[gottahavepets]

Hi Koran, after 6 days of just Mela-fix his tail is looking better. It is not so ragged as yesterday, it doesn't appear to be getting any smaller, he still looks happy, he's active, eating, foraging, playing tag with the otos and pandas! I think you may be right, there are some tight spots in the tank and lately he has been seen rooting around in almost all of them! He gets in and starts rooting, he stirs up a bunch of stuff while he's at it, the harlies come darting around catching all the bits and then he pulls out and moves on to a new spot! I try not to overfeed to cut down on nitrates etc building up but he finds all the spots where food collects LOL. I also saw him nipping at his own tail yesterday, which was actually kind of funny to watch as it is so short right now. I will be changing the water then continuing Mela-fix and adding pima-fix during the re-growing of the tail to prevent bacterial infection etc. I am not so sure about stressing him out with a salt dip, I may not know then which treatment did the trick. I am also not sure how long the tail growing will take. It is a much larger tail than the danios tail was (lost to another danio in a high-speed chase LOL).
I read about phosphates buffering the water at the seachem site I think it was, I go all over the 'net now, read here and there. I still have to get a test to prove/disprove that there is any phosphate in the tap water, then I'll know where to go from there. It could also be as you say that I need to get more peat in the water. I will increase the amount in the water change buckets until it reaches the desired levels. Plus there is the blackwater extract which is looking better every day. You should check out the arguments over on FP about trying to change the water! Yikes, I'm almost scared to even mention it now! I also ran into something interesting about CO2 and pH and photosynthesis. Maybe you've noticed the pH drops over night then rises during the day. It happens in my tank without CO2 and I'm trying to figure out what effect adding CO2 will have on this natural shift in pH. Especially as I'm trying to lower the KH and GH in the tank with peat, I'm wondering if the shift will be larger than if I left the KH and GH alone.

I am hoping to get a new hood with an extra bulb in it soon as well as the Hagen CO2 kit on the 25g. Then I will have moderate light, about 2 wpg and CO2 enhanced growth. I'm leaving the 10 alone though, it has plenty light and the fish are making enough CO2, plus I am using Excel when the fish don't have tail rot!