Ok, I'm fairly new to this whole fishtanky thing, so let me lay out my tanks contents and my fish tanking habits first. You guys seem to like that.
--A 7" black pleco (is that a bad word now?) thing with (natural) white spotty colorations. This guy has been through three tanks and two years of my family buying and forgetting about fish. Always the last standing. Amazing creature, he is.
--2 Gold (yellow?) barbs.
--1 Mickey Mouse platty
--2 gold swordtails (who's babies last exactly long enough to be engulfed by the next fish
<--[not a smilie. Stupid next fish.]
--1 blue dwarf Guarami (Welcome to the next fish)
--1 perpetually preggo black molly (no mate, two fry batches so far)
--1 teeny surviving black molly fry who just started surface feeding. God only knows how he survived.
--an unknown amount of ghost shrimp. We bought five about a year ago, thought they were all eaten about a day later, and after I took over, cleaned, and restocked the tank one or two will pop into view now and again. These things going to breed?
--Some big leafy plant that pops out clones of itself on these long stick-things it grows. I cut off the stick things because they irritated me, and replanted it's offshoots (8 of them, all about 2" tall).
--Hogwart or bogwart or some kinda wart that doesn't have a root system. It kept getting eaten or broken off or something so I banded it together, crammed it in a shell, and haven't had a problem since.
-- And the aforementioned two upside down catfish.
Okay, now, as for what I do with this tank, the answer is:
Not much.
I give it either a 50% change once a week, or a couple 15-20% changes twice a week using declorinated tapwater (I use AquaSafe). And . . . that's about it.
OH! Sometimes I throw in a tbl spoon of marine salt per 5 gal of water. Usually a once a month practice (that would make twice so far! Hooray!).
Ok. So my problem.
One of my two upside down catfish is stupid, and thinks that turning completely white every now and again is a good idea. This is no fungus. I mean, I'll be feeding in the afternoon and he'll be WHITE and almost translucent, and a half hour later he's back to normal. Also, they both may have rapid breathing, but I dunno how fast they're supposed to breath--and they've both been living in this tank for roughly two months now, and this isn't recent behavior.
OH! Right, also before he did this (which started about three weeks ago) he swoll up like a balloon, lost his ability to swim in any direction except "in circles" (is that a direction?), and . . . well that's it. He got bigger and progressively worse for about two weeks, I thought he was going to die, medicated the tank with what turned out to be meth blue (didn't kill anything, or make the other upside down seem any worse ::shrug:: ) and just kinda went about my business. Finally, he comes back down to a much more normal size (just a little fatter then the other one) and we've been where I'm at now for about two weeks.
This started happening to the other as well, but when that happened I gave both of them seperate salt baths at one tbl spoon per gal (this was the day after I meth-blued the tank, before I knew it was bad for them), and they've been pretty OK. Other then the whole "Look at me! I'm white!" Thing he does every now and again.
So . . . what's up with my fish?
--A 7" black pleco (is that a bad word now?) thing with (natural) white spotty colorations. This guy has been through three tanks and two years of my family buying and forgetting about fish. Always the last standing. Amazing creature, he is.
--2 Gold (yellow?) barbs.
--1 Mickey Mouse platty
--2 gold swordtails (who's babies last exactly long enough to be engulfed by the next fish
<--[not a smilie. Stupid next fish.] --1 blue dwarf Guarami (Welcome to the next fish)
--1 perpetually preggo black molly (no mate, two fry batches so far)
--1 teeny surviving black molly fry who just started surface feeding. God only knows how he survived.
--an unknown amount of ghost shrimp. We bought five about a year ago, thought they were all eaten about a day later, and after I took over, cleaned, and restocked the tank one or two will pop into view now and again. These things going to breed?
--Some big leafy plant that pops out clones of itself on these long stick-things it grows. I cut off the stick things because they irritated me, and replanted it's offshoots (8 of them, all about 2" tall).
--Hogwart or bogwart or some kinda wart that doesn't have a root system. It kept getting eaten or broken off or something so I banded it together, crammed it in a shell, and haven't had a problem since.
-- And the aforementioned two upside down catfish.
Okay, now, as for what I do with this tank, the answer is:
Not much.
I give it either a 50% change once a week, or a couple 15-20% changes twice a week using declorinated tapwater (I use AquaSafe). And . . . that's about it.
OH! Sometimes I throw in a tbl spoon of marine salt per 5 gal of water. Usually a once a month practice (that would make twice so far! Hooray!).
Ok. So my problem.
One of my two upside down catfish is stupid, and thinks that turning completely white every now and again is a good idea. This is no fungus. I mean, I'll be feeding in the afternoon and he'll be WHITE and almost translucent, and a half hour later he's back to normal. Also, they both may have rapid breathing, but I dunno how fast they're supposed to breath--and they've both been living in this tank for roughly two months now, and this isn't recent behavior.
OH! Right, also before he did this (which started about three weeks ago) he swoll up like a balloon, lost his ability to swim in any direction except "in circles" (is that a direction?), and . . . well that's it. He got bigger and progressively worse for about two weeks, I thought he was going to die, medicated the tank with what turned out to be meth blue (didn't kill anything, or make the other upside down seem any worse ::shrug:: ) and just kinda went about my business. Finally, he comes back down to a much more normal size (just a little fatter then the other one) and we've been where I'm at now for about two weeks.
This started happening to the other as well, but when that happened I gave both of them seperate salt baths at one tbl spoon per gal (this was the day after I meth-blued the tank, before I knew it was bad for them), and they've been pretty OK. Other then the whole "Look at me! I'm white!" Thing he does every now and again.
So . . . what's up with my fish?
2 corys they are almost white when i put the tank lights
