@JCL - Wuzzup buddeh! hahahaha, you're everywhere I see XD. Hows it hanging? Still waiting for some pics of your setup if there is one at the moment! @Wagenmeister : Glad to hear those fish are ok. So the Salt and Heat worked then. So yeah about that twinstar: As per The Green Machine: Twinstar Nano and Mini are effective on: Hair Algae, Thread Algae, Blue Algae, Green Dust Algae, Green Spot Algae, Fuzz Algae, Brown Algae Twinstar Mini S and Super S are effective on: Preventing fish disease, Green Algae @CraigMiles But then again, the proof is in the pudding. For that price, I'd rather scrap my tank and start a new one. Only in the case that I have invested a substantial amount of money into a tank would that be viable. Never the less, it's good to know about these devices, I head about UVSterilizers which where very interesting. You recon these work on a similar principle?
Hey @DaveAbes exactly the same principal, except that the Twinstar has a better record in terms of fighting disease, has a longer life span and saves electricity as it isn't running 24/7. Check out that link I posted earlier I think it depends on how much money you are putting into your tank and the fish in it, you may not want a whole tank wiped out due to a disease. If like me have you have 80 fish(4ft) priced anywhere between R10 and R450 you are looking at a lot more than R2000 to restock after a disease wipes out your tank. And that being said restarting a tank means new gravel as well as the disease may very well be in your filter/gravel. Some meds also affect plants not only the fish, and if you have any shrimp say goodbye to them as well So at the end of the day... I'm not saying go out and buy one immediately but it has and is working for me, and I will continue to use it until I see a negative result in my tank.
Very interesting! Will look into it in the future. I just picked up my new Gapedi tank the weekend, so next on my fish budget is a stand for the tank.
Yep, I am on TASA and APSA, been like that from day 1, I don't discriminate against fish nor plants But I never posted any pictures anywhere......I am too old to learn new tricks like uploading pics and all that You are welcome to come past and have a look at all my tanks, ...I am not quite sure but I have somewhere between 30 and 40, ....so with all the WC and stuff, no time to train my fish and shrimps to pose nicely for fancy pics ... But I repeat again, the Twinstar Nano and Mini are useless, regardless what the Internet says (Green machine or anyone else) Not one Forum member who bought one has come out and backed the unit, ...at best you get 'I don't know whether it works', ...well, I don't beat around the bush, call a spade a spade, ....but I also said that I can't make any claim regarding the Mini S or Super S as I didn't buy those. Not going to waste my money buying another product of the Twinstar range, I'll wait for the 5Star
I have no experience with this unit nor have I read any of the sales pitch etc but all the pics of tanks I've seen posted with this unit have algae? ...In fact most of the actual diffusers even have algae on them
100% correct! I experienced this, ...so did @AdrianT and @Hanekka .....so if algea starts growing on the diffuser itself you know the unit isn't living up to the sales pitch ......
@JCL - For sure man. That would be great. Currently snowed under with college work during the week and assignments each weekend all weekend myself, but the offer is provided and I would be glad to see your setup and learn a few things! Will drop you PM and make a plan sometime. I'll be bringing beverages and a notebook if you don't mind.
Yeah I cannot say I have experienced any miracles. Every time the power trips the Twinstar doesn't turn onto automatically... So sometimes it's off for a week if I don't notice. I am considering selling mine soon, if you're keen. Maybe it does work. If I sell it and my tank goes bad, I know it did something ;-) Claude, I'd like to visit your tanks one day I have excess cows if you are keen. For free.
Hi guys, I'm happy to report back that after the 1 week heat treatment and 3 days of Waterlife Ich medicine 3weeks later I have seen no ich on one of the two fish in the tank.
Now to figure out which of the treatments did the job, haha. Could you have avoided the stress on the inhabitants and plants and only use the Waterlife Ich medicine, or could you have saved the money and time treating with chemicals by only using heat? BUT in the end, great news that the ich is history. NOW to keep it that way!
Agreed. I managed to treat and rapidly get rid of Ich using Bio-Elite Anti Ich. A locally based company. They say it's all natural, and safe for use with plants and all fish. It's a 14 day ich treatment - that I used with zero casualties. I introduced some oto's while using it and they weren't even phased. So I'm guessing it was pretty good compared to the heavy duty meds that can kill fish as well as heal them. Perhaps worth looking into. Ofcorse if others have had bad experiences with this product I would like to hear about it too. The other side of the coin is allways handy.
Heat alone with no meds will sort it out. Obviously plants and inmates need to be able to deal with the heat. Ie don't try it with white clouds ☺
I've been maintaining aquariums for the better part of my lifetime and I've found the best Ich treatment depends on situation, but this is what I do... 1. If your fish are in a bad way (they're quite badly infested and visibly under stress) its best to take some drastic measures (sometimes the loss of one fish outweighs the risk of a full tank wipeout). One Tbsp Aquarium Salt (not table salt - no iodine!) per 50L Use Malachite Green (Ich med) - try get your Ich med without Formaldehyde if you can, just pure Malachite is best (treat at 2/3 the instructions on the bottle). Make sure you have removed any Activated Carbon (if you use Purigen you can leave that in - but remember to recharge it after treatment). Pump the temp up to 30C (I like to go to 31C) and leave it there for *three weeks* (ie. even when your tank looks perfectly clean of Ich, keep it there still). I find that 31C is fine even with my loaches who are quite sensitive. Do a 10% water change every day (for the first week) ensuring that you vacuum the gravel (very gently) and you can go back to normal weekly water changes after the first week of treatment Make sure to oxygenate the hell out of your water - remember the higher the temp the less oxygen held by the water, so this is a very important step to keeping fish stress down. I usually put a ceramic air disc under a powerhead to defuse better and for less surface displacement (planted tank). With the above I find I have hardly suffered any fatalities and even the plants seem to be 'ok' (providing you continue with the WC). Also you may want to ease up on your lights and ferts during the treatment period (not do away with, just reduce) as the plants will not be making use of them to the full extent anyway - they too will be a little stressed by the added salt, malachite and higher temp, etc. 2. If your fish are still "ok" when you notice the Ich, you can do the same as above just without the Malachite
Thanks so much! That's basically what I did, meds and 31-32 degrees, I just did not do it for 3 weeks but one. Got the results, put in a few fish and they are clean of ich for over a month now.
@Wagenmeister you don't medicate for 3 weeks, that you do per the instructions on your bottle (usually 3-4 days) and I do it at slightly less dosage. Its the Temp that you keep there for three weeks. Let me explain why we up the Temp and leave it for so long... Ich has a normal life cycle as follows: Trophont stage: The parasite is attached to the fish for between 3 to 7 days Disassociation stage: The parasite falls off the fish and floats freely in the water for about 1 day Tomont stage: The parasite now usually sits on the gravel and begins to reproduce, making hundreds more of itself for between 3 to 28 days Theront stage: The 'eggs' now hatch and the new parasite begin swimming freely looking for a host (fish) for 1 to 2 days (they can survive up to 4 days without a host before dying) This life cycle, as you can see, if very long in reality and bear in mind that each parasite may be at a different stage of its life cycle when you then notice you have Ich and start treatment. One is often fooled into thinking they have irradiated Ich because they no longer see any spots on their fish, but this could just be that the first stage is finished and the buggers are still very much going through their motions in your tank, and just when you thought all was well, bang, your tank is all infested again. Right, so why do we up the Temp? Well the life cycle I explained above is their normal cycle, at normal temps. Ich, like every living thing in your tank has a metabolism, and like most, if you increase the temperature, the metabolism increases too. So what does that mean? Well, simply put, when we increase the temp we speed up their life cycle. So instead of 3-7 days on the host, it would be quicker, like 3 days and they're done. Great, so now we've sped that up and got them to fall off, but surely now they are just going to reproduce quicker too, right? No. Just like your fish all have certain temps they enjoy and some are super sensitive to higher/lower temps, so are Ich. Ich struggle to reproduce, almost entirely retarded when the temp goes above 30C. So not only have we forced them to fatten up faster and leave our fish alone, they drop off sink to the substrate and now they struggle, if not find it impossible, to reproduce and they die. So why then do we have to keep the temp at 30+C for three weeks? Well, because as I said earlier, there is always going to be hundreds/thousands of the parasites in an infected tank all at different stages of their respective lifespans. So to ensure we catch ALL of them, we keep the temp up past 30C for three solid weeks. Salt? Why do we put salt in the water? Well, it's essentially working as a natural disinfectant. When the Ich leaves the fish's body, it has left tiny holes in the mucus membrane it has also stressed the fish out and lowered the fish's immune system. So the fish is vulnerable to infection. We simply add the salt to help prevent that. -- Most fish do not die from the Ich itself, but rather the by-products (such as desease / infection / etc) caused as a result of being weakened by the parasite. So what does Malachite Green do? Well, simply put it does nothing to the Ich when it is attached to the fish, as the Ich is protected by the fish's mucus membrane at that stage. However as soon as it falls off the fish and/or 'hatches' (in other words once the Ich is free swimming) the chemical kills them off. So I medicate initially/lower dose and short period, just to bring things under control a bit, then I use Temp to irradiate the rest.
