Saturday 28 June 2008

Another departure...

Not a good day! Blackie, the paralysed Guppy, was ddead when I looked in this morning. No idea what has happened there - nothing on the other fish. Then I did a good clean with a 20% water change. This had been planned for morning, but got delayed until evening.

I forgot to aerate the bottle the baby Danios are in and it was planned that they would come out of there today - I was intending to use the water taken from the main tank to set up the small tank. When I got around to that nearly all looked dead. There are maybe one or two that are swimming about.

Also, the shrimps haven't carried eggs for a while. Was pondering that and researching what could have got Blackie when I found a few diseases for which the treatment is salt. I've had salt in the tank occasionally, not often. I first added it when the female halfbeak had a strange growth - so the 26 April. 15 May I noticed the shrimp carrying the eggs.

She lost them after a large water change (and low oxygen) and at some point recently I added salt again, and I'm sure it was after that both shrimps carried eggs. Then the last few weeks I've done quite a few water changes.

Maybe, just maybe, the shrimps will only carry eggs when there is salt in the water? I'll hve to watch for that.

Maintenance - O2 normal; nitrate approaching 20ppm; 20% water change; 2 teaspoons tonic salts added; baby danios to spare tank.

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