No luck with mantilla. Call for concern?

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S

StingraySteve

Gambusia
MFK Member
Mar 20, 2013
545
0
16
Australia
The problems with my mantilla ray seem to be never-ending. I've come to the conclusion that he's affected by bacteria but I can't understand why his tankmates are totally unaffected.

He currently has a small cloud ("cataract") in each eye - about 3mm. Also, earlier today I noticed the tip of his tail has some fungus coming off it - 3mm again.

For the past 3 days I've been doing small w/c 10-15% adding a good amount of rock salt with each change to slowly increase its concentration.
Yesterday I also added a half dosage of Jungle Binox to the tank.

Now I'm really worried because he seems to have a spasm every so often. He would curl up his disc as if to flick sand off (even if there is no sand on him), produce a flinging motion and then launch himself aimlessly throughout the tank. Whenever he's resting on the bottom, his tail is raised looks similar to a scorpion.

Could it be the Binox I added to the tank? Is this something that will work itself out by maintaining water quality?
 
Is he eating well?

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barely at all. He'll only go for earthworms but not very eagerly.
 
Think I found the problem. I took a sample of my water to 2 different lfs to get my water tested. Turns out some of my test kits may be contaminated and giving me false readings - ammonia kit was main culprit. Also, one of the lfs informed me that tap water in Sydney could contain up to 2ppm ammonia. So after buying a few new test kits I went away with another big w/c. Just for s!@ts and giggles I tested my tap water for ammonia: 1ppm straight from tap!!! I also added a heap more prime to the tank (probably 2x normal recommendation), now ammonia readings are far better, but is there another way to deal with ammonia in tap water? Hopefully this is will at least bring my mantilla back to his old self.
 
WC, salt, earth worms, and no lights would be my recommendation. Anyone disagree?[/QUOTE]

Even though he has been on/off for the past 6-8 weeks. Salt and earthworms have been the only thing he has responded positively to. My lights have been off for 3 days so far. Would there be any reason why he has not lost weight, despite the fact he has barely eaten in nearly 2 months? I'm worried there might be something internal aswell...
 
If you have chloramine from your tap then your test kit will always give you false positives for ammonia. (chloramine = ammonia + chlorine) and there's not much you can easily do about it.
using more than recommended dose of prime etc won't help.
The objective for you is , where possible, to remove things from the water, to to add.
Keep doing large water changes. use aged water.
 
could I use activated carbon to help with the chloramine situation?
 
the only way is either R/O with membranes that will filter it out or massive biofilters/algae scrubbers , heavy plant growth etc for your aging water.Some types of carbon can help, depending on the type of carbon and the pore size and most of all the 'pass' time (extremely slow for ammonia/chloramine removal)

I would also be interested in all your other tank water parameters.
temp, pH, TDS, NO2, NO3, type of sand...yadda yadda
:)
 
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