Daphnia please. Thank you.

It has matured more at this point but this is the current setup. It's 18"x18"x36". When I originally made this post though they were in a 10 gallon cube.

Most fish stores are always hiring around here. Pay usually isnt good though. Maintenance employees usually are paid better than retail staff but still not great. Getting to work at the Smithsonian is usually volunteer work for ages before an actual position. Working in animal care can also be frustrating, emotions can get high, disagreements aplenty. I've been much happier switching to studying aquatic science instead.

That isn't the first I've heard about animal neglect there. Not uncommon to see in pet stores. Usually employees are not well paid, overworked, and exhausted. Not a great situation for animal care.

Yes, we do. They have been moved to a bigger setup now.

You could qt them but I'm not sure how long it takes for them to grow. Best bet is to avoid these moss balls at least for awhile. They probably mostly come from the same place probably in Asia.

The only details about killing them that I ran into was when they had been found in a quarry in Fairfax county and they used potassium chloride to poison the whole thing. In notices sent by Petco or County authorities they simply destroy the moss ball entirely, they don't try to save it. They are supposed to be extremely hardy in part because they can close up for awhile waiting for adverse conditions to clear up. I'm sure there is research out there, it just wasn't what I was focusing on.

I am pretty familiar with them. I wrote a 20 page paper about invasive freshwater invertebrates of Virginia for a class. Most of it ended up being about zebra mussels even though they aren't currently here. Honestly it seems inevitable that they will establish here eventually but we can do out best for now.

Thank you! We are going to go grab some ASAP.

@Becca Getting used to a scope can be tricky but I think the harder part is that there will always be little things crawling around normally or maybe some secondary infections that weren't the initial cause. Then you need some resource to identify what you find. It honestly overwhelms me since I'm not entirely familiar with microbiology. However if it can be done then treatment will be far more focused and effective.

I personally have more experience with saltwater fish and freshwater shrimp disease so I am not much direct help. If the lateral line issue is a result of bacteria potentially you are dealing with a resistant strain after your previous treatments. If the discus are all lost it may be worth a system restart. From my saltwater experience there is a theory that carbon dust can cause lateral line, not sure if that could be true for freshwater. Another thought is if anyone has a microscope they could do a scraping of the effected area, but this would require some idea of what to look for which is difficult. Dealing with unknown fish disease is a frustrating task. Hope it works out for you soon.

Reef Escape should be able to help you. I used to be the one who did the ordering there and they don't have tanks in stock but can get them within the week or next week with a 50% deposit. They mark up less due to not having them in store taking up retail space.

I don't think either would eat the other unless it were dead or dying. I have seen shrimp eating their dying but not dead yet tank mates but they aren't predators exactly, just voracious.

I was confused for a minute there because my app is just called inaturalist and had to look this up but I guess seek is another version that allows you to make observations without having to upload them to the database. It makes it more friendly for kids or people who don't want to share their findings, plus the seek app kinda looks cooler to me. Either way its the same idea and seek observations can be uploaded.

iNaturalist is worldwide. It's been pretty popular with naturalists lately. Its pretty fun to go on a walk and take photos of different things and post them. When you post you upload the picture and it can help you figure out what something is or you can just choose to identify as far as you know then people can suggest further ID. If you meant the crayfish law that is in Virginia specifically.

I have been checking a site called iNaturalist where people can submit photos and location data for plants and animals. There I have found people running into some things that USGS doesn't have record of. USGS has reports on certain species but do not seem to be up to date or people don't know to report to them.

I have seen that most of the crayfish of concern are listed specifically in other legislation such as marbled crayfish and yabby. The species that are already introduced to Virginia seem to be the fault of bait fisherman and not the pet trade. It's all pretty confusing honestly.

Gouramis are prone to a wasting disease that is not well understood. It could be that, or old age, or any number of things that we cannot see. There probably isn't much you can do that wouldn't just be guessing that could be more harmful than letting him live his life. I'd check ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and temperature just to rule them out too.

I don't know the ingredients list on aqua pharm foods but of the typically available foods I like omega one as compared to others the proteins or greens are higher up on the list and they use less protein meals than others do. Then again the fish food debate is just about as volatile as any other pet food debate and nobody seems to have much to back up their position. I tend to feed a mix of fresh, frozen, and pellet or flake foods just to hit all my bases. I prefer fewer grains just because that seems to make sense to me and I hold grudges against "big" brands like Purina although at this point even Omega One is owned by the same company as Tetra so you can't really escape it on retail shelves.

Like they said if its adding sodium that can be fine or good for many fish however some aquarium inhabitants are sensitive to salts. Catfish or other fish without scales, invertebrates, and plants don't tend to be ok with it but I couldn't tell you how much would have to be in your water to harm any of them. If you keep anything like that I'd personally look into it a bit further.