😭😭😭 You are all so lovely I am literally crying!!! This past month has been so awful and I'm so glad to be part of this community that is so engaging and supportive.
@Hufsa @Karmicnull @John q @Wookii @tacy k @The Miniaturist @KirstyF ! I really didn't expect this 🥰 Even just a little bit is so useful.
Honestly it's been like COMICALLY grim at my house the past few weeks. As you guys know we had to put down our beloved cat which I shared here cos this is a pets kinda place, and then my tank went downhill. Last week my partner's dad died of a heart attack suddenly, and just yesterday one of my mum's closest old friends died of pancreatic cancer that she was diagnosed with only 2 weeks ago. It feels a bit like our house is cursed it all happening at once tbh. I know that the fishtank does not compare to people, it has felt quite selfish for me to be so upset about the tank but it just even more enhances the awfulness of everything. I feel like at least I can try and do something about the fish tank and be a bit proactive, cos it's hard to know what to do in times like these! Plus the bit of money I used to have for aquariums is much lower due to living costs and inbetween work. I am stuck at home job hunting (this in itself is grim lmao) so I have a lot of time to watch the tank and obsess about it.
I really so much appreciate you guys helping out!! I really want to know what it is that the fish have. As much as symptoms line up with TB in my mind, they are generic enough and wide enough that it could be all sorts of things, I just don't have the experience to help.
Hi there,
@shangman, your last paragraph is very true. It is far too easy to get carried away when you see all the beautiful fish available.
Over the years I have learned, having nano tanks, to research well by reading other people's experiences with fish I'm interested in on sites like this, then pick a couple of suitable species to stock the aquarium, obviously scale things up for a bigger volume.
I'm unlikely to ever have a large showpiece aquarium but whatever the size I'd still aim for a stable environment for the fish to live out their natural lifespan.
I've got a couple of Chelsea Pensioner cherry barbs, whiling away their twilight years in one tank!
I've never had a major disease outbreak, though a heater failure (on, unfortunately) nearly caused me to give everything up a few years ago but I think it's in my blood & I simply can't imagine not having a tank to watch, enjoy and sometimes stress over!
I have pushed it tbh, my stocking would be fine in this tank except that I probably have 15 kuhli loaches living in the caves underneath it all. 5 full sized ones, 10 small matchstick sized. At least, I might do, I never see more than 2 (one big and one small) and never see them out with lights on, so there could be just those 2 left. In my old tank I thought they'd all died, but when I took it apart they were all there and all very fat, so it's possible either way, I added the extras so I might see them more often but it didn't work! I definitely couldn't get them out or know without taking apart the whole tank. Though the fish were all so small that it never seemed overstocked at all, the volume of them wasn't much so I thought it was fine compared to the safety they felt for their numbers. In my fishkeeping, I see many of my flaws laid bare.
I suppose every tank is an experiment and this tank is just a different experiment than I thought it would be, with each tank I start it thinking I know it all before realising I know nothing!
For those concerned about the burden of a QT. My 35L one that I got off Gumtree doubles as a potting shed, has a few shrimp in it more by accident than design and gets a 60% WC every 2-3 weeks which takes me about 20 mins to do. It runs off a sponge filter and is pretty much as close to zero effort as you can get.
This is a great way to do it, low effort but really useful. Tbh this is what I love about lowtech nano tanks, they can be really easy and really nice too.
Similar to what other folks have said, I have never quarantined any fish and just got lucky - I certainly will be doing so going forward and will set up a dedicated tank.
So how long do new fish need to be quarantined before you can be happy that they haven't got something like TB?
I'm glad, I think when you are setting up your big tank soon it would be 100% worth it to use one of your current ones as a quarantine tank for the new fish. My first pencilfish had symptoms after about a month in the tank, dicrossus began a week or two after that. I think I will quarantine for 8 weeks, apparently the tb can be slow acting and I'm now paranoid about it, but a month - 6 weeks catch a lot. It seems like 2 weeks isn't enough to know. Some fish are more susceptible than others I have read, including gourami, rainbowfish and cichlids.
I think it would be beneficial to anyone reading this thread, myself included, to see a formal diagnosis. How much did they quote you
@shangman - did it involve sending a sample off to a lab rather than a Vet just 'eyeballing' it?
When I first emailed I asked about the cost of a fish tb test, they replied saying they I needed a £35 25 minute chat first to help diagnostics and didn't tell me the price of a test. I know that's not that much but my panic brain started to worry about how that could be just the beginning of an excursion I couldn't afford when they didn't just tell me straight up. I am assuming it will be about £100 for the test. Whenever we went to the vets for the cats it was always about £100 lol. Not too sure though, maybe the vet will have other ideas and want to test for several things. I will email the vet tomorrow morning about the consultation and see what they say and report back.
I think having a diagnosis will really help to understand where to go from here.