Okiimiru

I was reading wikipedia.org and schistosomiasis caught my eye. It's a potentially lethal and thoroughly unfun disease that anyone who touches infected water can catch. The parasite that causes schistosomiasis lives inside Biomphalaria, Bulinus, and Oncomelania snails, which I looked up, and are ramshorn, pond snails, and spiral pond snails (common names). This disease is rated by the CDC as the second most important parasitic disease to global health after malaria. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosomiasis

My point is this:

1. I have those snails in my aquarium

2. Those snails can carry the parasite, which means any water infected snails live in can get people sick if they touch the water

3. I touch my aquarium water every week when I clean the tank.

Understandably concerned, I proceeded to check on the global infection rates. It looks like the majority of the people who are sick get sick in Africa. But this still worries me. It would only take one infected snail to make my aquarium hazardous to my health, even potentially lethal. Also, the worms are 10 mm long. Ew.

What is keeping us fishkeepers who don't live in Africa so safe? Why aren't there any cases of schistosomiasis outside of that continent? I mean, the snails in our aquariums originated in Africa, where the pathogen lives. Why aren't we getting sick? Does anyone have any ideas?

How do you clean a tank that has a lot of plants? I'm talking about tanks like this one: http://www.rockymountaindiscus.com/images/drwatson... where plants completely cover the substrate.

Do they use a gravel siphon? An under-substrate filter? How do you remove fish waste from those aquariums?

I'm thinking about getting some ground cover plants in my tank (picture: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au... ) but before I do I want to know how to maintain them.

I returned from vacation yesterday to discover one of my zebra danios swimming a little slowly. I looked more closely at it and saw this:

Pictures:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

What is going on? There's a circular hole missing from the side of my fish!

none of the other tank mates are ruffed up, so I don't think it's aggression. And the water is crystal clear and the water parameters are all very good (no ammonia or nitrite, minimal nitrate). The tank has been set up for quite a while. Here's a photo of it: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

What's going on? Is it fish tuberculosis, or a case of exploded ovaries, or an opened sore, or something else? I don't know what to do.

I came home from vacation and discovered that the person who had been feeding my fish had not noticed that one of them had a gaping hole taken out of its side.

Here are some pictures:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

The tank setup is as follows:

Picture:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

It's a 55 gallon tank with lots of live plants and some swordtails, platies, hatchetfish, 6 zebra danios, and some bettas. The chunk taken out of the side of the zebra danio couldn't have been from aggression because zebra danios are fast fish and none of the slower fish show any ripped fins, which they would if there was some sort of predatory fish ripping the other fish up in the tank. The chunk wasn't a bite, so it must be some sort of disease. I just don't know which one or how to treat it.

So my question is, is this fish tuberculosis? A lot of the websites I've been looking at online describe fish TB as raised scales and red bite-like chunks taken out of the fish, but I don't have any experience with fish tuberculosis and I don't know what it looks like.

Help!

I returned from vacation today and looked in my tank and found that one of my zebra danios has a gaping red hole in its side. Here are some pictures:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Au...

The other fish in the 55 gallon tank are swordtails, platies, hatchetfish, and bettas. I doubt any of them could have injured the zebra danio because danios are very fast fish and if one of the fish would be the victim of aggression, it would be one of the slower species. The bettas are very slow and their fins are all perfectly intact. This leads me to conclude that the hole in the side of the danio was not bitten out.

So if it wasn't aggression, what kind of pathogen can cause this kind of illness in a fish? Is it fish tuberculosis?

They're netherland dwarf bunnies, and I was wondering if a degu would be happy living with them. I heard degus were social, but does that mean they necessarily need other degus, or will a bunny be its friend?

The reason why there are only ten light bulbs in ten feet of strand is that the light bulbs each have clip on decorative paper lanterns on them. It doesn't really affect the light at all, and is merely a clip on to the hard plastic part.

I bought two lights hoods for my 55 gallon tank that are rated by a sticker on the back that says 19 watts. I think that means that 19 watts is the maximum they can do but am not 100% certain if that's what the sticker is trying to tell me. The name on the sticker on the back of the lights says, "All-Glass Aquarium., Inc" and "24 inch aquarium reflector" "120 Volt, 19 Watt, 60 Hz"

Well, the light bulbs (18 inch long fluorescent bulbs) that are inside the light reflectors are both 15 watts. I have two of them, so that's 30 watts in 55 gallons. Doing the math, that's less than one watt per gallon, which going by what people are saying on plant forums is not enough for the plant species I have. But it looks really, really bright to me. I know that the plant species I have do well in 3 watts per gallon because I took them out of my 10 gallon that had 30 watts of light over it, and they were flourishing in there. Should I buy a new light hood setup? One that has a total of 165 watts so that it is 3 watts per gallon?

Here is a picture of my tank: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Ma...

Should I get different lights or will these lights be enough?

I have a female swordtail (Xiphophorus hellerii) who dropped dead fry. She seemed perfectly happy throughout her pregnancy, so I separated her from the males so she could give birth. But then all of the babies came out dead, most of them still wrapped around themselves in egg shape.

Will she continue to drop dead fry? Will her babies ever be alive? Because if she's just going to keep having dead babies and make me cry again, I'm going to keep her in an all female tank and she won't be part of my breeding program any more.

advice please

My friend just bought two male rats, brothers. She bought them a very large hamster cage type thing and it has tube tunnels that go from one part of the cage to another. They can currently fit in the tunnels, and seem to enjoy them, but we both know that they will outgrow them. How long will this take? How big do fully grown rats get? Will they continue to get along, or will they begin to fight as they grow older?

I enjoy breeding fish and am currently trying to create a butterfly banded fin in swordtails, Xiphophorus hellerii. One of my females, who is my favorite, gave birth to a batch of 17 superb fry on March 26th. She was still very large, and I noticed her starting to square off recently. Last night I placed her in a floating breeding separator. Being placed in small places stresses swordtails, so I watch the fish very carefully once inside. Some fish get very very scared in the space and I remove them. This particular female is very placid and not too stressed in the floating breeding separator unless my face is up next to the glass inspecting her, which is understandable, and I try not to bother her too much.

She was placed in the breeding separator last night. This morning there were no fry, I checked. At 3pm today, I noticed that she was in the corner of the separator making little flaps with her pectoral fins but not moving, and it looked a lot like labor. Sure enough, there were three fry in the bottom of the separating container. One was swimming up in the main container with her, and I was afraid she would eat it. So I removed the fry and gave her some space to finish labor. The fry seem to be fully developed, even though this is three days short of a month from her last delivery. The average water temperature was 75 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. I feed the fish three small meals a day, since there are medium to large size fry in the main tank and they have tiny bellies and must eat frequently.

My question: I understand that swordtails have a gestation time of four to six weeks, my sources being several fish breeding books and past experience. Is there any reason to explain this female's unusually short gestation of 28 days?

Swordtails aren't guppies; according to every book I've read, they take longer than 28 days to gestate.

Any comments? Has any other breeder out there had a similar experience?

I was in a pet store and there was an aquarium full of fish labelled "mollies." I bought two females from that tank and one male sailfin molly from another tank. When I brought them home, though, they didn't breed. I went online and looked up their pictures and found that I had an all red swordtail female and a "black" swordtail female that is shiny green in the light.

How do you tell if a female livebearer is a molly or a swordtail? They look really identical to me.

Pictures of my fish:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Se...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Se...

The red one and the black/green one are the swordtails in question. They were sold to me as mollies.

One of my fish, a female guppy, has been pregnant for a very long time and I'm worried about her. She was either already pregnant when I bought her or became so shortly after being introduced to a tank with male guppies. That was over a month ago, and she's still pregnant! Should I worry? Can she die from not dropping the fry? Is there any way to induce labor?

She's in a ten gallon tank in a temperature controlled room (no need for a heater, the room is always at 75 or so) with a few tankmates who don't bother her and some live aponogeton plants.

One of my female guppies has gone a month and a week without giving birth. Is this unusual? Should I be concerned? I'm mainly a betta person, so I don't know what to do about this guppy.

I have a pond outside and use "Tetra Pond Algae Control" in it, and the stuff works great. It worked so well, in fact, that I wondered if I could add any to my ten gallon tank. There isn't really an algae problem in the 10 gal, but I'm lazy and cleaning the tank walls annoys me. Slowing algae growth would be awesome. I'm just worried about possible negative effects.

The ten gal has eight fish in it, six female bettas, one male betta, and one female guppy. They all live in harmony, and have beautiful fins. I also have two fully grown aponogeton plants in there and nine or ten sproutlings.

The active ingredient in the chemical treatment is poly[Oxyethylene (Dimethyliminio) Ethylene (Dimethyliminio) Ethylene Dichloride], and it's at 5.4%. If I use the right concentration in my ten gal, will that help control the algae? Or will it harm what's in the tank?

A while ago I dug a pond in my yard, and got it all set up with bettas and guppies. That was fine for the summer, and very beautiful with all the colors, but winter is going to eventually come and I would like some fish that could survive my climate. I'm planning to move all of the bettas and guppies indoors when autumn hits. But what should I put in my pond for the winter? Will a koi, if I add one, survive the winter? The pond is only six feet by five feet and an average of four and a half feet deep. It has no filter, just an airator that runs a waterfall. There is one lilly pad in there and I was thinking of adding aponogetons, but might not. Would keeping a koi alive in that pond require me to buy a heater for the winter? Should I worry about the koi getting big enough to eat my guppies and bettas when I put them in again in the summer? How many koi can I put in there? And what's a shubunkin?

I recently dug a pond in my backyard for bettas (it's an experiment to see how they do in a pond setting) and I have an aponogeton in one of my indoor ten gallon tanks that recently sprouted and had babies. I was thinking about putting the baby aponogetons in the pond, but I don't know how or even if that's a good idea.

The sproutlings were made about two months ago, and they've been in pretty low lighting since then. I have eleven of them, and they're all about an inch or two tall. How would I transfer them to my pond? Would they survive outside? Would I put them in a tray with gravel at the bottom, or should I use potting soil or some other substrate? Will transferring my plants kill them? How old should they be when I transplant them?

So, I have a bunch of questions. I've never had my own pond before, and although I'm experienced with raising plants in an aquarium setting, I don't know what to do differently for a pond. Any advice greatly appreciated. :)

I was just wondering if any of you had an opinion on this. One of my fish died yesterday, and I dont know how and it's really bothering me. Okay, here's what happened.

I was going about my daily fish tending business (I have a lot of fish, so I have to set aside about a half an hour a day to see to them all). One of my tanks, a ten gallon, was about an inch below its normal waterline. I topped it off with maybe 20 ounces or so of tap water, which isn't much for a ten gallon tank and I didn't expect any problems. But I did so with the tank light off, so I wasn't see what was happening in the tank. I go around, feed my other fish, and come back to the ten gallon. And I'm shocked to see my beautiful prize green snakeskin guppy belly up, with no movement, floating around in the current at the top of the tank. He was perfectly fine an hour before, and none of the fish showed any sign of illness, except for him being dead. The tankmates are a female guppy, a female betta ...

I recently found an awesome looking guppy at a local aquaculture store and, enamored, bought it with the hope of breeding it for more. But I have no idea what my fish's strain is called, or which female I should breed it with.

Does anyone know what this male guppy's strain is called?

http://s229.photobucket.com/albums/ee83/photoshare...

Is breeding him with this female a good idea?

http://s229.photobucket.com/albums/ee83/photoshare...

Thank you for your opinions, and I hope someone knows some information about my fish. :)

I've included a picture of him in a little temporary tank (his larger tank accidentally shattered earlier today, so I picked this up at the store). Note how the back fin is clamped in the picture.

The betta, Archer, just got over a mild case of dropsy, which I have also included a picture of. I had just moved him out of the hospital tank when, two days after he was symptom free, he showed signs of clamped fins.

Picture of his dropsy, which is now cleared:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Ma...

Picture of his clamped fin mystery illness:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v415/Okiimiru/Ma...

Does anyone know why his fins are clamped like that? He's having trouble swimming but still has an appetite. I'm worried.