The Circle of Life

Yesterday the 48 gallon surprised me. When I went to vacuum the tank like I usually do. When I moved the fake tree stump to clean under it I saw a lot of detritus swirl around. And around. And around. In fact quite a bit of it wouldn't stop moving. I got down close to the tank and found...

Babies! Small black fore body and clear tails. I don't know who's getting it on in my tank but someone did. At least eight fry are in there. In fact I managed to vacuum one up. I was able to scoop him up in a cup and put him back in though. Unfortunately with this tank it's deep and has tons of cover. It's almost impossible to find a fish that doesn't want to be found. That's good news for the fry. Since I know my guppies are all female that leaves the pandas, serpaes, or neons as the culprits. Given the coloration of the fry I'm hopeful it was the pandas. I hope so. First off I want more of them and second they're pretty stinking cute as little ones.

The rest of the circle of life? Friday night I couldn't find my second platy. Nothing turned up Saturday when I vacuumed the tank. Then Saturday night when I was getting some frozen food fixed for them I spotted my platy.

What was left of him.

Apparently the cannibals in my tank don't care for scales since that's all they left of him. Yikes.

The circle of life baby, it's brutal.

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.