Loach hanging out inside the heater. Is this bad?

SilersAngryMeow

Oooooh, thanks for the ideas!! I may pick up some mesh first (seems a little more discreet) but the grid idea is a fabulous one too. That stuff seems really useful!

Regarding the heater - really? You've never seen those? They sell them at Pet Kingdom. I favor them over the glass ones. No breaking :) The hole is kind of an odd design feature, though. I think that's so you can run your tubing in there. Although there's no place to run tubing out - so I don't quite understand the utility of the design. :D

aunt kymmie

I agree, weird design, lol. I use Marineland Stealth heaters, which aren't made of glass, and they have no "holes". I've seen all of Eileen's tanks and she has put to use all those good ideas to use and they are very cool!

I wish we know why your fish were dying off. How frustrating.

eileen

Hard to say what is going on. My friend lost fish here and there over a years time and could not figure out what it was until she saw the worms on one of her fish. It's hard to pin point things like that. I had a angelfish that was fine one day and then passed the next day. It was not old age. I checked my water with a drop API test kit and the water was high in Ammonia for some reason. I did a 30% water change and the water was fine again. I think my fish died of ammonia poisioning. I think one of my Bushy Nosed Plecos died in a week before the death and I never found the body of that fish. I have Assassin snails in that tank so they might have ate the dead fish but that would give me a spike in Ammonia.

Chemicals near the tank, rocks used that might be unsafe, your hands in the water that was not washed after using detergent or whatever could affect your tank. New fish added can always bring in outside stuff. I have heard of even live plants. All old fish could be wiped out and the new fish you added could be fine. I just added some Wild Columbian Rams to my main tank unsafe but I had no planted tank to put them. I will have to see how that goes. Not a smart idea to do.

I hope you figure out what might be killing your fish.I know that they have safe stuff to use for QT fish that would kill anything weird. I looked at fosterandsmithaquatics.com and they have this stuff called Stop Parasites and also Coopersafe used for external parasites and you could get some stuff of internal parasites also. But if you do not know what you have it sometimes is not good to treat the whole tank with products like these.

That's why it's good to QT plants and fish before. I do a 1 part bleach/ 19 parts water for all new plants for snail control or algae for 20 seconds and then rinse well in treated water for 10 min. This is only good for less fragil plants. You can also use Alum to kill snails on new plants Prepare soak 1 gal. water, 2 TBS of Alum soak for 2-3 day then rinse well before planting in the tank.