10G boy tank questions

[BettaMomma]

Harvey and Archie seem to be doing okay in their 10G divided tank.
A couple of things that I've noticed that are still kinda bugging me though that I wanted to see if anyone could shed some light on...

1 ) I seeded their tank with gravel from my girly tank 10 days ago, filled it up and added Archie to the other side. I still haven't seen any spikes in ANYTHING. Everything is flat out zero. I test the water every evening. Is it normal for everything to be at zero for that long before anything starts up? The reason I'm asking has to do with point 2.
2 ) I was worried that there was some sort of spike yesterday, because Archie's tail has once again started disintegrating - well, it never really started to heal once I got them into the big tank... What's really odd is that he's built me the biggest bubble nest I've ever seen from any of my fish - it's an oval about 8" x 4" and covers a huge part of the surface of his side of the tank. The other thing that's odd about that all is that Harvey is on the other side of the same tank and his tail is growing back beautifully -the tail/fin issues he was dealing with (same as what Archie is STILL dealing with) are going away...
3 ) Harvey still can't flare full-bore. One gill raker still stays folded in when he flares. Could he have sustained permanent damage when he had whatever disease he was battling?

Their temp has been at a perfectly steady 78 degrees since the day they both went into the tank. I'm not really sure what to do with Archie at this point, because if I medicate somebody, everybody gets medicated in this tank and it will hose up the cycling process.

Oh, and I can't even begin to say how nice it is to only have 2 tanks that require 100% water changes in them now as opposed to 4. Love it!

 

[newfishies]

1)
well, i think that ideally, if you seeded the tank with enough bacteria from the girly tank, then you shouldn't see any spikes, because the bacteria are gobbling up the ammonia and nitrites right away

2)
does harvey flare at archie and vice-versa? when i've had boys side by side, their tails get raggeddy from flaring so much. maybe archie is flaring a lot, even though the boys are not right next to each other

3)
if i remember correctly, didn't harvey always have a raker that didn't fully extend? maybe it was injured before you got him and has nothing to do with any disease process. maybe bumped or injured during shipping, etc...

 

[BettaMomma]

1 ) that's very possible - I'm not very good at knowing exactly how the whole cycling thing works, but I thought there would still be some kind of spike..?

2 ) They really don't pay too much attention to each other. If anything, Harvey notices Archie and swims back and forth for a bit but then goes on his merry way. There is about 4" of space between then and 2 dividers so they can't see each other very well at all. Archie swims back and forth along his divider but really never flares. Come to think of it, i've not seen him flare since he went into this tank. He sure is bubblenesting like crazy, tho.

3 ) He actually had perfect gill rakers until several weeks ago - he had the biggest flare I have seen yet. He developed some lumps under his chin and his gills got really rusty and red. This all happened after I OD'd him on MelaFix (before I knew better about that stuff) I also noticed that on the outside of his gills- the part right where his cheeks bend when he flares - some scales were popping out and falling off. All the while he was losing his tail - whether it was being eaten off or what, i'm not sure... but I treated him with Tetracycline followed by Maracyn Two. His lumps and rusty gills never really went away, but it seems like he's really feeling much better overall. His tail is growing back very nicely, in fact it looks better now than it ever has and he seems very puffy-chested and full of himself lately.