in my last video I did a live stream and my wife was in that video one of the
questions we asked her was what is your wife's favorite fish or tank what is it
Danny what do you like oh you don't like Frank you're gonna cause you're gonna
cause a rat I guess I should have prepped her prior
to it because what she didn't say was Frank so what was her favorite fish in
the entire gallery okay just as I'm gonna apologize for formerly for Tanja
in advance for saying Frank is not her favorite but what is it the colorful
ones which ones these guys know the peacocks and you know what I can't blame
her these are probably the most colorful fish in the entire gallery and one of
the most act is always presenting themselves always acting like a bunch of
starving lunatics absolute blast to have if you guys remember this is a malawi
aquarium with all male peacocks now when i made that video when i was live some
of you noticed that the OB peacocks that I got previously that I wanted to add to
this aquarium are already in it now we've added a ton of fish to the
aquarium gallery and every time we unbox new fish I talked about the quarantine
process and the steps that I take to ensure that I don't contaminate the rest
of the gallery however contamination couldn't happen as
easy as using a net that netted up some sick fish and you use that on a healthy
aquarium like I did previously where my wall room tank actually got it now I use
that opportunity to show you guys how to cure it but I also talked about the idea
of expediting your quarantine process you see usually I talk about quarantine
in your fish for four to six weeks but I also have a method that you can
quarantine fish in as little as 10 days and add them to your main display
bottom line before we move any further regardless of where you get your fish
you bought them from a friend you got them from the store the other from a
trusted source based on your experience you don't get these types of fish I
don't care what you say or wait experiences or what your excuses
quarantine your fish regardless of where they come from now my quarantine process
is simple like this I set up a bear aquarium with simple filtration and
heating I do nothing else I simply monitor the fish for four to six weeks
during this timeframe any external parasites or Eternals parasites or any
sort of bacterial infections or any other symptoms are going to show their
face within that time frame I say four to six weeks for example it was three
weeks of my vieja in the their aquarium before they showed signs of it they
carried that parasite for three weeks before anything happened sitting in
front of the 2,000 gallon aquarium with the freshwater stingrays though reminds
me of a story in 2009 the post monte stingray which is
a freshwater stingray from Suriname was scientifically described for the first
time in 2011 I got my hands on them only a very small amount was actually
imported to North America and by small amount I believe it was less than 20 but
they were having massive die-offs and nobody knew why in fact they came to the
point where a lot of people thought that I had one of only three remaining in the
entire world at that time now there's a ton more being imported and and
distributed all over the world these days however at that time in the very
early years a lot of people were under the impression that almost all of them
died off and I believe it was due to a bacterial infection so here's what I did
the benefit of the post-money stingray is it was such an aggressive feeder no
matter what I gave it it would pounce at that food no matter what so I knew that
if it had something internal wrong with it I could just treat its food with some
sort of anti-parasitic medication and I would have success with it at the same
time I could treat the outside of it as well in case there was some sort of
bacterial or maybe some parasite that I wasn't seeing fortunately though
freshwater stingrays tend not to get a lot of external parasites and in fact
I've never heard of a freshwater stingray getting it before why is this
well I believe it's because of two reasons one their bass up there our body
is constantly or their bellies are constantly rubbing up against abrasive
sand nothing's really getting the opportunity
to attach to it even though this is a very soft material
under their bellies entirely soft its silky smooth on the bottom on the tops
of them though kind of feels like sandpaper
you see everybody knows that stingrays don't really have scales well they kind
of do they have something called denticles or of course to be more
specific dermal denticles now if we zoom right in on these you'll see that this
is almost like having a bunch of extremely tiny scales like very tiny
armor plating this stuff feels just like very fine sandpaper if you've ever
touched a ray it's very confusing the tops of them feel like sandpaper the
bottoms of them simply feel like silk I believe that because of their tentacles
they're that parasite simply cannot attach or get in through them in order
to start feeding off of the fish so a lot of times Ray's are referred to as a
scale as fish where they're kind of not but one fish that is scaleless
is the clown loach now you guys know that these guys are just covered with
their skin typically speaking this is what all fish look like except they have
scales on top of it now a lot of the time scale as fish are highly
susceptible to external parasites simply because they're so easy to attach to but
it also means they're highly susceptible to medication so a lot of the times we
just dose half of the recommended dose for scale is fished by the way on the
topic of scales and the fact that we're in front of the two thousand gallon
aquarium with some Asian Arowana check out the scales that they have this is
just one scale this is two scales these skills get a heck of a lot bigger these
were actually from my fish buddy my other Asian Arowana that passed away a
little while ago but every once in a while they can bang themselves up and
shed a scale but it just goes to show do you see how hard these are this is like
armor plating even though the post monty stingray was eating so vigorously
something was still attacking her from the outside I didn't know what it was
however we've already covered the fact that skinless fish can be very
susceptible to medications you can even kill them at full doses and half doses
sometimes I aren't strong enough and I didn't want to kill this fray but I also
still need to treat her so I did the following since she was such
vigorous eater I decided I'm going to go from the inside out I decided I'm going
to medicate her food I took four ounces of her frozen food and added in some
Metro Plus this is a medication that can be treated as a bath lake you can add it
to the water column or you can add it directly to their foods now this stuff
is a powder so something that I prefer to do is mix it with a very tiny amount
of water now I think you're supposed to actually mix it with like 190-proof
grain alcohol but I don't have any of that so I
typically did it with a little bit of water and since the froude food was
already frozen I knew that I was going to be able to thaw it out and this food
is going to attach to it to ensure I was gonna be a little too attached to it I
made sure I use some focus now this is by sea Kemp
it essentially meat allows the food to chemically bind to the the medication to
chemically bind to the foods use it in a ratio of 5 to 1 so for example one scoop
of this to five scoops of Metro on about 4 ounces of food works well now I'll mix
that up add it to the food stir the food into it and I fed it to the Bose Monty
she ate it well it was barely in the water column and the reason why we use
this focus is simply because a lot of the times when you were medicating foods
and you drop it in the water that medication simply leeches off of the
food and the fish aren't actually eating it or consuming it I fed her medicated
foods for a week and she slowly started to improve the next thing I thought is
maybe she has some external parasites maybe she has something some Gill flutes
or you know some sort of parasite that is slowly killing her on the outside so
I half dosed with prezi Pro and I did that for a week as well
I didn't dose at the exact same time I did this over a two-week period she
moved on to live she was extremely healthy got very big and eventually she
bred to one of my male mo Toro stingrays which ended up producing a hybrid pup
but this was the first time that a bose monty stingray had bred in captivity
having that success with that boast Monty I transferred everything that I
did with her to other fish so nowadays when I
a fish that is an aggressive eater like that boesemani once was i will medicate
their foods when i first get them just like I did with the peacocks and that's
why I was able to add them so quickly to their aquarium for the first three days
I tried to induce any external parasites that are temperature dependent like ik
for example during those three days the egg should be able to go through its
lifecycle to the point where it at least shows its face on the fish if I don't
see any ick I'll move on to medicating their foods however these guys are on a
DRI based food but I do the same thing as the frozen foods I'll it mix up a
little bit of Metro with the focus a little bit of water add it to their
pelletized food stir it up I let that dry a lot of times I'll go ahead and put
it near a warm surface so it dries faster and then simply feed them again
the levels of medication are gonna vary based on the size of your fish but Metro
a lot of times can be added to the water column I prefer to medicate the foods so
about 4 ounces of food 5 scoops of this a scoop of the focus and you're good to
go I feed them a medicated food for at least 5 days then I start medicating the
water for external parasites usually I'll go with prezi Pro simply because
it's gonna cover a lot of the most common external parasites and worms that
you'll see in a freshwater fish and I'll do that for another 5 to 7 days as well
so instead of needing to quarantine these guys for 4 to 6 weeks like I
typically would if the fish is healthy vigorous and readily eating I'll put
them through a medicated quarantine process that only lasts two weeks I
should probably add in that none of these companies are sponsoring me or
gave me any of this for free I did pay for it use the medications that you are
comfortable with and the ones that you can commonly find you don't have to use
this in fact I would highly suggest you don't do the medicated process unless
one you absolutely need to or two you have a bit of experience with medicating
your fish in the first place so clearly you can see why this is Tania's favorite
aquarium we now have what is probably the most colorful fish in the entire
gallery this is my most colorful fish for sure with so many varieties and
vivid coloration we yellows blues reds you know everything you can imagine
terms of color and these guys will conspire more impressive in person with
that said I guess I have a couple of confessions one is that I used to
absolutely despise Malawi's cichlids I found that every malawi aquarium looked
the same was like everybody kept housing the same fish never really gave them a
chance and of course that's my own ignorance from simply not researching
them enough or actually giving them a chance but i gotta say if you kind of
feel the same way about it or if you kind of sick of seeing malawi cichlids
or gunas or whatever the case might be from lakes in Africa for example my
suggestion would be to just give them a try these guys are absolutely stunning
extremely colorful easy to keep very active they'll eat whatever you offer
them as long as you give them optimal water quality and stop them properly and
to be honest this is the aquarium that everybody loves when they come into the
gallery for those that don't know fish the 2000 is always impressive and the
others are extremely interesting and catch their eye but they always come
back to this aquarium so if you have an office or you want to add one to a
school or just add a splash of color and Zen to your living space go ahead and
get some of these guys astonishing fish I love them and I guess that brings me
to my second confession which is these guys are now unofficially my favourite
aquarium