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.