Opallios and Pictures

[Peter Finke]

You have opallios, congratulations!

[Ted L. Dutcher]

Unfortunately I have terrible news to post. I’m really sick and let down.

In a matter of 3 days I have lost all my Opallios. This is one tank that has been very stable for me. All water parameters, temps and Ph has remained good.

I am going to scrub the tank out and try once more since they are still available. If it was disease from the seller I assume they would also know by now also. Peter once once mentioned that some or at times they can be fragile, so I was using extra caution with them, but this was sudden death with no clues I can find.

Sorry I have report this as all fish health has been well.

[Lennart Friedritz]

that’s horrible!
my condolences

[helene schoubye]

Oh, I am very sorry for you, – that must be so hard.

I will hurry to tell you, that in fact … last time I went to my local very good fish shop (has one person there with really good knowledge regarding parosphromenus) – he actually told me, they had had two shipments lately of wildcaught fish – they arrived well and fine, they put them in a tank to settle … next morning all dead. They have had wildcaught paros many times and never had this happen before. They were quite puzzled.

I dont know excatly which species this was, but since opallios is around here too it could have been them.

[Ted L. Dutcher]

Thank you Helne and Lennart,

This is a real kicker!!!
On top of this I am fighting constant amonia problems in the other tanks although the fish seem fine. I can change water today with perfect readings and have ammonia at .5 + by tomorrow.

The Opallios tank was the one I could say is perfect.

We must have some really strange water on this side of the pond.

[Maciej]

Ted, what kind of substrate are You using? It might be connected to insufficient denitrification.

[Ted L. Dutcher]

I only have a very thin layer of small inert gravel,,, the fish were having trouble catching Moina…were chasing the the reflections off the bottom of the tank.

Do I need thick substrate?? I guess I dont get it yet, with no or little bacteria present, nothing cleans the amonia. Java moss is not a heavey feeder, and I’m trying to keep the tanks simple.

I also do have a small sponge filter bubbler to keep slight water movement in the tanks…and to keep a better gas exchange…but, all seems to be failing.

[Maciej]

Actually, what You need is fine sand at the bottom. In small aquaria, where the chemistry is unstable each decaying particulate create greater strain on the filtration. If the substrate consists of bigger stones, than each particle finds its way beneath the gravel and decomposes there. You don’t want that. This creates small timebombs of amonia. With fine sand there is no place for filth “to hide”, and so it decomposes in a more controlled way.

Even in the low pH there are some bacteria alive. In the sulfur stream in Spain, where the pH was below 2 (!) scientists found colonies of algae and bacteria. So don’t sweat it. There is some filtration.

[Ted L. Dutcher]

Thank you, I can certainly give that a try, even though what I have is very fine and similar to sand maybe twice the size of sand granules and doesn’t even cover the bottom completely. I try to keep the tanks clear of any dead plants and the brown bottoms off the Java moss.

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