Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Paranoia

Tonight my wife said something that made me very nervous.

"Uh oh, I only count six fish."

To a man who's lost nine fish that's not a reassuring thing to say. I tried to remain calm about it but I couldn't find my fourth neon tetra either. I went behind my tank and lifted the backdrop to find my neon in the bottom right (from the dining room) corner. Hidden behind the fake stump and under the bushes. So yay for effective cover for my fish.

Unfortunately his color was faded and his was flicking his fins a lot. Now it could just be that before I snatched up the backdrop it was shaded back there but then maybe not. A neon's color, in fact most fish's color seems to fade when stressed or in the dark. Well I wasn't going to risk it. I knew my nitrites had been climbing the since Saturday and were up to about 0.5ppm. Supposedly that's low enough that the fish should be fine but I had a fish that didn't look so hot that had been just fine twelve hours earlier.

So I did the first thing that came to mind. A water change. Fifteen treated gallons later my school of neons has no more absenteeism. Almost the moment I started to add fresh water the pale neon came out of hiding and started to regain his color.

Call me paranoid but I lost six neons in 48 hours. It's not happening again if I can do anything about it. Even if my wife does look at me funny.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Back

Well we're back from vacation. I'm pleased to report that all four of the guys made it through just fine. I even got another surprise, a 0 ppm ammonia reading and a nitrite spike. It looks like my tank finally decided to move on with its cycle while we were gone.

To celebrate I went out and got three more neons. They're in a bucket right now acclimating to the water. They should be ready to join Fe in an hour or so. Hopefully the Stooges won't be too rough on the new guys.

I also went ahead and re-aquascaped the tank. Since I had the new background on it I could set things up a bit differently. With no more need for 360 degree viewing I moved some things around. The hygrophalia is all now in one big clump. The bush is now behind the artificial stump. I'm liking it a lot more now. I still need some plants on the left, another big clump would be perfect, but I'm close to it being spot on.



Oh, Angela was nice enough to buy some velcro while she was at the grocery store and that's holding my background on.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Wish List & Plans

Since I've got nothing else to do on vacation I figured I'd start a wish list, those things I want but am in no real hurry to get. I'll also go over my plans for the tank.

Plans:
1) Background
Last week while holding a crying five week old I came to the realization that my wife was right, my tank would look better with a background. I'd left one off because I thought I'd love to look at my tank from both sides, from my den and from the family room/dining room side. So far all my tank enjoyment looking has been from the family room side only. Given that I put up a piece of black cloth on the den side. The tank looked fantastic, sorry for the lack of a good picture. Unfortunately the tape I used to hold it up wouldn't last, with or without a toddler pulling on it. When I get back I want to find a better way to secure it up.

2) Plants
More of them. A nice thing about the background is I don't have to worry about cluttering up my view from the den side so I'm thinking about re-aquascaping things. I can pile my tall plants along the back of the tank and push my shorter ones to the front. I still need quite a few more tall plants though. I really don't have much taking up the higher portions of the water column.

3) Fish
So long as everyone survives vacation I'm going to start stocking my tank up. My plans right now are to add on neons until I get to about six to eight. After that I'll slow down, maybe only buy a neon at a time until I hit my goal of a dozen. At the same time as I'm slowing on the neons I'm going to start getting some rummy-nosed tetras. Once I have all eight of them I'm going to sit on things for a while, make sure everything's steady. If everything looks good I'm going to start on my panda corys. Nice and slow to start, one or two at a time. The final big addition will be the BIG addition. I'm going to save up the cash to buy an entire school of serpaes in one shot. Eight to ten in a go. Once that's done my big species should be taken care of. A dozen neons, eight rummys, eight corys, ten serpaes, and the three platys. That's 41 fish. I'm rethinking the rasboras, I don't think there will be enough room for them in a large enough school. After that it's the german blue ram and the red tailed black shark. I'm doing them both at the same time in the hopes of preventing them from fighting. They'll both be new to the tank at the same time and hopefully pick out their own territories without too much fighting. After that I'm officially done. I say officially because I'm probably not going to leave well enough alone. So long as everything seems to be ok I will likely monkey with things a bit. I would like to get some more upper level swimming fish but both the ones I like could be problematic. A dwarf gourami is probably a bad idea, but so might the guppies I wanna try. The only thing that worries me about the guppies are the serpaes. I'm hopefully that in such a large school of them, 10, the serpaes will behave. The only way to find out how they'll do is to throw them in together and see what happens. I think the large school of serpaes should keep their nippiness in check and let the guppies swim in peace.

4) Biomedia
More of it. I've got a 50 gallon pack of biomedia in my filter right now but I want to get some more. I know I'll have more tanks in the future and I'd like to have enough extra to seed new tanks later.

5) Peat
I'm seriously considering using peat in one compartment of my filter in order to soften the water. I'm not sure if I want the tea colored water but I've also heard that carbon can take the color out. I've got some more research to do on this but it's something I'm thinking about.

Wish List:

1) UV Sterilizer.
One day I'd love to keep a dwarf gourami, in fact I'd love a mated pair that could make more little dwarf gouramis. From what I've read they are highly susceptible to bacterial infections. On top of that just for the health of my fish and to get rid of algae in the water I'd like to get one of these. Until I've got $60 bucks free and no more fish or decor to buy it'll have to wait though.

2) Plant Blub
I want to get a blub for my light fixture that will support plant growth. I want to plant my tank one day but that's way down the road once I get all the fish I want and I'm happy with how things are going.

3) CO2 Injection
Once I start planting my tank I want to look into injecting CO2 to help the plants. Probably start with just a yeast reactor, not a pressurized tank.

4) More Tanks
Duh. Start off with a 5 gallon tank at work for a betta, then a 3 gallon at home for some shrimp. A 20 gallon for that stand I built and one day a monster salt water tank. Some day.

Vacation

The family went on vacation this week. Friday we headed to the beach for ten days. So what about my fish you ask? Well first a little biology lesson, fish are not like humans, fish are cold blooded animals. Unlike humans, cats, or dogs, fish don't need to continually eat large portions of food to give them the energy to regulate their temperature. Yes, most of the food you eat goes to just keeping your body temperature up. This means that fish can survive on a lot less food because their bodies aren't looking for something to burn all the time to keep their temperature up. In nature fish don't eat like they do in your tank. My fish get two square meals a day. In the wild they'd eat when they found food, and sometimes you don't find any. Going without eating for a while is what fish are designed for. Most fish can go a week easy without ill effect, some two.


So my fish should be alright while we're on vacation. I fed them regularly prior to leaving and changed out 50% of their water the morning we left. My wife's sister will be stopping by to drop off our cats and when she does I left some food premeasured in a cup on the counter for her to give the fish. I figure I've done all I can to ensure that they will be taken care of while we're on vacation. I hope when I get back Fe and the Stooges will be fine, if a little hungry.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Maintenance

Saturday is weekly maintenance day for my tank. The first thing I do is a water change/gravel vacuum. I give the sand a good once over with the vacuum to pick up uneaten food and fish poop. If I don't they'll decay and in the process make ammonia, a lot of it. Since the gravel vacuum is also a siphon I wind up sucking out about five gallons of water. Once the vacuuming is done I put my bucket low on the floor to suck the hardest it can and pull another five gallons of water out. All in all it takes about fifteen minutes.Once I've pulled out the ten gallons its time to put it back. The first two and a half gallons get the water conditioner for the full ten gallon change along with the pinch of buffering salts, the next three buckets just get salt. That takes about another fifteen minutes. After that I use a fork to stir up the sand to keep it from getting to compact and going anaerobic. Finally I rotate my filters, I pull out the cartridge on the right, move the one on the left into the slot on the right and put a fresh cartridge on the left. Since they've both been in the tank for two weeks now I'll remove the first one, in two weeks I'll yank the next one. If I keep up that schedule each cartridge will stay in the tank for a month with them on average being two weeks old.

All that takes about forty minutes to work through. Really it's not too bad.

For the aggravation I treat my fish too some frozen brine shrimp. Unfortunately being the first time I'd done this I put in WAY too much shrimp. I had to fish a lot of them out with my fish net. Next time I'm going to give them about a third of what I did. Given how much they had to eat they only got one small meal on Sunday.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Successful Week

Well tomorrow marks the one week point in this round of fish. Fe soldiers on as always, refusing to do the appropriate thing and hide in fear since he lacks a shoal. Instead he prowls the tank spending little time amongst the cover spread around. The three stooges are as animated as ever, begging for food and showing no signs of undo stress. In other words after a week everything looks to be going well.

So now what? Well unfortunately for my tank we're going on vacation at the end of next week so it's probably not the best time to add more fish, though I desperately want to. Angela's sister will be stopping by to drop off our cats and I'm going to have her feed my fish. If everyone makes it through the vacation fine then I'll start to stock up when we get back. First on the list are more neons to give Fe a proper school, after that probably the rummy's.

A note on stocking up, I found another good local fish shop. Ocean Blue has a sister store called Aquaria Studios. It's not as close to my house but it is near work. I like the store better frankly. The shop keeper said they turn over the stock slower than Ocean Blue and I can tell, all the fish are larger than the same breeds at OB. Larger older fish that have been in the store longer are more stable and likely to survive. Maybe not critical with small fish like the tetras but larger more expensive fish will be better off if they aren't fresh out of the packing box.

I also spotted another future denizen of my tank, a german blue ram.


Tell me that's not a good looking fish.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Still Going

Well, five days in and so far everyone is doing pretty good. Fe is still firing on all cylinders but he's a freak so he doesn't count. The three platys are all still very active and a lot of fun to watch. They seem to play tag with one another, chasing each other around. All three come rushing up to the glass when they see me, begging for food.

They're already more loyal than the cats.

In other news the tank water is completely clear, all the haze from the sand is gone and has been for a while.



Sunday, July 6, 2008

Let's Try That Again

While Fe continues to swim defiantly he was looking lonely. His refusal to capitulate to my inept attempts at fish keeping left me in a rough spot. With him in there I couldn't cycle the tank fishlessly, the ammonia levels a fishless cycle generates would be lethal, even for him. However cycling the tank naturally would take too long as we're going on vacation at the end of July and a fish fueled cycle would certainly drag on for that long, if not in ammonia then certainly in nitrites. Perhaps I'm too impatient but just leaving the tank as is and doing nothing for almost a month doesn't sit well with me.

So I decided to cheat.

Yes, cheat. If you read this you know that I knocked the idea of dump in starter bacteria not too long ago. What I did is I asked the guy at my fish store exactly how he gets his tanks going. He recommended this stuff:

Well I bought a bottle, yes it is refrigerated, and I used it. If this stuff works as advertised and the way the fish store guy says it does I should take care of most of the cycling process in a few days as the bacteria take up residence in the tank.

I also bought three more mickey mouse platys. So far Mickey II, Donald, and Goofy are all doing well. In fact the three of them are more lively and active than Mickey ever was. When they see someone coming up to the tank they move up to the glass and beg for food. When I moved the thermometer and temperature probe in the tank they gathered around my hand and wouldn't leave my hand or the items alone for a while afterwards.


While platys are not listed as schooling fish in anything I've seen I think that having a few more of their kind might be helping with their quick acclimation.

We'll see if my cheating is going to pay off.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Unfortunate Circumstances

I've held off posting this for a few days, its a combination of embarrassing and... well its hard to call the loss of three fish worth $14 tragic but there it is. Yes I lost three more fish. My mickey mouse platy and the two cories.

In my endeavor to get my pH under control I dosed my water with buffering salts. The salts react with the alkalines in the water and make CO2. The downside to controlling pH in this way is that each time I add water during a regular water change the pH will go wonky as I add pH 8.0 tap water to the mix. Which means more salts which means the pH jumps around, etc. The best solution to dealing with the pH problems is to use reverse osmosis water which has a perfect pH of 7.0. Once I figure out the ratio of tap water to RO water to hit 7.5 I can alway use that ratio for my water changes.

Anyways, back on subject. I was testing my water's pH regularly so i would know when I had hit a good pH. The problem is that the test kit has two tests for pH, a low range one that goes from 6.0 to 7.6 and a high range one that goes from 7.4 to 8.0. Well with how high my pH was I was using the high range test. Unfortunately I can't tell colors. I bottomed out the high range pH test at light orange without realizing it and kept on dosing the salts. The big problem is that the pH scale is logarithmic. That means it's not a constant scale. A pH of 8.0 is ten times more alkaline than 7.0 and a hundred times more alkaline than 6.0. That means when the pH drops it'll start slow then go incredibly fast. Well it did.

My platy and both cories died and my neon wasn't looking good. When I used the low range pH chart it was bottomed out at 6.0. Well that tremendous a pH change is what did it. So the high pH killed off my first batch of fish and then dropping killed off the second.

Well I still had one fish alive. I siphoned off fifteen gallons of water and replaced it with dechlorinated tap water. That high pH tap water drew my overall pH up to 7.5. Amazingly enough my neon survived the correction. No matter how hard I screw up I can't kill this guy.

So there it is, I'm down to one tiny little neon tetra in a 55 gallon tank.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Hey Mickey You're So Fine...

...you're so fine you blow my mind!

Angela made me do that.

Mickey the mickey mouse platy has suddenly become much more photogenic however, peeking out yesterday and today bumrushing the glass when he sees a human coming. Whatever shyness he might have felt is long gone.