We innocently brought home some Khuli Loaches that my son received for helping someone out. They appeared healthy, happy and active. Having just moved our existing fish into the new fishroom we had no quarantine tank set up, plus hey, these guys looked great. Three weeks later all I can say is the tank is a barren wasteland of death! About a week after adding the loaches I noticed one appeared to be a lighter color. Meh! Not a biggie, he must have stress color from being such a freak. (The loaches freaked out from day one, never settling in.) Zipping around, banging into stuff, just panicked in general. Next day I noticed the loach had a slime hanging off him. NO! The slime made its rounds and soon covered all three loaches. Everyone else in the tank looked great. The next few days my sub-adult black Corys had cloudy eyes and fins. NO! So.............after 2 weeks of tank treatments all three loaches are dead, two black Corys are dead, the plants are torched, every snail is on its side in the sand, bodies hanging out of shells. I've dipped the remaining black Cory and 3 Similis Corys in Methylene Blue and done a 90% water change. I removed my young black Cory to her own tub to keep an eye on her (as she's a hybrid experiment of mine) and this morning she appears to be looking better and actually swimming around again. Looks like today I'll be netting out the mass snail casualties out of the 30 gallon................The entire time the plague was ravaging, I had a few female guppies in the tank and they went about business as usual, having babies, eating, it never did effect them. It sure laid waste to everyone else.
Second thing I learned this month, chickens are a handy thing to have around a fishroom. Who knew? I use snails in my grow out tanks to control the extra food rather then me do constant siphoning. Well I get overrun with snails, its insane how they can reproduce. I had about 200 of them I'd pulled from tanks not sure what to do with them when I see my chickens standing outside by the food bowl. Hmmm, why not? Boy do chickens love eating snails! I also discovered that as long as there is chickens around you won't have duckweed growing in your pond, must be to yummy. I use amazon frogbit and duckweed in my tanks to help with water quality. The frog bit is easy and people love to buy it, the duckweed not so much. I've found offering up a mix of snails and duckweed to the chickens kills to birds with one stone. Pun intended............
On a different note, we finally found some Corydoras hastatus for the fishroom. Paid way to much, but wow the little dudes are hard to find! Guess my patience isn't so good, I was done waiting to find some at the right price. They are swimming happily in the 30G plant tank that houses the cherry shrimp colony and poso snails.
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| Rainbow Endler male on the left a couple C. hastatus on the right |
We also set up a Fluval Spec 5 gallon tank on the breakfast bar. I put some young male guppies in to cycle the tank before the addition of shrimp. We aren't sure if we are just going to add our Crystal Red Shrimp or acquire a new type to study while we eat breakfast.
Arriving at the fishroom today is two different orders of Corydoras "nanus" from the eastern part of the country. I say "nanus" as these Corys usually aren't actually the true "nanus" but a similar fish, as there are quite a few with the same color pattern. Here are the two photos I was given. Each photo is a different order of fish. I'll post my finding and new photos of the fishies soon.
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Enjoy the spring weather!
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