Hi.
I had planned on taking sometime out to do a concise write up as to how things have been but it took far longer than i thought to get some other tasks done that i've only just finished now.
I've decided I think it might be easier to sterilize his main tank and start over even though his water again was perfect yesterday. I had the aquarium do a check with their stuff just to be 100% sure my API water test reagents had not expired. We were half expecting to discover the reagents I was using to test his water had run foul.
So yeah it's just all the more funny though, in reading things here, and talking to the aquarium staff... his gill trauma issue just seems really odd from what data we have on his tank's conditions as they more readily would be affecting an axie with common water quality issues.
Speaking of his main tank, I noticed since taking Lux out of his tank and switching off his pump in his main tank that there were things like cyclopods and possibly I noticed a single planteria worm floating about, so you would think if it was a contaminant or bad water they would be affected too in some manner? There are quite a few of the cyclopods and similar, darting around the tank that are obvious now that there is no water movement at all. I think from what I saw, they are all the harmless varieties as I did an image aquarium ID pest checklist online nothing matched up as a 'bad bug' I could see I should be concerned about.
The advice of the aquarium was to sterilize the tank and start over. He suggested Potassium Permangenate for doing that now that we discovered all Australian bleach both he and I had researched (including White King- the Aussie equivalent of Chlorox) has detergent in it and most of the time it is unlabeled on the bottles!
I think I will boil up his sand and filter media after the potassium treatment just to be sure. I did a test boil on some spare filter medium I had left in the box to see if it could handle the heat and it seemed ok after a 20 minute rolling boil.
Even with them being porus that should kill anything hopefully right?
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B.T.W Fimbriae to answer your question, the medium in my moving bed filter is Aquatopia Bio Substrate Beads
HYDRO PURE BIOSUBSTRATE BEADS 500G - AQUARIUM, FILTER - MEDIA, AQUATOPIA - Product Detail - Premier Pet Pty Ltd
On a side note I had to go to the Chemist/pharmacy over the road as that is where he told me to get some Potassium Permangenate for clearing out the tank and in telling the pharmacist that it was for my axie she died laughing as she said she had never prescribed anything for helping a sick fish before
I don't think she got quite how it worked lol.
So I will take out the live plants in his main tank during the week (do you guys think I should throw them out or try to sterilize them with a salt water and weaker Potassium Permangenate bath?) and then run the Potassium Permangenate through to kill everything in his main tank and then do the boil.
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Big note now I would love to have some axie experts to think about ********
Because of the Potassium Permangenate the chap at the store warned me it would dye the silicone on the tank purple. I didn't know that. But in mentioning it to dad on the drive home he said 'oh yes just like the stuff I used years ago that made the tank silicone turn blue.' I was like, 'Hold up- what?!'
Turns out that when we had gold fish in there, before the tank lay empty and dormant for the last 10 years, dad had treated them for White Spot with the blue copper based meds I know are toxic to Axolotls. In doing that, it turned the silicone blue, just like the Potassium Permangenate will turn it purple. I read that silicone can be a little porous itself...could the fact that the silicone is blue mean that it could be in the silicone and leaching traces into the tank making his gills get sick? I don't know but is it overkill to get him to strip the tank down to glass sheets and having him resilicone it up again before putting Lux in again? I don't know anything about silicone and fish tanks though he made Luxies main tank 30 years ago. So any opinions for the above on anyone in the know would be really grateful.
Fimbriae, in regards to the bubbler, I have it in on minimum which is meant to be 50 litres an hour. He is in 20 litres of remineralised R.O water and I've changed it daily thus far (tomorrow I will go back to Brita carbon filter water as the aquarium guys said that should be fine and far quicker too).
I was a bit hesitant to have him sitting there in the still water as he kept surfacing for air a lot even in the main tank with the bubbler. He has been doing that less and less though since going into the temp tank however which must be a good sign. Maybe once ever 45 minutes this afternoon I noticed. At his worst -right before i moved him, it was almost once every minute.
Something that happened the first night he was in his temp tank startled me too and worth mentioning. At 1:33 am, he woke me with 3 very large splashes/thrashes which is not typical for him and not something I had ever seen. I don't know what he was doing but as soon as the light came on he stopped and was sitting peacefully. I worry it was to do with having no bubbler in the water but I don't know.
He hasn't been floating much now and is more like normal axie behavior, sitting/walking on the bottom- though that just might be the fact that there is significantly less height between the top and bottom of the water level and more oxygen getting to him whilst he is sitting.
Lighting is ambient light and very minimal. It does seem his threshold for 'starling' has dropped a bit with the daily water changes (though my stupid idea yesterday of transferring him didn't help...slow moving waterfalls and axies do not mix
duh but seemed a better alternative to the netting which he hates or me grabbing him. Next time I do a water change I'll lower the little bucket with him, into the temp tank with the new water and let him swim out on his own).
I didn't do a change today but the last one was yesterday at 9pm and its just gone 10pm now, so I might do it tomorrow at noon. I noticed a lot of shedding after his first day in the new water and
maybe if im not imagining it, a lot of the shedding/gunk possible fungus/trauma stuff came off after 24 hours in his temp tank. I think there is still some on one of the gills but I am hoping it is looking better and I'm not just being hopeful. I got pictures on my phone and i'll post those tomorrow as it's charging right now.
He actually hunted a worm this morning (I dropped it) and caught it mid sink which was great to see as he has never done that
Ok, time for me to hit the sack too.