Pregnancy

It's about time for the platies to come out of quarantine. I lost one of them early on. It was one of those unexplainable deaths. Happy, active, no sign of disease or sickness the next day she's dead on the bottom of the tank. The other two have been doing ok and I'm really enjoying having the QT tank running in my office again.

I've decided that I'm going to leave the platies in QT until they give birth. Once the little ones are free swimming both mommies are going in the main tank. I'll give the little ones a couple weeks to mature before looking for some new fish for QT. Probably some more panda cories.

Quarantine Set Up

Anyways, after the losses I've decided to build back some of my stock, specifically non-characins since no one but tetras have been having issues. I set my quarantine tank back up, with sand this time since I'll be dropping corys into QT soon.

However... that's a month in the future. I was in Petsmart and had a moment of weakness. Petsmart is the only place that has red wag platies. I love red wag platies. I bought three female red wag platies. I made sure to get only females, small ones, and none that were visibly showing. There's probably zero chance they're not knocked up but I'm hopeful they'll hold off on giving birth until late in quarantine and I'll be able to move the moms right over into the main tank and let the babies grow out in the QT. At the very least I've got a week or two to get a few more to get some more small plants to help the fry hide if they're born early.

After the platys and maybe platy fry I'll be getting some more cories, 4, and 4 more neons. There could be a couple more serpaes in the future but not until the remaining three have a good two months of good health.

Rollercoaster

Since the last post I've been on a bit of a fishy roller coaster. I've lost two rasboras to the fungal infection. The infected long fin serpae died. Two of my female guppies were also in a bad way, one blew up like a balloon and the second developed a bent spine in only two weeks. To top it all off my interest in the 90 gallon tank apparently rekindled the owner's interest in it. He decided to try and fix what's wrong with it. That was a huge disappointment.

Ok so its not so much a roller coaster as free fall.

I'm not sure what my course of action from this point is gonna be. I'm thinking of setting up the quarantine tank and putting the serpaes in it. Leave them in there and see if anything happens to the remaining three. I do know I want more neons and cories. If anything happens to the serpaes I may give up on them and use rummynose tetras.

Salty News

It's not all doom and gloom. Most of my fish are in good health.

Also my wife has notified me that she knows a woman who is trying to get rid of a 90 gallon saltwater tank. They don't want anything for it, just get it out of their house. I'm really hopeful that I'll get it.

Been a While

It has, hopefully in a few days I'll have some pictures to post.

Most of the reason is the same as always, nothing is really happening. Well, mostly nothing. I've got to admit that there is something seriously wrong with my serpaes. Since I've gotten them they've been slowly dying off one by one. The symptoms are always the same. The serpae starts to get pale. Their eyes start to bulge, they get lethargic, they take to hiding, and then they die. The entire process takes about two weeks. My most recent one died on Saturday. Unfortunately my last long fin now has one severly distorted eye. I have a bad feeling that he'll grow more pale soon and die.

One of the rasboras in my tank has a discolored patch behind is dorsal fin, a little fuzzy, like a fungus.

Shark is also not staying to the front of the tank but the back.

To top off the fun times, I haven't seen any evidence of the fry lately. I suspect they've all been eating.

Right now, things kinda suck.

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.

Ammonia Spike Over

Well, the ammonia spike looks to be over. I tested yesterday and today with no sign of ammonia. Good deal.

Heater on the Fritz

The 200W heater I got for my 48 gallon tank lasted almost long enough to get it through the first cold snap. About a week ago I went to feed my fish and when I opened the hood I got a blast of hot moist air in my face. This has been pretty normal since the tank was supposed to be almost 80 in a room that was maybe 65 degrees. This was HOT though. Looking at the thermometer I saw the temp was all the way up to 86 degrees. Yikes. I quickly unplugged the heater and let the temp settle down. I spent a while monkeying with the heater but nothing seemed to work. Since the temperature was so low I couldn't just switch back to my 100W heater, it didn't have the grunt to deal with the low temperatures.

So for about a week Angela and I kept the temp in the safe zone by monitoring the thermometer and plugging in and unplugging the heater. Not fun. Thankfully the temperature has come up so my 100 and 50W heaters can keep things ok. I'll need to get a new heater either with a warranty on this one or just buying one.

Ammonia Spike

I've been fighting a bit of a conundrum with my Eclipse at the moment. For some reason I'm having to deal with an ammonia spike. Given that the tank is over six weeks old, almost seven actually, and it's not big and well stocked it's odd that this would show up now. It's been three weeks since the rasboras were added. The two things I've done lately are starting a proper vacuuming routine (not the epic failure that was the turkey baster. Fish poo shows up remarkably well on white sand, on black... not so much) and adding the diverter.

It wouldn't make a lot of sense for the vacuuming to be the cause, I'm removing things that make ammonia. The diverter doesn't make sense either. Potentially there could be fungicides in it but the packaging makes no mention of it and the diverter is the same material as the old one that's been in the tank for four weeks.

Consider me stumped.

The downside is that the growths on the rasboras are back. he upside is it looks like the ammonia is coming back down. With any luck this spike will be over soon.

There is more good news though, it looks like the algae problem is about beat. After a good scrub about two weeks ago the brown algae is not making a come back. There's small spots here and there but it's not expanding. Also the filamentous stuff on the driftwood is looking pretty bad. It is no longer gauzy and swallowing the piece, it's stringy, weak, and looks to be barely holding on. My new crypt is also looking good as well. It hasn't grown or anything but after a week in the tank it's holding steady.

Green Life!

I haven't updated a whole lot lately. Frankly there's not much to say. The fish keep swimming, I keep feeding them, things keep on keeping on. My 48 gallon is going well. Mekong, my red tailed black shark, is behaving herself very well. She keeps to herself and to her side of the tank. She doesn't even get in the face of the other fish if they wander in to "her" territory. She does occasionally bum rush a serpae but in her defense they are usually asking for it.

My eclipse is also going very well. I added a diverter to the output of the filter to reduce the current so that Shark doesn't get knocked around. I made it myself and it works great. There's very little flow in front of the filter where previously it'd drive him to the bottom of the tank.


I had a situation with the rasboras at the end of last week. One of them developed a white lump under his mouth, about 1 to 2mm in size. A day or two later they all had it. I was nervous about it but rather than try to medicate it without a clue I just made sure the water was as good as it could be. Today I found that three of them had cleared up completely and the other was down to just 1mm in size.


I also got my first live plant today. It's a crypt, a low light simple to keep plant. Oddly enough it's the most expensive living thing in any of my tanks. Here's hoping it does alright and helps out with keeping the algae down.

Shark's New Roomies

I decided to go ahead and add a few new room mates for Shark. I added in four harlequin rasboras. They're small now and will max out at just over an inch. They're peaceful and calm, so they won't stress out Shark. Finally they're a nice silvery color so they're a nice counter-point to Shark's dark color.

Next up I'll update you on a DIY project I embarked on with their filter.

Christmas

Well, there's not a whole lot going on lately.

The 48 gallon is doing just great. Everyone is fat and happy. Mekong (my RTBS) is right at home. She's bum rushed some of the other fish when they get to nosy with her cave but for the most part she seems quite content. The serpaes are calm and well mannered and the neon herd is staying out of the way. The remaining platys are behaving themselves. The guppies have started to demonstrate an interesting behavior. In the morning when I turn on the light I've noticed all four of them huddled down together in a corner under a cave. During the day they just bum around and ignore one another but apparently at night they like to hang out together.

The Eclipse at work has been an interesting trip. Initially I wrapped the intake in foam to try and slow down the flow through the filter. Well apparently the resitance was too much for the pump. I had problems with the pump overheating and just shutting off. Obviously this would be a bad thing to happen when I wasn't around. I've removed the foam on the intake and for the last ten days it's run without a problem. I also packed the filter with bio-max pellets. Unfortunately I packed some spots too full and had some pellets fall into the biowheel and jam it to a halt. Ugh. Thankfully I seem to have solved all those problems and the tank is mechanically sound.

Biologically... well it appears to be cycled. No ammonia readings, no nitrite readings, and no nitrate readings. It's a bit odd for a tank that's three weeks old with a fish like Shark in it. I've had two algae outbreaks. The first is good old brown algae, yay. The second is only on the driftwood and is this wierd fuzzy gauze. No the pic isn't out of focus, its the algae.


Shark is doing well. He's always excited to see me and eating well. He doesn't seem to mind the current in the tank. Playing in it at times and at others finding quiet spots. His coloration is absolutely gorgeous, his pectoral fins have an iridescent sheen to them that wasn't there a week ago. He's continued to get darker and richer every day.

Sometime next week I'm going to look into adding some harlequin rasboras or maybe platys to the tank for some additional movement.

That's what's been going on lately.

In The Tank!

My girl is now in her tank! I put her in a day early, sue me. Like the serpaes she immediately took to her new home She darkened up instantly and her tail took on a deeper red. I dunno what's going on with the quarantine tank but for some reason the fish just don't get to their best color in there.

Anyways, she started to check out the other fish and the tank and they started to check her out. To my delight she headed immediately for the slate cave I made for her months ago. She's decided that its hers and spends a lot of time hovering around it. She's been the model fish so far and has kept to her side of the tank. I was worried she might bother the corys or vice versa but they seem to ignore one another.

She's gorgeous and I already love having her in the tank.

Tank at Work

For my birthday/Christmas I received just what I asked for, a 6 gallon Eclipse fish tank and all the fixin's, of course it was the only thing I asked for period so take it with a grain of salt.

To my wife's chagrin I couldn't help myself and had to immediately prepare my tank to go to work. An extra wooden brace for my desk due to the weight, cut a piece of foam to cushion the bottom, rinse my black sand. Yeah, black, it's awesome. I got everything ready to go and brought it to work. Since I'd found a great looking betta the day before and was going to get it on my lunch break I had to set it up before lunch. Thankfully my boss didn't seem to mind as I spent about an hour puttering around with it getting everything in and the tank filled. At lunch I met my wife and we got something to eat then we took my boy to the store to find a fish. He hadn't gotten a nap and was too cranky to be any help but he was enthusiastic about getting to see the fish.

I picked out my fish and came back to the office and put him in. After the tiny cup he'd been stuck in with water that was... well its best not to talk about it, he seemed to enjoy having space to swim. He spent most of the rest of the day swimming around his new place poking his head in every corner. He was shy and would scoot away when I got close to the tank but today he's gotten a lot bolder, even spending time watching me work and interacting with me a bit. I put my finger next to the tank and he tracked me running it up and down the side. Yeah it's not much but try and get a platy to do anything but beg for food.

Last night we asked my boy to name the fish. He knows four words for fish, fishy, guppy, shark, and whale. Shark won. Shark is already proving to be far more photogenic than any of my other fish, holding still long enough to get some great shots of him.


The wood has already started to stain the water a golden hue, I'm loving the look. Sadly I didn't estimate sizes very well and the T-Rex skull I got for the tank is just too big to get in it. It'll have to wait for another tank.

Some of you are probably wondering what is wrong with me. Putting a fish in an uncycled aquarium. Well what you can't see in the pictures is that the filter is loaded up with biomax pellets under the blue cartridge and behind the biowheel. Those are the same pellets I've left in my aquarium's filter so they are already seeded with bacteria. All I've got to do now is wait for the bacteria to migrate from the pellets to the biowheel. I plan to leave them in until the first cartridge change then I'll take them out.

December Update

First off my an update on my main tank the 48... everything is perfectly fine. Everyone is doing well in their new home. The quarantine tank residents are just as good. All three neons are just fine. My shark is a female as it turns out, she has a dark gray belly instead of a pure black one. She's also a total sissy. I don't get to see her in all her glory much because she hides whenever I get near the tank. Oh well, another week and they go in the main tank.