50 for a qt tank + heater.

sat/sun my relax time

 

[p0tluck]

well on sat/sun they get fed of course lol once with tropical probiotics , the other with the omega one

 

[p0tluck]

well on sat/sun they get fed of course lol once with tropical probiotics , the other with the omega one

i still dont get it , i did 35% change last night, if my ammonia and nitrite could be negative they would be as they are almost see through so 0 nitrite, 0 ammonia but my nitrate is still a darker orange color about 30-40 ppm i am a bit color blind to lighter shades of colors i mean i know my colors but i have a hard time making out the lighter shades from the next level if that makes sense

 

[Tifftastic]

It sounds like your feeding schedules is pretty thorough!

I didn't see it mentioned anywhere, but have you tested your tap water for nitrates? With your schedule of changes it should be dropping, which makes me think you might have an external source of nitrates.

 

[Rbishop]

I'd gauge when the test tube is on top of the card...comparing the tube part over white to the sample bar...test that tap...

 

[p0tluck]

havent tested the tap but i certainly will

 

[p0tluck]

tap reads absolutely 0, my vac is kind of junky as its a top fin and sucks water so fast i have to hurry and vac as fast as i can so i can get 50% substrate before i hit my 25 - 35% mark and the hose is so thick i cant pinch it to slow it down, maybe its not getting all the waste out of the substrate ? .. i have an eheim battery vac i could go back over it after i do my initial vac for my pwc i dont know if that would help though.

 

[Rbishop]

You have some pretty large stone in there...could hold a lot of crud. Get a thinner walled tube for the gravel vac that you can pinch off. Or a small canister that can be rigged to so the gravel vac tube is on the suction/inlet side and it discharges back to the tank with just floss for mechanical filtration.

 

[Turbosaurus]

Its actually much easier to clean large gravel because stuff doesn't get stuck in small places- but cleaning gravel is wasted effort (unless you are overfeeding and removing uneaten food that would otherwise rot).
Getting the visible waste out of your substrate has NOTHING to do with lowering nitrate unless you overfeed so much that you have rotting food in your gravel. The major source is your fish expelling ammonia via their kidneys- and it is 100% soluble- its dissolved in your water, you can't see it.

To put it plainly, poop is things eaten that aren't useful to the body. Its irrelevant. This is what you see as "dirt" in the tank. Just like with people, its indicative of fiber in the diet. Un-digestible stuff. But that's not bad for your fish- that's stuff that CAN'T be used by the body for all of the very complicated chemical reactors that happen inside the cells of your fish and has a very very small effect on nitrogenous waste in your fish tank.

When you think of nitrates- its urine, think car exhaust- its the result of all of the great useful stuff that enters into the blood stream dissolved - and used for biological processes - the chemicals left over are still dissolved and the kidneys filter them out... out to where? the water of your tank- and its not visible.

The body is all about making energy for each cell, so it can grow and do its job. But just like your car has exhaust when it burns fuel and puts unhealthy by products into the atmosphere- so do cells. The byproducts of this energy- make teeny molecules of left overs that are poison that need to be filtered out of the blood- they are expelled into the environment as ammonia, your filter turns them into nitrite than nitrate- but then you still have to get rid of nitrate. But remember its 100% soluble...clean your gravel all day long, it will never come out, because its in your water, not your gravel.

If your nitrates are raging and they are not coming from your tap water they are W/O question the result of food- most likely really chubby well-fed happy fish. The good news is its a pretty simple solution- larger water changes- and I mean a lot larger- 50%, or feed less, or get rid of some fish to lower bioload. You can consider planting the tank since nitrogenous waste is food for plants- but that's a really complicated conversation.

The net-net is that if you are willing to do the work NOW to put the tank back in balance and understand how it got this wonky- You will get some leeway in the future-

 

[p0tluck]

yeah i was going to add some long leafed plants that way some of my more anxious fish have cover to hide in, not talking about a 10,000 dollar aqua scape just maybe 1 bundle that has like 4-5 plants , maybe clean the filter sponge more than once a month and i do get alot of waste out of the gravel, i do have some fat fish lol but i dont really overfeed once a day and only as much as they eat in 2 - 3 minutes even though i have fish that would eat 24-7 , i do have to rehome my BA tetras which are really big cause they are agressive chasing all my fish around but those are the only 2 i can part with, i dont have as many fish as you saw in the picture since i had the slow die off over 2 months time i went from 31 fish to 20, but as i said previously i have a lot of singles when they should be in schools of 5+ i was told barbs have to be in a group of double digits (dont know how true that is) my biggest fish are my angels, BA tetras and 2 turquoise rainbows , my columbia tetras are medium size i just need to set up another tank so i can properly stock my 55 gallon and i realllly want to do a 75 gallon aquascape but i dont think im ready for that.


on a side note my ex got me a book today dont know if its a good read or informative but maybe you all might know its called "exotic aquarium fishes by: Dr.William T.Innes"