Ok time for me to fess up to my boneheadedness ........ and admit to my most resent set of mistakes. Story goes as follows I got a 55 gal tank from a guy that was moving away from a college town (which means I got it cheap ... errr free .. so the set up was cheap anyway,) and like a good little nerd/geek I went out to the internet and read for 6 weeks about every thing I could hoping from one post to the next asking questions. During the first week I put in sand, set up the filter and added water and chemicals; 2 weeks later plants; the next week legos ... yes legos ... a week after that i started with fish small groups at a time. Well that my friends is when the "fun" begins. First thing that happens is that I have a spike in ammonia and am told that the plants that i have are not truely aquatic so I tear them out. Next the placo dies because of whats sturred up by removing the plants,... so I freak out and do a LARGE water change and go to the LFS where they tell me that Its alright and that the water is within exceptible limits. So a couple days go by and I deside to get a new pleco ... and all the stores are closed except walmart .... yeah I know, I know. So I'm in walmart and I ask for a pleco and I hear the "fish" guy cursing under his breath. So I ask him what was going on and he said congradulations your getting a free loach. I tell him I only want the pleco, then I look in the bag and its notice that it is a small peacock eel (I have two single stripe eels) and think to my self this can't be that bad of an idea so I agree to take it figureing that my tank would be a better home than the nasty funky gravel tanks they have. Anyway I wake up the next morning to see it has developed a fungus overnight while in his new home, my tank and I think to my self "moron, you should have used a quarintine tank." So my zoooligest girlfriend is harping at me pointing out what I have done while I dig around for Fungus-be-gone and Ick-be-gone type medications to treat the whole tank... to find that I had nither under the tank in the stand so I get more snide coments and laughed at by the LFS and the girlfriend as I go to get something to try to save the little guy and prevent my whole tank from getting wiped out. I treated the little guy and the tank for a day (which he looks worse so I finaly got a QT set up today on day two of the little guys decline in health, which now looks like parisites in gills and fungus and weigh loss. So we will see what happens) So moral of the story is that nothing comes for "free", be prepaired, follow proticals, and spelling is realy bad at 4 in the morning.
I realy must be soft hearted ... I spent more on salt, medication, and the QT tank than on all the fish in my tank. It might not be enough to win but I learned the hard way about fungus and ick<AND NOT DOING SOMETHING BECAUSE ITS CONVENIENT, KNOWING THAT ITS NOT THE RIGHT THING TO DO>