Well... Been awhile since I gave an update.. no so good...
-- 2 of my 50 BTA's died that i didn't see which caused about 1/2 of my bta's to start shriveling up. I did a 30% water change next day.. then 15% every week for 4 weeks straight.
-- With the 1/2 the bta's shriveled up the 50 clowns (which most were 2-3" in size) started to beat the crap out of the smaller BTA's. And those smaller even got smaller then all the clowns started to beat up up the remain big BTA's (which couldn't handle all 50 bouncing off them.) So.. hard decision to make I sold 45 clowns, keeping the 6 big helmet picasso clowns.
-- With the 6 clowns I was trying to let the bta's recover without taking any abuse. With still doing 10% every week to clean water.. found 2 more dead bta's. So i started the water changes from fresh again and refreshed the carbon. the shriveled up bta's never recover just got smaller and smaller till they died. the remain bigger BTA's started the shriveling path in the next few weeks. Which they never recovered and eventually started dying off. Which doing some research I basically had too clean of water which starved the BTA's. I did try to dust them with brine shrimp but none of them would eat.
-- As of the end of June the tank is completely back to normal levels and condition.
-- So now I have 6 clowns... and due to the BTA pricing and availability, the clowns new home will be a Saddle carpet.
-- 2 of my 50 BTA's died that i didn't see which caused about 1/2 of my bta's to start shriveling up. I did a 30% water change next day.. then 15% every week for 4 weeks straight.
-- With the 1/2 the bta's shriveled up the 50 clowns (which most were 2-3" in size) started to beat the crap out of the smaller BTA's. And those smaller even got smaller then all the clowns started to beat up up the remain big BTA's (which couldn't handle all 50 bouncing off them.) So.. hard decision to make I sold 45 clowns, keeping the 6 big helmet picasso clowns.
-- With the 6 clowns I was trying to let the bta's recover without taking any abuse. With still doing 10% every week to clean water.. found 2 more dead bta's. So i started the water changes from fresh again and refreshed the carbon. the shriveled up bta's never recover just got smaller and smaller till they died. the remain bigger BTA's started the shriveling path in the next few weeks. Which they never recovered and eventually started dying off. Which doing some research I basically had too clean of water which starved the BTA's. I did try to dust them with brine shrimp but none of them would eat.
-- As of the end of June the tank is completely back to normal levels and condition.
-- So now I have 6 clowns... and due to the BTA pricing and availability, the clowns new home will be a Saddle carpet.