OK, what do I do now

[Ob1]

Hi SMB, mate it takes a lot to get me pissed off and getting friendly advice does not make me angry even if I don,t agree with you. All help is welcome, as you said its a illimination process

Well put

 

[aquamanis]

Thanks Suemack and Lordmoose for the advise. I had done pretty much what you said moose about using half dose of the whitespot treatment as I,ve got a cory in there. I don,t want to put any salt for that reason. I did a small waterchange when I treated and I,ll do another one when I retreat tommorrow. (the bottle says to retreat after 3 days). The fish have stopped flashing so much but there is a bit of scale missing from one of the silver sharks and it looks like brown flesh is exposed. Has anyone ever treated for whitespot before, would you know if the scales might fall off or something when the parasite dies? I think the redness on the side of the tiger barbs is going away slowly. I tested the water again last night and to my supprise ammonia and nitrites were negative.(0) Nitrates are 5ppm.There is a bit of algae in the tank now and the glass is getting quite brown but the actuall water looks and smells fine. Do you think the algae might be a problem? Watching the fish last night they all seemed to be acting normal again so hopefully this is the end of it. Will keep you posted. Oh, somebody mentioned PH down is a bad thing. I used PH down over a couple of weeks, do you think this might have hurt the fish?

 

[ketyana]

Really glad after wading through all those other posts and the aggression above that things are starting to look up for you and your tank, well done to you and all those that added anything constructive to the situation

 

[Alien Anna]

From bitter experience, I do think the pH Down could have stressed your fish and lead to this outbreak of ick. Swings in pH are always bad - much worse than a less-than-ideal pH.

pH Down also contains phosphates which encourage the growth of algae.

I feel that fish keeping is complicated enough: Keep it simple. If you want to lower your pH and KH gradually and safely, put some bogwood in the tank and after a few weeks your pH will have come down. Don't over-stock, try to keep compatible species and another rule-of-thumb I've heard is not to buy any new stock for 6 weeks after an infection in the tank. Keep up the regular but small water changes (10-15%) and don't over-clean your filters or gravel.

I feel you're learning this anyway, but I think it bears repeating.

Good luck and I hope it becomes plainer sailing from now on.