@DoubleDutch - wasn't you. At all. You just came in right as I'd gotten fed up with the whole thing. It was a buildup of people ignoring the question at hand and lecturing me that I should be doing things I literally *can't* do in the short term.
The problem is that I posted in *emergency issues* to know what I could do in an *emergency* to get them back to health, so I could safely make long-term improvements. Major changes while the fish are sick, that don't directly address sickness, just add stress. And the arrogance of people *refusing* to answer my very specific, clear questions in favor of talking about those major changes (but not necessarily explaining *how* to safely make them, I might add!), after I'd said that I had pondered them, and was operating under constraints, is infuriating.
If, like you, they explicitly said they didn't know and commisserated, or if they kept investigating like
@wasmewasntit is so kindly interpreting folks as having been doing, that would've been fine. But there was a lot of "you're doing it wrong" to which I could only really respond, "Yeah, I know, working on it. But what can I do *now* to buy time?" And that got more, "You're doing it wrong." I stayed patient with folks as long as I could, but the condescension eventually rubbed raw.
If I weren't in any other fora, I might've just accepted it as normal, like people here keep saying - but I've seen in the ADF fora how experienced folks can be very helpful without being at all arrogant or condescending. They'll tell you their general recommendations, but they'll also tell you what can help even if you don't follow those. And those fora are supposedly among the most intense and opinionated.
@wasmewasntit It's not that people were bombarding me with detailed questions about things that hadn't occurred to me - I would've expected and welcomed that. I described parameters and conditions, took photos, and would've uploaded videos if the site had allowed it, no complaints. BUT: that wasn't met with further investigation, rather impossible demands.
FWIW, the cories are now in the sand-bottomed hospital tank, but the pH is still significantly more basic than I'd like (around 7.8-8.1, *higher* than in the main tank). Will add a couple more catappa leaves to slowly acidify tomorrow. After the haranguing I got here, I gambled that the sand, the slight cooling (76°F), and isolating them from the larger animals would reduce more stress than the pH increase and chasing/catching/acclimating them would add.
If that turns out to be wrong, their deaths are on this forum. I would've been far more conservative in making changes, otherwise. As it stands, I don't know what more I could have done to follow the - for all intents and purposes - *commands* I got here, seeing as I don't have the money or the magic to recreate the Río Salinas overnight. I've spent a week trying to acidify the hospital tank without serious chemicals - speaking of the "how-to" advice I could've used!
I was literally told both "the tank should be much more acidic" and "don't use chemicals to change the pH", with no explanation given of how to square that circle - especially given that I already use catappa leaves, as can be seen in the photos. Apparently some folks here are blessed with municipal taps that deliver hot and cold running gastric juice. But somehow *my frustration* is the distressing thing! Oh, and my nitrates should somehow both take care of themselves, with hardly any need for water changes, *and* always stay very near zero ::eye roll:: Let's count the double binds, shall we? Was I supposed to ask Santa for a ten-year-old biotope tank and then expect him to actually show up with one - in November, at that?
All that said, IF - and *only* if - by some miracle they suddenly perk up, I'll happily grovel for forgiveness for my temper and folly, or whatever else these folks with impossible expectations want. The fish are the point, here, after all.
