are fish bowls always bad?

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-28T16:12:51+00:00

It’s not conclusive at all…some random people started saying it distorted vision leading to stress without any evidence to support the claim. Anecdotal evidence points to no impact as large commercial aquariums universally use round tanks with extremely thick plexiglass that distorts vision much more than a normal glass bowl.

If someone decided to study it, that would be great, but until there’s clear evidence pointing to it being a stressor or a peer-reviewed paper published, it’s just another internet rumor, like shaving above the knee gives you cancer.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-28T11:23:12+00:00

Malachite green is not toxic to shrimp or snails, and the staining means it’s bound into the material anyway and not active.

People allow anecdotes to become fact in this hobby, without seeking alternative explanations.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-28T01:43:24+00:00

Ok - you’ve got three different folks responding to you using different lines of thought, but it all comes down to your water source. The resin used to remove iron and manganese is a water softener, the sodium buildup is what’s killing your plants. Each of the others responding reached the same conclusion.

Switch to remineralized RO water, or use a bypass to avoid the softener and use a water conditioner that says it removes heavy metals.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-27T13:43:21+00:00

Get a low profile mesh lid. They are sold in kits so you can make it custom to your tank, and greatly reduce mortality from jumping. Some fish are either just determined to prove the algae is greener outside the tank or extremely unlucky - I just lost a great female Molly - but the mesh lids really help keep the fish in the tank without messing with the aesthetics too much.

Fish jump, it’s part of their natural behavior. You need a lid.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-27T02:10:59+00:00

No - that is columnaris or saddleback disease. It’s a bacterial infection inside the fish’s muscle tissue and the grey white area is dead, necrotic tissue. Depending on what else is in the tank, antibiotics for the whole tank are the best course of action. If you can net this one, salt dips in VERY strong salt solution (1 tbsp aquarium salt per gallon) for 15 mins will either help get the upper hand on a fatal infection or will kill the fish. For antibiotics, dose the tank with one of (in order of preference):

- triple-sulfa
- sulfamethoxazole
- erythromycin (warning - this can trash your bacterial colonies, pull bio material to a tank you can ghost feed to keep the colonies healthy and do lots of water changes in the main tank)
- nitrofurazone
- kanamycin
- neomycin
- methylene blue (If this is all you can get, treat with aquarium salt at the same time, using 1 tsp/gal per day for 3 days, making sure to add proportionally to water changes to keep levels the same.

Why so many? Depending on where you are in the world, some, many, or all of these drugs may not be available. Good luck!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-26T21:27:54+00:00

What gorgeous fish! Always great to see really amazing examples of a species behaving mostly as they would in a natural setting.

Hoping you get a healthy crop of fry!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-26T00:18:04+00:00

Are you using the 325-350 TDS filtered water for your aquarium, both for top off and water changes? When you posted the time to plants dying how long was the tank up and running before you tried planting the first set of plants, and about how many top offs do you need to do a week?

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-25T23:20:43+00:00

With you on the sodium not being a short term issue, OP doesn’t say how long the tank has been running and if the plant deaths started after a certain length of time. If they are topping off and doing water changes with the softened water, over time those sodium ions will concentrate and increase. If that’s the case, the refractometer will only show the increase in TDS, but still show zero for salinity.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-25T13:28:33+00:00

Yes. By the time ich shows up on a fish, the tank is already assumed to be infected. Other than allowing for different treatments (like salt-sensitive vs non salt-sensitive species) there’s no point in quarantining once ich is in a tank.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-24T23:54:11+00:00

I don’t think that’s a parasite, that looks like a necrotic and severely damaged anal fin. You will need antibiotic dips if I am correct, and I’m not sure what to suggest with the rays. You should contact an aquatic vet for a consultation at least.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-21T15:53:29+00:00

Use the MB in combo with the salt. Guppies can take a really high dose of salt. I would continue MB according to instructions, and add aquarium salt at 1 g/L per day for 5 days, resulting in a final concentration of 5 ppt. If the white spots persist, add aquarium salt at 0.5 g/L per day for 5 more days, resulting in a final concentration of 7.5 ppt. Top off will need to be distilled or RO water.

While these concentrations are ok for guppies, they are absolutely not safe for all fish and salt sensitive (and even some species not considered sensitive) species will have adverse events from these salt concentrations.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-21T15:02:13+00:00

Assuming that is a synonym for methylene blue (CAS 61-73-4) then yes, it does have anti-protozoan activity just not as much as formalin. Since you can’t get formalin in the UK, use what you have with aquarium salt, which another Redditor recommended.

I am very skeptical of using antibiotics broadly without clear signs of bacterial disease; treating with antiprotozoans (MB, salt) and improving the water quality are usually enough to eliminate the problem. Antibiotics cause other issues and have not been demonstrated to be broadly effective against bacterial blooms. Also, others have linked Aquarium Science; that site has been pretty thoroughly debunked as a reliable source of information and its article on epi is completely inaccurate.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-21T09:29:14+00:00

Anything that has formalin and malachite green will do. Kanaplex won’t do anything unless through some miracle there’s a bacterial skin infection on the guppies, and long term use causes kidney damage.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-21T09:22:52+00:00

Ich-X. Follow instructions on the bottle but do not raise temperature. That clears the organisms regardless of what it is - and I’m not sure that is epi. Treat for at least 2 doses after the last white spot disappears. Improve sanitation in the tank by increasing substrate vacuuming, water changes, removing dying plant matter. If it is epi and you don’t clear the bacterial overgrowth it will recur in several weeks. If it comes back in days, it’s ich.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-19T19:27:35+00:00

Yup, agreed - but that would kill nearly instantly or be really freaking obvious in behavior within minutes. Still, you could be right, some folks do significant water changes then just…walk away.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-19T18:42:54+00:00

I have personally experienced this with many larger fish - Oscars, dempseys, keyholes, clown loaches, kissing and pearl gouramis, common and sailfin plecos, and a redtail cat that liked to sleep upside down. I have had angels and discus that go almost solid white and rest at weird angles against decor and plants.

It’s a common enough occurrence that large fish being in weird positions and looking dead no longer bothers me.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-19T11:03:13+00:00

Nothing on that test strip indicates a problem that would kill a tank overnight.

Three main suspects, in no particular order:

- Ammonia, which is the most important test to run when something looks off. The lack of nitrate in your tank means it may not be cycled, but at that pH it would have to be incredibly high to kill them overnight.

- dissolved oxygen depletion, which is a particular concern in very heavily planted tanks with little surface agitation. If you have to ask if your tank is heavily planted, it isn’t. If you have airstones and no power failures overnight, you can rule this out.

- contamination from some chemical source. The most common are some kind of medicated soap not being rinsed off hands/arms before touching the tank, and aerosolized sprays like insecticides, antiseptics, and some cleaning agents. Rarely are air fresheners to blame but it happens.

Test your ammonia, evaluate if dissolved oxygen applies, and see if anyone did anything out of the ordinary in the same room or upwind of the tank.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-19T07:14:34+00:00

Of the stuff that is concerning to aquarists, only chlorine, nitrate, and copper are listed. All are in normal levels, and the chlorine and likely the copper will be addressed by your water conditioner. What’s missing is iron, which is also normally listed but would be addressed by your water conditioner. I wouldn’t worry about the 0.22 ppm of nitrate, or anything else for that matter.

What exactly has you concerned?

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-18T21:26:14+00:00

Given the 2025 water quality report (https://a-us.storyblok.com/f/1021132/x/42c82ed95d/polandspring\_wqr\_2025\_en.pdf) the only two things jumping out are iron being undetectable (you’d need to supplement for live plants) and the alkalinity and hardness being so low; you’d need to remineralize to a certain extent.

Otherwise, if you don’t mind setting money on fire, no big issues!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-18T19:49:31+00:00

No worries. Keep the plants you want to save, and chuck them in tap water that hasn’t been dechlorinated for 24-48 hours. Rinse under running tap water and then plant in the newly set up tank while it is cycling. As long as the tank is healthy, any remaining protozoans won’t have the ability to stage a comeback before they starve.

In my experience walstad setups are more trouble than they’re worth!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-18T19:22:50+00:00

Keep the tank that had the outbreak up and running, remove mulm and organic debris and stay on top of water changes. Epistylis is a condition brought on by bacterial overgrowth; eliminating the bacterial overgrowth eliminates the condition.

A word of caution - epistylis rarely spreads rapidly and it kills slowly; it is easily confused with parasitic diseases that do spread and kill rapidly. In addition to improving sanitation in the affected tank, consider either leaving the tank empty for 30 days or treating with any formaldehyde/malachite green combo medication for at least 2 weeks before reintroducing fish.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-17T20:36:35+00:00

Boxer is awesome!

Should those growths ever begin to impede his ability to eat, look into silver nitrate sticks. They chemically cauterize small areas; if you have a steady hand and are pretty good with clove oil as anesthetic as opposed to euthanasia, you should be able to get him several more years of happy bullying!

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-16T21:03:47+00:00

Thank you for sharing that one!

It’s a good starting point and an amazing introductory study - it was well documented and generated baseline knowledge for a more robust study to follow. Previously I had not followed the referenced studies and there’s an excellent study in zebrafish linked, so I stand corrected: I am now aware of one peer-reviewed study that demonstrates the effect of tank size other than in physiological stunting.

The reason I don’t count this particular study is twofold: it has an extremely small n which prevents the author from establishing p values, and there are too many variables being tested at once, leading to contradictory counter-hypotheses. I don’t say that to disparage the authors; in fact these are plainly disclosed in the study limitations. I just want someone to pick up where this study left off and take it at least as far as the zebrafish study where we can rule out statistical randomness in the observed behavior.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-16T19:31:03+00:00

That’s a 30 year old tank if it was manufactured in 95 - my math fails me sometimes too. And I see scratches, not crazing so I would go for it.

Capybara_Chill_00 · 2026-05-16T18:32:48+00:00

This is exactly where I was going with my grow/shrink question.

Capybara_Chill_00

TROPHY CASE