Skirt Tetra Community Tank

[Ghost463]

Skirted tetra are known to be fish eaters and fairly agressive. I never really noticed until a few months ago.
Here is the scope. 75 gallon freshwater community tank. All sorts, cardinals, rasboras, glass catfish, platinum and marbal skirts, 2 betas, rummie nose, frog... Much more. So we restocked the tank after a year or so. Moved a few things around setup new tanks. Ect.. And upon examining the tank i noticed many of my smaller cardinals and raboras are missing. Low and behold!! Skirted tetra has one hanging out of ita mouth. Yes its true. So i drought this new found info to my local pet shop and inquired.. Turns out skirted tetra are not the best community fish. They do get bigger and fairy quickly compaired to all the other i named. Besides this i also niticed the skirts taking shots at my rather large and old angel.
If i had the chance to do it all again i would avoid skirted tetra and go with a few rainbows or well a nice mix of rummies, cardinals or neons and rasoras. Maybe 5 of each. In a 20gallon. Also consider coras or a clown pleco.
Good luck!.
Current tank setup.. Owning the human!.
45 bow disuss. 75 community. 35bow freahwater predator grow tank. 75gal profile 1000 saltwater. 10 gal saltwater. 20gal qt.

 

[Reido Dorito]

No no, Fishorama, you're absolutely fine! I appreciate the advice! Unfortunately, with Fritz's Aquarium Salt (great brand, imo), it only gives instructions for a quarantine tank, so I've been going off of what you said in addition to what I've read elsewhere. Thank you again for your help!

Ghost463, sounds like an awesome tank! Sorry about the bad luck with your cardinals and rasboras. I hate to have fish fight, but it's not exactly something we can control, I guess. Thanks for your advice! I hope your tanks get along well!

 

[Ghost463]

Most of the time they are all fine. I am one to push my luck as well. Was a leason well learned after 15 or so years of housing them. Just goes to shoe no matter how much u may know. There is always more of the basics to learn.
Im gonna try and figure out this forum perhaps ill get some photos up soon.
Good luck and happy keeping!!!

 

[Reido Dorito]

Yeah, it's never a black-and-white thing, is it? Way to stick with it, man... 15 years; that's crazy. Good luck to you as well!

 

[fishorama]

RD, "aquarium salts" are mostly table salt for 4x + the price. Just don't get ocean salt mix, it's very different.

So, what is the quarantine salt dose suggested on your aquarium salt?

Really, you need to dose for ich, not some vague "fish health" "quarantine" amount. Did you look it up? I do know it's a LOT more than 1/4 teaspoon (per gallon? what?).

Underdosing does next to nothing. You need treat the fish fully to get rid of ich. I understand you want to be "gentle" but it needs to be effective, first & foremost! This undertreating is why some say ich is a "chronic" disease. It isn't like that, it's either still in the tank...or not! Take the steps needed, ich is very treatable if caught early!! Do it now!! Don't goof around!

Ich can still be present in the gills, it's not always visible...& it can continue it's lifecycle again & again. Get rid of it!! (is that enough exclamation points to make my point?) Yes, it requires a bit of work & math on your part. Yes, fish can die, but they don't have to, if you treat well enough, for long enough.

 

[fishorama]

So, how's it going with the salt treatment? Are you up to a "full dose", whatever it is? I did look at some dosages...some say 1 teaspoon/gallon...so you're not far off IF you're dosing 1/4 teasp/gal twice a day...you should be there now or soon... But don't forget to compensate for WCs/vacuuming.

How are your fish looking & behaving?

Fingers crossed!

 

[Reido Dorito]

Everything's going well, thank you for asking! I've been doing daily water changes (about 25% a day), feeding once or twice. The temp was around 86, but something weird happened with the thermometer and now it's registering 81. On the rise, though, which is nice. I'm trying to get it up to that 85.8 or so, as that seemed to be doing the trick in combination with the salt.

Still getting up there with the salt, yeah. Not up to a full dosage yet, but I've been adding around a 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of replacement water. Still need to be adding more. Right now, I believe there's about two tbsp of salt in there, but I still need more.

To answer your question in the previous post, the guide on the back of the aquarium salt said to create a 2.5% solution, but again, that's in a QT tank.

The fish are acting fine. I haven't seen any more white spots on any of them, and my longfin has healed up since he got the tears in his tail. I think they're doing really well! I haven't seen any signs of stress. When feeding time comes, they all group up right under the surface and swarm the flakes, often before I even get to close the lid. Their appetites haven't been affected, that's for sure. Their fins are looking fine, as well.

Sorry I haven't been able to reply; just been really busy. I'm going to try to get that salt higher, as well. Thank you again for your help!

 

[fishorama]

That's great the fish are doing well! Some fish are stressed by high temps. Usually it's because the warmer water will hold less oxygen. But by lowering the water level you're helping with that aspect.

Percent solutions are even more of a PITA figure than teasp/gal after water changes. Keep in mind your tank doesn't really hold 20g, it's likely a bit less, maybe lots depending how low your water level is.

Just nagging, get the dose up & get the treatment over. Your plants won't like salt but can tolerate it for a while. Many don't like high heat either.

Continued good luck! Update us when you can.

 

[Reido Dorito]

TBear

Here ya go.

 

[Reido Dorito]

A little update:

Fish are still doing well. Did a 50% WC last night.
Heater started acting stupid and went wayyyyyy down to 81 degrees. Currently waiting on that to go up.
And salt is up to 1.5 tbsp.

LORD willing, everything will go well! Thank you for your help, guys!