Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Christmas

Well, there's not a whole lot going on lately.

The 48 gallon is doing just great. Everyone is fat and happy. Mekong (my RTBS) is right at home. She's bum rushed some of the other fish when they get to nosy with her cave but for the most part she seems quite content. The serpaes are calm and well mannered and the neon herd is staying out of the way. The remaining platys are behaving themselves. The guppies have started to demonstrate an interesting behavior. In the morning when I turn on the light I've noticed all four of them huddled down together in a corner under a cave. During the day they just bum around and ignore one another but apparently at night they like to hang out together.

The Eclipse at work has been an interesting trip. Initially I wrapped the intake in foam to try and slow down the flow through the filter. Well apparently the resitance was too much for the pump. I had problems with the pump overheating and just shutting off. Obviously this would be a bad thing to happen when I wasn't around. I've removed the foam on the intake and for the last ten days it's run without a problem. I also packed the filter with bio-max pellets. Unfortunately I packed some spots too full and had some pellets fall into the biowheel and jam it to a halt. Ugh. Thankfully I seem to have solved all those problems and the tank is mechanically sound.

Biologically... well it appears to be cycled. No ammonia readings, no nitrite readings, and no nitrate readings. It's a bit odd for a tank that's three weeks old with a fish like Shark in it. I've had two algae outbreaks. The first is good old brown algae, yay. The second is only on the driftwood and is this wierd fuzzy gauze. No the pic isn't out of focus, its the algae.


Shark is doing well. He's always excited to see me and eating well. He doesn't seem to mind the current in the tank. Playing in it at times and at others finding quiet spots. His coloration is absolutely gorgeous, his pectoral fins have an iridescent sheen to them that wasn't there a week ago. He's continued to get darker and richer every day.

Sometime next week I'm going to look into adding some harlequin rasboras or maybe platys to the tank for some additional movement.

That's what's been going on lately.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

In The Tank!






My girl is now in her tank! I put her in a day early, sue me. Like the serpaes she immediately took to her new home She darkened up instantly and her tail took on a deeper red. I dunno what's going on with the quarantine tank but for some reason the fish just don't get to their best color in there.

Anyways, she started to check out the other fish and the tank and they started to check her out. To my delight she headed immediately for the slate cave I made for her months ago. She's decided that its hers and spends a lot of time hovering around it. She's been the model fish so far and has kept to her side of the tank. I was worried she might bother the corys or vice versa but they seem to ignore one another.

She's gorgeous and I already love having her in the tank.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Tank at Work

For my birthday/Christmas I received just what I asked for, a 6 gallon Eclipse fish tank and all the fixin's, of course it was the only thing I asked for period so take it with a grain of salt.

To my wife's chagrin I couldn't help myself and had to immediately prepare my tank to go to work. An extra wooden brace for my desk due to the weight, cut a piece of foam to cushion the bottom, rinse my black sand. Yeah, black, it's awesome. I got everything ready to go and brought it to work. Since I'd found a great looking betta the day before and was going to get it on my lunch break I had to set it up before lunch. Thankfully my boss didn't seem to mind as I spent about an hour puttering around with it getting everything in and the tank filled. At lunch I met my wife and we got something to eat then we took my boy to the store to find a fish. He hadn't gotten a nap and was too cranky to be any help but he was enthusiastic about getting to see the fish.

I picked out my fish and came back to the office and put him in. After the tiny cup he'd been stuck in with water that was... well its best not to talk about it, he seemed to enjoy having space to swim. He spent most of the rest of the day swimming around his new place poking his head in every corner. He was shy and would scoot away when I got close to the tank but today he's gotten a lot bolder, even spending time watching me work and interacting with me a bit. I put my finger next to the tank and he tracked me running it up and down the side. Yeah it's not much but try and get a platy to do anything but beg for food.

Last night we asked my boy to name the fish. He knows four words for fish, fishy, guppy, shark, and whale. Shark won. Shark is already proving to be far more photogenic than any of my other fish, holding still long enough to get some great shots of him.


The wood has already started to stain the water a golden hue, I'm loving the look. Sadly I didn't estimate sizes very well and the T-Rex skull I got for the tank is just too big to get in it. It'll have to wait for another tank.

Some of you are probably wondering what is wrong with me. Putting a fish in an uncycled aquarium. Well what you can't see in the pictures is that the filter is loaded up with biomax pellets under the blue cartridge and behind the biowheel. Those are the same pellets I've left in my aquarium's filter so they are already seeded with bacteria. All I've got to do now is wait for the bacteria to migrate from the pellets to the biowheel. I plan to leave them in until the first cartridge change then I'll take them out.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

December Update

First off my an update on my main tank the 48... everything is perfectly fine. Everyone is doing well in their new home. The quarantine tank residents are just as good. All three neons are just fine. My shark is a female as it turns out, she has a dark gray belly instead of a pure black one. She's also a total sissy. I don't get to see her in all her glory much because she hides whenever I get near the tank. Oh well, another week and they go in the main tank.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Shark, "Oh No!"


With the serpaes in the main tank there's room in the QT tank for something I've been waiting five months for, my red tailed black shark.Well my RTBS and three more neons. Before I put them in I broke the tank down and removed about half the gravel, there was just too much and I had to dig a pit so I could fit in the filter and still put on the lid. I also pulled out the baggie of biomax since the sponge was cycled and the bioload went way down.

And here's my pride and joy. I have to say he's skittish... well he's a complete sissy. He spends most of his time hiding under the heater, the filter, or in a cave/rock. He'll even run and hide when a neon swims by and he's easily ten times their size. I don't want him vicously attacking everyone in the tank but a little back bone would be nice.

It makes it even funnier that when I first brought my boy over to look at him. I told him I had a shark in the tank and pointed to him. My boy spotted him and immediately backed up saying, "Oh NO!"

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Serpaes

Well this Thursday marked the end of the fourth week of quarantine for the serpaes and in they went to the main tank. I was delighted to see how they've integrated so far. They've been model citizens so far and keep to themselves. I was surprised how quickly they colored up, they were never very vibrant in the QT tank and they were almost clear while they were being transfered to the main tank. After only six hours in the main tank they were a more vibrant orange/red than they'd even had in the store.

Yes, I'm starting off my post about the addition of my serpaes with a picture of my cories but I was pretty dang excited to finally get a picture of them that's clear and in focus.


As you can see the tank is a lot fuller now that the serpaes were added. It's driving the platys nuts as they are no longer the biggest fish in the tank. They're just two against seven now.



Here's a video of the tank, ignore the reflection of the football in the back ground.

As an update on my temperature woes the recent cold snap has left everyone in the house in long pants, socks and shirts at all times. The 100W heater has struggled with the temperature keeping it only around 73 degrees or so. I finally broke down and purchased a 200W heater online and added it to the tank. Almost immediately the tempeature jumped up to almost 80 degrees. Now I've unplugged the 100W and I'm trying to dial in the 200W to keep things about 78 or 79 degrees. My QT tank has no problems at all as it holds rock steady at 78.


And here is one of the few pictures, well only picture, I have of my shrimp. Unfortunately right after this picture both he and all his friends climbed out and jumped to their dooms. My best guess is that the former owner of this tank probably dosed it with a copper based medicine pretty heavily and is seeped into the silicone. I'll test the tank eventually but for the moment I'm just going to add any more shrimp. It's a pity because I really liked these guys.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

New Tank

Sadly my first fish tank looks to have lasted only about four months.

The good news is that everyone took the move over to the new tank just fine.

Things got started on Friday when I moved the tank into the house. The top of the stand itself wasn't perfectly level so I bought some foam to set underneath it. I couldn't help myself and I had to put at least a little water in it.

On Saturday I washed sand. Since water and dirt were intimately involved Charles had to get in on that action.
In goes the slop.

I was actually a bit surprised when a single bag of sand was enough to fill the bottom up but I didn't fight it, washing sand is an absolute pain. Once the sand was in I went ahead and filled it up. I used the tap in the sink to do it. I'd seen too many lizards in the front yard hose to really trust it. 48 Gallons 2.5 gallons at a time. Ugh.

On Monday things started to move. I went ahead and started to pull out about half the decorations and give them a bleach dunk. I didn't want any of that brown algae making the trip over if I could help it. Tuesday I put in the decorations I'd cleaned on Monday and then emptied out the rest of the decorations from the 55 gallon. I moved the heater over to the 48 gallon and then started netting fish. Lemme tell you, trying to net an inch and a half fish out of a four foot tank is no easy task. I actually felt a bit bad about all the stress they were getting but it couldn't be helped. Eventually everyone got moved in and the rest of the decor got a dunking. Finally on Wednesday I put in the last of the decorations and everything was in.

The end result:


I'm very pleased with the way it looks, even more than I thought I would. It was a real pain to aquascape though, lots of depth but not width, sort of the exact opposite of what I had before. I think I need a few taller plants, maybe another one that attaches to the wall but overall it's looking very nice. One thing I didn't expect to like was the anemic light. As you can see the tank is rather dim, it's got all of 15 watts of lighting right now. The darkness makes the aquarium look pretty sharp, especially as part of the living room's decor.



Saturday, November 8, 2008

Not So Baby and Sexism


As you can see the babies are growing up and getting big. Big enough that I went ahead and sorted them out. Of the five there was only one boy, the guppy with the bent spine. Since they were getting older I figured I'd separate them before they reached maturity. The boy went down into the quarantine tank and the girls get to stay in the main tank. Angela asked if the boy was likely to get pounded by the serpaes.

Yep.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

New Tank Background

Here's the new tank with its background sprayed on. The initial granite spray went on well but even though it looked even it was blotchy. So I went ahead and gave it a black base coat. After it everything was fine. I'll get a better picture after I take off the masking and get it cleaned up.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Corner Tank

In other news I went ahead and bought that corner tank. The tank itself looks to be in good condition. A good cleaning should deal with it. The stand is a piece of crap. It's made out of particle board, you know, sawdust and glue. The stuff that turns into oatmeal when it gets wet. Yeah, that's the material you want to make a fish tank stand out of. So I got a new tank stand made. The guys that made it for me made it out of the scrap they had laying around and what they had laying around was 1/4" stainless steel. Because of this the stand weighs a ton, easily a hundred pounds, maybe one twenty five. The upside is you could park a truck on top of it and it'd hold up fine. Seriously, I ran the numbers.

It also came with a Penguin 170 filter, what is it with me and collecting legacy filters? Anyways, I cleaned that one up and went ahead with putting it in my existing tank. I didn't bother with the cartridges, just some biomax pellets and a load of filter floss. I figured I'd use it to help polish the water and get some flow in the left hand corner of my tank where there isn't much. When I first started it up the thing sounded like a gravel tumbler and for about 24 hours afterwards. However whatever seemed to be the problem worked itself out and now its as quiet as my other filter. Well, almost. For some reason this one sits higher on my tank and the water splashes down into the tank from a height of about an inch or two. This does two things, one it makes a racket just like you'd expect a waterfall to and second it makes one heck of a falling current in the tank. The circulation is good in that part of the tank, its always been a bit of a dead zone, but this is spinning my fish around if they get caught in it. I've got to cut some holes in the lid that came with this thing so I might use that plastic to make a comb to break up the flow going back into the tank. Not likely to do much about the noise but if it can break up the flow I'll be happy.

All that being said my sweetie loves the corner tank. She loves it too much in fact. After telling me how much she loved it the first thing she said was, "Why don't you move your tank into this one?" Well because this corner tank was going to be a briny mess and home to a homicidal little mantis shrimp. Then I got to thinking about it. The tank really does look good and I'd love to get a tank out into the part of the house where everyone is, really let everyone appreciate my fish. So I'm going to be moving tanks.

Yikes.

So I've got more work to do on my hobby which I never mind. My first step is going to be getting some plywood feet cut out for the stand, both to protect the floor and distribute the load. After that I'm going to be spray painting the back panel of the tank with this granite looking stuff.

http://www.rchuntingstore.com/servlet/the-171/KRYLON-MAKE-IT-STONE/Detail

I've seen someone else do it on their tank and it looks awesome. It give the background some character rather than being flat black. That particle board stand is going to be sacrificed as a spray stand, about all its good for. I'd burn it but the fumes from the glue would probably make my babies be born naked.

After that its back to rinsing sand and then filling up.

As for the move itself, well some of the decor is getting left behind. I've only got about 74% as much surface area on the bottom so I won't have room for all the rock work, I think. My fish are going to be very unhappy because before I move any of them I'm taking all the decor from their tank, nuking it again with bleach water, then stuffing it in the new tank. For about a day they're going to have to just deal with living in an empty tank. I'll probably leave the lights off. Once I get all the stuff in the new tank I'll net all the fish out and move them along with the filter to the new tank. Oh, right now I'm planning on moving the 170 first and use it as a water polisher over there as well. All the new sand will no doubt raise a sand storm in the new tank.

All that being said I'm going to have to alter my stocking plans a bit. I was thinking red tailed black shark and a German blue ram because of the length of my tank and the cover available. With the different shape of my tank though I'm not sure I'll have the space on the bottom for both fish to stake out their areas and not get into it with one another. I'll probably leave the GBR by the wayside and just got with the RTBS.

Oh, one thing that's not going to cut it on this tank is the light. It's a wennie little 18" 15W deal who's bulb is ugly right now. I was already planning on upgrading the 55's lights eventually to support plant growth, so now upgrading the new tank's lights is still in the plan. I've done the math and a 24" light could fit on top of the tank, it's just going to take some cutting of the plastic to fit it all in. I'll have a little over hang but just like a quarter inch nubbin. Right now I'm thinking the 24" version of this:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+3733+9654+12109&pcatid=12109
That would give me 2.9 watts per gallon and that should be enough to grow whatever I please in the tank.

What am I going to do with the 55? Well I do still want a GBR and maybe some gouramis. Oh, and rummy nose tetras and harlequin rasboras are always nice.

Quarantine Tank Pictures



Ok, first its not that cloudy. Second its not that pink. Its the light. As you can see I have too much gravel and I've left in the biomax pellets. The sepaes seem to be doing well for the most part but once they're done I'm going to spray the back of the tank black and replace the gravel with sand.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Quarantine and Babies

Well there's a lot of stuff going on right now fish wise.

First off my quarantine tank is set up and running. It also has its first residents, seven serpae tetras. Four longfin and three shortfins. Unfortunately it started out as eight with a four/four split. Two days ago I found one of the shortfins dead. An examination of his body didn't reveal anything wrong, no pineconeing of scales, no protruding eyes, body wasn't distended or deformed in any way, and no obvious wounds. My tank's water parameters all check out as well, steady at 79 degrees, 0 ammonia and nitrites, 5ppm nitrates, and a 7.5 pH with a water change three days prior. I have no real idea what befell the little guy. I'm resisting the urge to go out and buy another just to keep things at eight. We're through a week and a half of quarantine, if I toss another fish in we get to start right over.

Speaking of the tank here's a quick reminder of what it is.
~20 Gallon rubbermaid container
Sponge Filter
50W Visitherm Deluxe heater
Quartz gravel (Going to go to sand since I'll be keeping corys in there eventually)
One donated rock ornament
Two terra cotta pots
Two fake plants
15W light fixture

The tank is working out well, my pre-seeded filter cycled the tank in less than 48 hours. Since then the water parameters have been stable and match my main tank as closely as I can manage. The serpaes are all active and eating well.

Cold Snap

Well we had our first cold snap here in Florida and I learned something. First, my 100W heater really is no where near enough to keep my 55 gallon warm when the temperature plunges to 45 outside. It's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be though. My tank got down into the low 70's, around 73, but it never went much lower. Yes, that's not warm enough for my fish but that's not as bad as I thought it would be and its only for about 8 hours. During the day it was able to keep up and keep the temperature around 77 or 78. Looking back I really wish I'd bought my heater online. Online the cost difference between a hundred watt heater and a two fifty watt heater is like $2. I'm probably going to need to buy a bigger heater here soon, real soon, as in get my credit card out right now kinda soon. When the temperature starts to go lower and stay there that 100W is just not gonna cut it.

Stooges

I'll admit, I never wanted to be a live bearer daddy when I started. As cool looking as some guppies and platys are I didn't want a tank overrun with them. So I got three male platys. I knew some aggression issues were possible but I figured in my sparsely populated tank there would be enough room that they could avoid one another if they got too pissy. Thankfully the stooges all seemed to get along just fine with one another. About two weeks ago I noticed that one of them seemed to be hiding a lot more. The other two seemed to chase him any time he came out of hiding. Over the next two weeks I observed him being more and more listless, hiding a lot and progressively eating less. Unfortunately by the time I got worried about him the serpaes were already in their tank and I didn't have a free spot to put him in. I did my best to keep the tank in good condition but he grew more and more listless. Finally he took to wedging himself behind rocks or under plants and just drifting in place, gasping for air. Finally a few days ago he passed.

It sucks because he was one of my do-over fish, one of the first to go into the tank after the pH crash and he'd been with me four months. Him dying and then finding the serpae the next day have me bummed. I'm especially down because it looks like the other two turned on him and hounded him to death. I may try a quartet of female platies later on, the shop has some gorgeous sunburst ones in, but then there's the babies to deal with.

Fry

Speaking of babies. I'm about to stop being able to call the guppy fry that. The two largest are as big as some of the neons now. I noticed it because I did my daily neon count a week ago and counted ten of them. Since I knew there were only nine in the tank I was understandably confused until I took another look and noticed that one of the neons was a guppy. Four of the five survivors look to be just fine, if a little fat in the belly, but the fourth has a birth defect, a severly bent spine. I think all five are female but I'm not sure. I need to really keep an eye on them now and sex them so that I can seperate the girls from the boys before they learn about the birds and the bees. The look a lot like their momma with their spotted tails. So long as they're all girls I'll be happy to keep them in tank.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Another Tank

Well I got turned on to another tank by a co-worker. A neighbor of his was looking to get rid of his fish tank so I got it. Twenty bucks for a corner tank with a penguin filter. The filter itself is worth twenty bucks. The tank and stand I dunno but a heck of a lot more than 20. No I have no idea what I'm going to do with it. Yes, I won't be eating much for lunch for a long while as I save up the cash to get it wet and eventually put in fish. I may use it as a betta/cory tank.

Any ideas?

Thursday, October 16, 2008

QT Update

I decided not to wait till the end of the outage to get my sepaes. Angela pointed out that I didn't really have guppies or platys in my plan so stick to the plan. Well sticking to the plan means serpaes in the QT to begin with. Dang, I'm so broken up over that. Anyways, I got things set up. I got a big metal plate to help support the bottom and set my container on there. In went gravel, caves and then water. The water all came from my main tank, siphoned off intentionally to help the QT start off as close to my main tank as I could. Add in filter, a few el-cheapo plants, and the heater and I'm ready to go. Now for the fish...

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Bad Fishy Daddy

I really have been. Working 12 hours a day for three weeks straight with four more weeks to go has left me without much free time. What free time I do have has been taken up playing with and bathing small children, fixing dinner (some nights), and keeping up with a honey do list. Not a whole lot of time to deal with my tank.

Big mistake. I got it in my head that I could let things slip for a while until I got a good night to do it. After all I can't make nitrates in this tank if I wanted to. Even after 12 days without attention my nitrates were still only about 10 ppm.
What was the problem then? In a word, detritus. In non fishkeeper lingo that's a combination of fish poo, uneaten food, and gunk. My sand was literally covered in it. This is partly because when I vacuumed my tank out there was literally nothing in it but water, fish, and sand. So I know lots this had been in there a while hiding where I couldn't vacuum, but a good bit was because I hadn't cleaned in almost two weeks. I learned my lesson, the tank gets a cleaning every Saturday come hell or high water.

Why was everything out? I'm sick of the algae. I know I know, it's part of a new tank but it's freaking ugly. It's not even a mild brown, its sickly blackish nasty brown. So I started Friday night by removing "half" of the decorations and plants from my tank. I say half in quotes because it turned out to be no where close to half. Anyways, in the sink I mixed up about a 7 to 10% solution of bleach to water. I took the plants and such and got ready to scrub. I took a plant, swirled it in the water and pulled it out to wipe down and... it was clean. I kid you not, ten seconds of swishing in that solution killed the algae and sloughed it right off. Made things go pretty quick actually. I dunked everything in the bleach then rinsed it till the slimy feel and stink of the bleach was gone then I let them air dry. Saturday night I pulled the rest of the decor and waged chemical warfare on the remaining algae.
After that I cleaned and redecorated, sort of. I only put the stuff in I washed off on Friday night. Sunday night I put the stuff back in I washed Saturday night.

So the tank got cleaned and redecorated. I moved the hygrophalia around to provide more of a divider in the tank. I'm looking to break up sightlines across the entire tank, from a fish perspective. Some caves got moved. My vine is not on the right wall instead of the right side of the back wall. Gets it away from the filter flow a bit more. I like it over all, I think it'll be good for the serpaes.



Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Video

Angela took some video of my tank. You'll get to see why I call the platys "The Stooges".

Monday, October 13, 2008

Another Update

First off, the fry are doing well. The best we can count now there's five fry still going strong. One in particular is getting BIG. No evidence of color or sex yet, I'm going to separate boys from girls the moment I can though. I don't mind some fry once in a while but until I've got some more fish in the tank I don't think I'm going to let them breed. I can deal with one or two surviving from each drop but 5+ is dangerous.

In QT/Hospital tank news I've got all the pieces together, now its just a matter of waiting for my sponge filter to marinate and then I can set it up. I've got about another week to go on the sponge filter before I put everything together.

To keep it cycled while I wait on the serpaes at the end of the outage I may buy a couple more neons and a platy or two... don't tell my wife.
It's goofy but I really love the neons. Their bright blue and red colors, the way they school together, they're just great looking fish. I've found a lot of varities of platy I'd love to see in my tank.



Thursday, September 25, 2008

Late September Update

Well things are still just going on. Sadly I lost Thing 1 a few days ago. Maybe the stress of giving birth got to her, I honestly don't know. She had been acting perfectly normal the day before, eating, swimming, with her full color. The next day she's stuck near the airstone upside down and dead. There's nothing wrong with the water, I had tested it two days earlier at the water change and ammonia and nitrites were both zero with nitrates under 10ppm. After Thing 1 died the same. pH was stable at 7.5. She had no signs of anything wrong with her at all. The kicker is that all the fry are still present and accounted for, all seven of them. I have to believe that anything wrong in the tank bad enough to kill momma would have wiped out the babies as well.

Everyone else is doing well, my pandas are coming out more during the day. The neons are all still cruising around in their school and brightly colored. The stooges are still being the stooges. The brown algae is still present but not nearly as aggressive. It's supposed to be a symptom of new tanks and go away eventually, hopefully I'm on the downside of it.







I got the money saved up to purchase some additional plants from a fishforum.com member. About half the plants are ones I want for the main tank and the rest are going into the QT tank. I hope to hear from her soon so I can get the stuff.

In other news of the QT I tested its water-tightness and everything was fine. I also cleaned the gravel that came with the original tank. Finally I drilled the lid with a bunch of 1/4" air holes. That's really all I can do until I get the filter. Thankfully I should have the filter in three weeks, that gives me two weeks to let it marinate in the main tank, then with one week to go on my outage I'll set up the QT tank with the filter, the ceramic rings from my filter and toss in two or three of the young guppies and let it roll for a week. Then I put the guppies back into the main tank and get my serpaes.

I've also lucked into a few freebies. A co-worker hooked me up with some odds and ends from a 20 gallon tank, including the rock below that's going in the QT. He also knows of someone with a 30 gallon tank looking to get rid of it. I told him if they just want to be rid of it I'll take it but I can't afford to pay for it. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Growing Up

Well our guppy fry look to be doing quite well. At their peak there looked to be at least seven of the little guys swimming in the tank. I haven't been able to see that many recently but I think we've got at least five little guys hanging on. They aren't so little any more though. What were originally black dots with skinny tails have grown into guppies. They're small but very recognizable as guppies. The other fish in the tank seem to ignore them but I did catch one of my neons running one of the fry off during feeding time. Bully.




Sunday, September 7, 2008

Babies!

First, the bad news. One of my neons died. I have no idea why. They were all looking good and doing fine. The next day I count only nine and a quick survey of the tank finds number ten pale, dead, and sucked up against the back side of the filter intake. Shoot.

Thing 2 also passed away. At some point for some reason she got a small wound on the top of her head and a very large wound near her caudal fin. I didn't see the wounds and she almost immediately caught a fungal infection. The infection was extremely aggressive, going from a tiny fleck of white to a huge growth in less than 24 hours. She didn't make it.

Finally, I am learning to hate pandas. Ten pandas in my tank and I'm down to three. My water quality has been perfect, zero ammonia, zero nitrites, and my nitrates haven't even gotten over 10 ppm. They just kept turning up dead. I even lost one of the older ones. I've decided that I'm not replacing the pandas anytime soon. I know 3 isn't a great number for a social fish like a cory but I can't keep replacing them at $6 a pop. I want to get my other fish in at some point and replacing pandas is a drain. Aquaria Studios has some Sterbai cories...

Ok, the good news, Thing 1 finally dropped her fry! We got home from the grocery store on Sunday and when I walked by the tank I saw one of the neons dart after something small and white that shot into the plants. Well I don't have anything small and white in my tank... WHAT THE HECK IS IN MY TANK!? So I stop what I'm doing and make like an idiot pressing my nose against the tank to figure out what weird thing is invading my tank and... I spot a guppy fry hiding in the hygrophalia! I call out to Angela and she comes over to look. Sure enough there was a guppy fry hiding in the plants. For the rest of the day we'd check on Thing 1 and the tank looking for more fry. So far we've seen five at the most. I don't know if any of the little guys will make it to adulthood but I'm hopeful.




In other news that's neither good nor bad I'm seriously considering setting up a quarantine tank. Between the pandas and Thing 2's untimely demise I've started to worry. What if the next fish that dies doesn't die because they're a wuss or a bad fungus. What if a fish drags in some bacteria or a parasite? I don't have a huge amount of money invested in my fish just yet, but it's racking up. So I'm thinking before I lay out for a big school of serpaes or more pandas or something like that maybe I should get a quarantine set up.

What I need is:
1) Container - A real ten or twenty gallon tank would be nice but something food safe that holds about ten or fifteen gallons of water would do just fine.

2) Filter - A simple sponge filter sized for a 20 gallon tank would do the trick. Alternately I could do a big water change daily. I don't really like the idea of doing that on a 15 gallon tank/bin because that means a lot more work. Siphon water from the Q tank and toss. Siphon water from the main tank into the Q tank. Replace new water into the main tank. I'd be doing daily 5 to 10 gallon changes though... not so much fun, and a lot of tap water conditioner. Given that a small sponge filter costs about what a bottle of Prime costs and I already have an air pump I think a sponge filter is a better idea.

3) Heater - My computer room isn't that cold. It's probably a steady 75 degrees in there. My current heaters don't have to pull that hard to keep it up to 79 degrees. I might be able to pull the 50W heater from my main tank and add it to my Q tank. It's probably too much for the small volume, but it won't have to run that much anyways. I could always wrap a towel around most of the Q tank to help insulate it.

4) Decorations - I don't need substrate, or at most just a very thin layer. I got a 5 gallon tub worth of light colored gravel with my tank but I'm not wild about the stuff, its sharp and light colored. Dark and round would be better. I've gotten a weird looking but functional rock... thing, from a co-worker I could add in, and I've still got left over slate. Throw in a few of the fake plants I'm going to get from someone I know, but don't really want in my main tank, and I should have enough stuff to keep the Q fish happy.

5) Light - Probably don't need to bother, a subdued lighting might help anyways. If I do need one though I've still got one of the 24" fixtures left over from the box of parts I got with the tank.

So what do I really need for a Q set up? A 10 to 20 gallon Rubbermaid container like this:
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=217004-315-FG3J9000CLRBF&lpage=none
Fifteen gallons, no wheels or penetrations down low. Clear so I can see inside and I can drill holes in the top for air. Gravel I have, sort of. I could use the stuff that came with the tank but I'd rather get some dark colored stuff so figure $5 for a bag of it from petsmart or the LFS. A sponge filter, hopefully I can pick something up for under $10 along with some fittings for the lines.

All told I figure for $30 or less I can get a quarantine tank set up. I'm loathe to put off buying more fish for even longer, but I'm just as unwilling to watch the ones I already have die.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Scum

Something has been bugging me about the tank for a while now. When viewed end on the water has looked hazy. I've blown it off to be just the water being a little cloudy, after all I was looking through 4 feet of water, a little stuff in it is to be expected.

Well it's not haze, its algae. Its not concentrated like the brown stuff that's popping up all over but its a general scum coating every square inch of the glass. Tomorrow on the way home from Sea World I'm picking up a scrapper. I'm also going to pick up some Prime. My tetra water conditioner is running out and I need some more and everyone seems to rave about Prime.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Guppy Love

I forgot to mention that the remaining first female guppy is already pregnant. Since she's already showing its unlikely its happened in my tank, she was probably knocked up when I bought her. Thanks to guppy biology it'll be six weeks before any fry she or her new friend produce can be sure to be Panzer's. It doesn't that much in the grand scheme of things since I'm rooting for nature to win and the rest of the fish to eat the fry. If they don't though I'd love to see the fry and know they are a result of the fish in my tank. I specifically picked the two girls out to go well with Panzer and I hope they'll make nice looking fish.

Also, I need names for the new girls, any suggestions?

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Cory Death Watch Day 9

Nine corys in my tank, six out and in the trash. I've not only lost most of the babies but I've also lost two of my older pandas as well. I'm down to just one baby and two adults in my tank. I don't know why they are having these problems but I know I'm done with these devil fish for the moment. Instead of wasting money on pandas I'm just going to save it for serpaes. I'm going to proceed with the rest of the tank residents and finish things up before I revisit the corys. I might forget the pandas entirely and go with something like a sterbai or something. If I wait a loooong time I can get wild caught pandas after I add CO2 and driftwood to my tank and lower the pH.

On to something happier. I was at the fish store today and looking around. I was about to leave and I stopped by the guppy tank to see if any of the girls looked good enough to replace my lost one. Well as it turned out just as I was about to give up and head off I spotted her, a gorgeous female guppy who would go perfectly with Panzer and the other girl.

You can see the new girl on the left, along with Panzer showing the goods to the girls.
The stooges had to get in on talking to the new girl, Panzer was not amused.


And a new shot of Panzer solo.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Disappointment

There's no other word for what I feel right now. Thursday morning the red female guppy died. I attribute it to her being dropped and my ham fisted attempt to pick her up and put her in. Later on the same day on of the baby panda corys died. So far I'm losing 50% of the baby pandas. This morning I saw something I really didn't expect. One of my larger older pandas died. I saw nothing on him that would indicate why. Right now I've got three baby pandas and two older ones left and I'm not buying any more for a long while. At least until I get a quarantine tank set up. In fact if any more die I'm seriously thinking about writing off pandas and instead going with another kind of cory like a sterbai or something. Or maybe just some wild caught pandas.

So in addition to all the death lately my tank is undergoing an outbreak of brown algae. This is normal for a new tank and should clear up eventually but right now it's just making my tank ugly which when combined with the fish losses just depresses the crap out of me.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Silly Guppies

Some updates. On Tuesday Angela called me at work to tell me that two of my new pandas were dead. To put it simply I was bummed. I know pandas are delicate for corys so I should have been ready for it but the new guys seemed to be doing well in the tank. When I got home I tested my water and everything was fine, zero ammonia, nitrites, and not even 5 ppm of nitrates. Well I knew that pandas were delicate, still stings to lose them.

In other news Panzer, my guppy, turns out to be a bit of a jerk. Since he went into the tank he's chased the Stooges around relentlessly. The sight of it is ridiculous as anyone of the platys is easily twice to three times Panzer's size.

So on Monday night I decided to go to my LFS (Aquaria Studio) and see about getting some female guppies in the hope they'd keep Panzer occupied. Yes, I know, they'll breed like rabbits. I know, I'll have fry all over the dang place. Panzer is just too good looking and Angela likes him too much to be rid of him. My only hope is that the lack of good tight cover will let the rest of the fish pick off the fry before they grow.

Well as you might know Tuesday was hurricane day around here and AS was closed. I guess they figured not many people would be looking to buy fish mid-hurricane. So I went back and checked today and the store was open, not that Fay had gone anywhere. Anyways I picked up two female guppies, in the process probably driving the guy helping me nuts as I tried to coach him onto exactly which two I wanted out of the swirling mass of fifty in the tank and sent him back again and again to try and get the ones I wanted. Well while we were talking I asked him if they'd lost a lot of the pandas and he said yes. I told him about the two I'd lost and low and behold, even though I was long beyond the 24 hour guarantee my coming back to the shop over and over and waiting patiently while other customers were helped paid off and he offered to replace them for free. So I left the shop with my two guppies and two replacement pandas.

First the guppies. One of them has a snakeskin tail not too unlike Panzer's. The other is an orange and red guppy that was as close to the one in the book that Charles liked as I could swing. The snakeskin female is more lively than the other by a long shot, probably because the orange girl was dropped outside the tank when I tried to introduce her. Long story, don't wanna get into it, suffice it to say that I am going to keep an eye on her as her entry was way more stressful than it should have been.


And then there's the pandas. Both of the new guys are looking good and so are the other five that were in the tank to begin with. In fact the whole panda crew is getting more lively by the day. That's not saying a whole lot but seeing them out on the sand snuffling around from time to time is nice.