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.