My kubotai dream coming true

[AnneH]

Unfortunately I only have Faunamor. Selling medicine has not been allowed for about a year in Denmark now, so I have to order any medicine from Germany or England. It usually takes 4-5 days for it to arrive here. I have quite a few different ones at home (just in case, I hardly ever use them), but Faunamor and EshaExit were the only ones against ich.

I feel Faunamor and heat treatment are my only options right now. Hopefully I can add bacteria from another fish tank after the treatment. Man, this isn't what I hoped for...

Luckily the fish hardly ever flash and they don't seem ill apart from the few white spots left on some of them, so maybe I can beat the ich in time

[NancyD]

How is the treatment going?

[AnneH]

The treatment seems to be going well Thank you for asking, Nancy.
No visible signs of ich, no flashing, and they eat ferociously when fed. I still count 10 kubs, and a good handfull of sids (I am certain that the rest of them are just hiding. They are very small, there are lots of hiding places, and I only let the light on for a few minutes).

According to the medicine (Faunamor), I'll have to add more of it on monday and tuesday. Then on wednesday, I'll do a water change (how much should I change?), add some filterstart bacteria, slowly start lowering the temperature, and then hopefully that was it. Phew!

If you want to switch to another product, you could try Sera Prozatol. This is highly recommend here, and doesn't harm scaleless fish. Furthermore it cures in cases, where ichthyo has got resistent .

I would really like to have some Sera Protazol in the house. When I tried to buy it from a webshop, it somehow didn't work. I could order anything else from my basket, but this one wasn't "allowed". I couldn't figure out why.

[NancyD]

Great! You know, if the fish are ok with treatment & you have enough left, you may want to do 1 more round (2 days?) just to be sure. Heat speeds up the ich lifecycle but 10 days is the least that I'd feel safe with. You want to make sure it is truly gone. Then do 40-50% water change, maybe run some carbon if you have it, & do another 40-50% in several days.

& then post some pics of your new fish

[AnneH]

Actually, when I checked the instruction again, it read that I should only add more medicine today and then do a 30% water change tomorrow. I will, however, stick to the plan I posted the other day: add medicine today and tomorrow and change 40-50% on wednesday (and add filterstart bacteria). Then it'll be 10 days of heat treatment combined with 8-9 days of medication. Carbon would be difficult to use in a background filter, so I'll skip that part and replace it with water changes instead.

Man, am I looking forward to seeing my wonderful loaches. Hopefully some of the plants survive.

[AnneH]

Finally: pics! But oh my, it's awfully difficult to take photographs of the loaches. Mostly they just appear as blurry stripes all over the picture




As I feared, some of the plants didn't make it... but the fish seem to be all right, so the plant problem will be solved when they start growing again.

[bookpage]

Real nice tank and fish. I don't mean to burst your bubble, but they do not look like kubotai. They look more like Botia histrionica

http://www.loaches.com/species-index/botia-histronica
http://www.loaches.com/species-index/botia-kubotai

[NancyD]

They look so cute! I think they are probably kubotai. They are very small but some already show some slight dark lateral lines forming & the gray area between the vertical stripes. Time will tell.

It's funny how on the sand your sids look pale (probably still adjusting some). The last time I kept them on black substrate they were very dark, a few with almost no chain pattern at all.

Too bad about some of the plants, your tank still looks great, especially now with loaches!

[AnneH]

A tiny bit closer:




I understand why they can be confused with histrionica, but these are tiny and will hopefully develop a more kubotai-looking patterne when they grow.

All the fish in this tank look a bit pale after the treatment, the danios too. Maybe they're just not used to the lamp anymore

[AnneH]

Now almost a year has passed by, and even though the fish seem to enjoy themselves, I have had some trouble with the tank, above all because of algae. Finally this summer I decided to get a co2 system, which actually turned out to be a challenge in many ways until I got it all up and running without problems.

A few months ago I decided to double up the amount of danio choprae because they were far to shy when only 15. They were always hiding in the plants. When suddenly counting 30 they became braver and much more visible in the tank. A beautiful species.

Some of the sids are still very small and a bit pale. Sometimes I wonder if they are "real" sids at all... but never the less I haven't lost a loach during this year, so I guess everything is fine. I really enjoy watching this tank and look forward to seeing the plants thrive even more than now.

A few recent pics:
Daylight


Nightlight

[NancyD]

Thanks for the update, Anne. Your tank & fish look very good! The kubs seem to be pretty slow growers, yes? I had histionicas (similar to kubs), that grew quite fast, almost adult size in a year but, a different species. Your sids just look a bit pale, maybe the white substrate, but really like sids.

I meant to ask, before the heat melt down, what is (was) the reddish bullated (textured) crypt, it's very pretty but I don't see it in your later pics, And what is the happy crypt with thinner red leaves now?

I so happy that all your loaches look so good, you've done well!

[AnneH]

Oh, thank you for all the nice words I'm so glad you like my tank.
Yes, the kubs seem to grow very slowly. How long should I expect before they are fully grown? They are all smaller than the yoyo I had some years ago which was 3 years old when I got it. I have no previous experience with kubs, so I have nothing to compare with. That also goes for the sids, but as a matter of fact some of them (the first batch I bought) look rather pale sometimes. Then again, so do some of the danios when they are up front (probably because of the light), but the later sids I bought (from another place) do look less pale than the first ones. After about half a year I decided to buy 5 more sids because I rarely saw more than a few at a time. They seem to enjoy the tank.

I remember somebody being sceptical about the number of hiding places in the beginning. I wouldn't worry about that now At daytime I hardly ever see more than the danios and maybe a glimpse of the crossocheilus. Apart from the danios the tank mostly look deserted... but at twilight or feeding time there's suddenly a party going on I'm happy that I bought a sunriser with the lamp.

The first crypt you ask about is the wendtii brown, if you mean the one to the left (I have moved the plants around a few times but always had much of it on the left side). I still have loads of it, it might just look different now because of the co2? Actually I'm not sure about the second one mentioned, but I might be able to find out within a few days

[NancyD]

Well, maybe it is the CO2, I don't remember wendtii "brown" looking like that when I had it, but it's been a long time now. I also don't recall all the leaf texture.

My B. striata were very slow growers too. They grew from almost 3 cm to ~ 6 or 7 cm in the next 3+ years (maybe 5?), I don't remember anymore. Nothing like their "potentialial" size even with daily 2x feedings & at least weekly water changes. As long your kubs continue to grow, in girth if not length, & look healthy, I say all is good. I had some smaller, paler sids once, I think I decided they were just young but maybe from a different spawning batch (almost all sids are captive bred these days AFAIK).