raglan's bedraggled Altums

[raglan]

show the ravages of diseases ovecome, with bent fins, missing dorsal rays, holes, and small size..but they look like they're getting in the mood anyhow !
Sincere apologies for the fast and dirty video

YouTube - fun with altums

[raglan]

Thank you , Quixotic ! I'm just learning how to use pc..and not too fast learning it ! I couldn't embed this so I'm looking back at sticky instructions to see what I am doing wrong.

dave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v/foYfAEyzEqk

thanks Q and AQ !

[StanChung]

Congrats!-how long have you had them?
They're quite big if you ask me. The ones I got are 3/4" body size. Tiny. Maybe about 3" tall.

[raglan]

that's just it , Stan, These are 3 1/2 years old now. They should be quadruple the body mass. I could see them double their body mass still, now that they are putting on some weight.
They would just not eat enough before. All of them have the first hard ray of the dorsal gone, some have a few missing, like the shorter finned one of the pair. Undamaged fins would make them a couple of inches taller too !

We should be looking at a fish well over a foot tall including fins

I'm sure yours will outgrow mine within less than a year.

[illumnae]

altums grow really fast don't they? Mine are showing very noticeable growth over the last 2 weeks. they range now from about 2.75 inches to 4 inches tip to tip

[raglan]

altums grow really fast don't they? Mine are showing very noticeable growth over the last 2 weeks. they range now from about 2.75 inches to 4 inches tip to tip

I see that at the end of the year, December or so, they are six inches tall, at the importer's

[StanChung]

I think the key is diet at the start of their youth.
I have 3 adults left of 10 that are about 10-11" dorsal to anal fin tip. They ate exclusively frozen bloodworms for the 1st two years! I don't think they're going to grow anymore but it's okay by me. I think I have a pair but they are not in the mood yet.

The new ones are my first 'successful' batch of wild altums after 3 disasters before. 78% survival-5 weeks into QT. Fingers crossed...!

Hope you get a pair at least. Altums are notoriously hard if not impossible to breed.

[raglan]

notorious but not impossible; I have 4 buddies who've bred them

[StanChung]

Ah-there's hope...

Bedraggled fins does not affect 'performance' based on my experience with discus so with your 3 1/2 year ones you should be seeing some pairs?

My older ones I estimate are about 3 years old. The new ones are like little arrows...

[raglan]

most of the reported spawnings were from the early 90's or earlier,and before Linke's successful marketing of his product, there was no commercial value to them.

Frank Aguirre and Jim Robinson live nearby , Ed Ruiz was in Venezuela when theirs bred, and Granville Hammond in England.. and then we have several others with reports from Linke to Sven Fornback.

We also have the not too rare matings known from Linke fish.

Rather little info on altumish appearance fish appearing in eastern europe for very very low prices
Stlll, the number of people had them spawn is fwer than the number of people who have been into space.

[raglan]

Yeterday I moved the mopani stump closer to one end so that the tetras would feel less secure about traversing the wide open space into the pair's territory.
Already there was an odd allowance of a certain suspected female altum to slide into the pair's territory.
Yesterday as the pair worked on pushing the crowd back further ( this has been a week long exercise, since the second fish of the pair which was only a neutral bystander allowed to remain in the territory, strongly paired and turned into the "field marhall" that it is now) I saw many instances of apparently two more pairs forming as up to 4 fish entered the territory as the pair held the others at bay.
Some of the other fish, being much more free to eat, rather than chase, have become more "ripe" looking than the first pair.
I notice a distinct blue bar on both sides of the forehead, down to beside the eye ( of the suspected females) , as this happens. This blue comes out, and the nose turns a nicer colour, not clear or slightly white greyish , but yellow with hints of rose, (not a metallic golden sheen ).

[raglan]

I'm going to dose again soon with wormers , for longer this time, as I suspect worm issues at the bottom of their growth and appetite problems.
you've seen this spawning of them in China ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v/_xie6rfw48g

Stan, you may be right on the money about early feeding too.
Every one of my altums was last choice left. some of them were last of the last ( of thousands) from the importer. Some were the last from a batch of 200. so I got some runts or ones not gaining as much.
however, seeing the improvements in them now after treatments, and seeing the ugly thing that came out of one of them, I'm suspecting that even then that was why they were smaller and always spit pellets out several or many times before eating.

[StanChung]

Compared to honest politicians?

Ok, back to topic-I think the video is pretty cool.
I think I'm going to find mine some private space to spawn after seeing that video.

What kind of wormers are you going to use? I find worms not really an issue but more of bacterial for altums. I've lost a few to pop eye even with some powerful anti biotics like fucin. I think metro is useful to clean them up of hexamita and prazi to be good for protozoans generally. I usually use PP first. Then Metro and Praziquantel[when available]. If they're eating, PP long bath-100%WC after, Tetracycline based AB-8-10 days, Salt 1ppt throughout, Metro after that to be sure.

Some guys in Taiwan say Prazi & maintaining pH4~ is good enough. Maintaining it at pH 4 is a pain though. I usually use some cattapa leaves to get it around pH6+. Can't imagine myself testing kH and pH every few days.

[illumnae]

I ran mine through a course of Furan2, and am now running them through a course of Metro + Prazi. Would that be enough of preventive maintainance? The runt that was really much smaller when he arrived (and he's the one i found evidence of internal parasites on) is now visibly grown after a round of diluted metro...hopefully after this full dose of metro + prazi he'll be rid of all internal parasites and catch up with the rest

[StanChung]

That would be enough i think but you can never be 100% especially with wilds.
Altums are greedy fellas, not like discus that could act reticent so you have to observe them and their feeding pattern and behaviour.

[illumnae]

they're all pigs, including the ones that were sick with columnaris and internal parasites. even the runt was fighting for food

[StanChung]

That's good, IME[6th time only-], avoid feeding heavily 1st week.
So some of these are only 'hypothesis' level.
Gill bacteria is the worst enemy. Can suffocate and die easily if there's excess ammonia. [thru poor water quality] Fish excrete ammonia thru gills.
PP to burn/seal any wounds-expecially gill area. Salt 1ppt to maintain slime coat and straight away OTC[oxytetracycline] 7-14 days. I used Tetracycline. This you have to change water 50% daily and redose to strength.
A chemical that removes ammonia is recommended. Seachem Prime, Ammo lock, Kordon Amquel etc.

After that, any worming/deflagellating you can do but not really necessary unless you plan to breed them or just wanna have them really clean.

Blackwater is good for them. Higher water acidity reduces bacteria activity and toxicity of ammonia.

I had 48 of them for QT, now with 36 after 6th week. The 1st week of death was most telling because of heavy feeding-impatience to get them fat.
No more mortality after 1st week. Fish poo daily is jet black and fins are recovering well. 6th week now. Grown one cm.

[raglan]

I am now a bleever in OxyTC oral administration , for some infections, too.

In the water regular TC causes so much pollution by the next day...it used to a mainstay at the importer's facility in the seventies...big WC necessary. It usually ( whether through water quality issues, or other reasons ) fails totally, for altum new arrivals, though.

By this I mean that once an illness is seen in the new altums, or even when dosed as prophylaxis in the water, it never once succeeded, to my knowledge, though tried many times. Of course, if there was no problem to start with, it could be seen as a success when nothing happened. a successful acquisition of altum, but not a successful treatment or prophylaxis !
Because by next time, all the fish went down with prophylaxis of TC . So it is not a real prophylaxis for new altum, nor a treatment that succeeds as a "stand alone", for their new arrival problems. Perhaps it would give better results when dosed via feed.


However, with PP first it may be a really different story, removing slime coat on the gills and and pathogen underneath it first, and then using TC for prevention.

I tried PP on an altum for the first time and almost killed the fish, gave it a slight burn on the eyes, but it is looking very clear now, fins really clean. I dosed at about one sixth concentration of what other people recommend, because I used clean water and saw that ORP was very high after a few few drops of standard solution.

Something large and gross was left on the bottom of the tank afterward, entangled with poop strings. Not sure what it was.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v/Tj9_dXwLNA4


I am also going to give another metro dose routine soon, and may be looking for dimetro instead.

Something I did changed these fish recently for the better But I changed many things, so it's hard to tell what was the element added or subtracted that proved to be so beneficial a change.
I have them in flubenol for this week.That was one treatment that seemed might be involved in their dramatic improvement recently, but I used it for a short time only, one day before starting to dilute it and change water at a quick pace as usual.

This time though I will change 10 percent twice daily of water through siphoning poop, I will re add the lost amount of flubenol, and after 4 days I will do several large WC and full redose.

[raglan]

PP to burn/seal any wounds-expecially gill area. Salt 1ppt to maintain slime coat and straight away OTC[oxytetracycline] 7-14 days.

Stan, how do you dose PP ( how much for how long ) without burning too much ? And what have you seen as the reaction of the fish, and the visible results , i.e. slime coming off or not, clear fins, breathing better or worse than before ?