Petco Online Rep Experience

I often feel like most people (or at least myself) with pet fish (or perhaps not just with fish) often question another persons aquatic,etc advice. I often find doing research and experimenting is generally the best route to take (that's why I have this blog in the first place, right?! hah). Onto my point...

I recently decided to see how Petco's Online Interactive Rep Chat was and I quickly began talking to an online Petco representative named "Abby" whom I asked "aside from appearances, what is the difference between the Aqueon Pro and the regular Aqueon aquarium heater?". The response I ultimately got from her was based on the customer reviews she had read, and so Abby's response was that the Pro series supposedly lasts longer. Seriously, that's all that she could tell me...well, that and how they currently are having a sale on the item (like duh, its Black Friday week, heh).

Overall, this Petco Chat help line was not really anymore helpful to me than what I could have learned on my own and both of these items have a lifetime warranty. So, her response really tells me that aside from looks... they are the same. Was this the response I was looking for...not really, I was desiring more since both the items according to her are basically the same since I know they both have a lifetime warranty, and yet the Pro costs more, and... for what reason? Well, we already know Abby can't really help us so... that's where I come in.

Actually, I already knew the answer as to what the difference was between the two heaters (or at least one) from my own personal knowledge. The difference is that the Pro heater is fully submersible underwater which allows it to be added anywhere inside the aquarium and positioned in any direction; the regular heater can only be positioned vertically as the top part of the device is marked showing a waterline, this waterline means that you are not suppose to fully submerse this heater underwater. Although they both say on the label they are "submersible" this does not mean they are fully submersible however, you may not realize this until you open the package and read the directions/warnings inside. Although, one way to know if it is or not is to look at the device itself and if it shows a marked waterline on it, then it's more than likely NOT fully submersible.

So, based on this Petco experience, I really doubt I'll be asking them for advice online anytime soon. Of course if they start getting more knowledgeable people working for them I might ask for advice, but even then I'll probably still be a bit skeptic.

*Aside from other things on Petco I came across their fish forum online and I could not agree more with THIS article on fish rights which, I think all us fish fanatics and lovers can agree with, thanks TacoLuv for posting.

Aquarium Bacteria - Good and Bad

Often I hear people talking about aquarium bacteria when dealing with established filtration media, gravel, etc. In my personal opinion once a tank is started it begins to accumulate some type of bacteria and such throughout the entire tank and not just one particular area.

I am uncertain as to what extent people seem to think they have "good bacteria" in their aquarium. What are the qualifications for this "good bacteria" and what are their standards, because what one person may consider "good" the next person may not. You could base this off many factors like healthy fish, clean water, growing plants, breeding fish, etc but... that also varies from person to person, and tank to tank. So in my personal opinion, I don't think those factors should make anyone think they have the best bacteria and healthiest setup for there aquatic friends. Nearly any aquarium can take an unhealthy turn for the worse and vice versa, and some fish and plants can still flourish in not-so-great conditions.

If you want to consider a cycled aquarium as having "good bacteria" I would not state that, I would just say that it is an established aquarium. I also don't find that having an established aquarium has really helped kick start any new aquarium of mine to help it cycle faster...maybe others have had luck with this but adding gravel from an established tank or filtration media did not work for me (although you will find another post on here of a product that did cycle my aquarium rapidly).

So, I hope this post perhaps helps anyone else that is having issues or also struggles with this topic. Keep in mind that this is my personal opinion and what has been my past experience with this issue. I would love to hear others comments and opinions on this topic as well.

Fish Updates

Here is a photo of one of the first batch of fry that my original female guppy (who recently passed away) and one of her sons reproduced, these fry are now 6 weeks old this week and in my opinion have been growing rapidly (they all basically look like this thus far) as they are about an inch in length now.

Here are the original female guppy's first offspring (to which the father is unknown and the mother is now deceased as mentioned before). These two males were the ones that reproduced this current batch of 6 week old fry and are the only 2 fully matured males I currently have. I don't plan on breeding these two again until the 6 week old female fry are mature. These two have also reproduced with there sisters in my other tank and those fry are around 3-4 weeks old now and seem a bit slow growing.

Male guppies at 7.5 months old

Some people have asked me how Mr.Moto my blue veil-tail betta is doing and he's doing just fine although I think he has been wanting to breed for some time now, but I do not plan to breed betta's due to there general temperment and the amount of space it will ultimately consume for me. Today I placed him back into his smaller Cubus tank while I clean out his Mini-Bow. As you can see his coloring has changed yet again. Mr. Moto's head area has turned mostly black in color and he has odd white lines that run vertically between the mouth to gill area, which I think may be a breeding identifer as well as the white area running under his belly. The horizontal stripes along his sides though are what I call his "stress stripes" which didn't start to appear until I moved him back into his Cubus (the tank change and move can cause that to happen obviously but they will go away when he feels more at ease). I also have never noticed the tiny black line of dots on his lower under-belly fin, perhaps that's also a breeding sign.

Click to Enlarge

Dropsy

This week as I checked on my female guppy tank I noticed my main fish mom (the one that started all the current guppies I have) had developed a case of dropsy. I don't think I've had a fish get dropsy since about 5yrs back when I had some zebra danio's. I treated the tank with Maracyn Two and Mardel CopperSafe and within a few hours the female had unfortunately passed away. All my other fish seem to be doing fine, I moved the fry into the male guppy tank after 24/hrs of treatment and left the other adult females in the treated tank which I will clean out this coming week.

What's Dropsy?

Dropsy is a bit difficult to diagnose but it is generally a bacterial infection which could be introduced through poor water quality (high in nitrates). It could also be kidney/heart failure (possibly due to too many water chemicals), excess fluid to the liver, or other possible causes. It could possibly be contagious.

Dropsy Characteristics?

Rapid Breathing, Protruding Scales, and Bloated Body. In early and latter stages of dropsy you may notice the fish going to the surface often for air, possible lack of appetite, or even spends most of its time at the top or bottom of the aquarium. There may also be a change in color (female guppies tend to turn a bit gray on the body).

Dropsy Treatment?
As dropsy is hard to diagnose it makes it difficult to treat. Moving the fish to a quarantine tank may make matters worse due to the stress it will cause on the ill fish. If the fish is already showing the bloated spiny appearance than chances of survival are probably slim. An aquarium salt bath may help to draw out the fluid in the fish. Some medications that may help are penicillin, tetracycline, and nalidixic acid. Water changes and clean water are a must to help prevent fish from getting dropsy.

*These remedies are only what I've researched on the Internet thus far and may/may not work.

Tail Split Remedy



A ginkgo leaf looks similar to a tail split



After moving my male guppies back into there 10gal aquarium last week I noticed one of my males had a tail split straight down the middle of his tail to the base. Tail splits can occur for many different reasons such as...water parameter changes, fighting, or even getting snagged on aquarium decor. After waiting about 2 days to see if his tail was going to mend itself, it really didn't seem to be so I took a shot at trying to correct the issue.

I decided to pour in a bit of PimaFix (originally I was going to try Melafix but I couldn't locate my bottle of it) into my 10gal aquarium. By the next day I shocked to see that his tail was halfway repaired! So I continued putting in 1-2 capfuls of PimaFix into the aquarium every day (I actually didn't remove the carbon from my filtration either) and in under a week, his tail split was basically gone. Click here to see how it helped my gold barbs in the past as well.

What's PimaFix?
PimaFix's active ingredient is Pimenta Racemosa (1.0% in the API brand I used) which is a bay rum oil that comes from the West Indian bay tree (or bay rum tree) which is part of the myrtle tree family. Common remedy uses for Pimenta Racemosa are for colds, flu's, digestion and insect repellent. PimaFix claims to rapidly treat internal and external fungal infections on fish as it's an anti-fungal product. It also claims to help cottony growth and reddening on fins and body.

Guppy Updates

Today my first guppy (the original store bought pregnant guppy that started this strain) gave birth to her sons fry (yes, that sounds weird but true). I now have at least 20+ new fry and I believe her daughters are also pregnant from there brothers so, I'm sure I'll end up with more fry at some point in the near future. I am hoping that with my new fry I will be able to perfect the strain a bit however, there are many other factors to consider but I'd rather not make things too complicated. In the mean time, I have 3 months before the new fry has mature males to breed (from my past experience it usually takes the females twice as long to fully mature for breeding) and I have put the mature males into a separate tank from the females and new fry as I don't want them to breed together again. Keep in mind that a female guppy can continue giving birth months after she has dropped one batch of fry without having mated again (this additional batch has always been a low number of new fry for me though as it's generally just one fry born but I'm sure it could vary).