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.

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.

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.