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.