New Phish!

In true 'me' style I went out and bought some more fish, and continuing the 'me' trend I got more than I originally intended. I now have 26 Fish in the one tank... The fish shop people tell me that's fine and I needn't worry about being over stocked. I'm almost certain they're wrong but I just can't help myself sometimes.

So I went down this morning with the intention of buying 1 more albino corydoras and 2 bronze corydoras, same species. Came home with 2 albinos, 3 bronze, and this fellow:

He (I'm pretty sure) is a German golden ram, a colour variant of the standard German blue ram, a type of cichlid.

I purchased him because my girlfriend wanted a new favourite fish after Bruce passed away. I hope she like him, cause he was 4 times as expensive as your typical betta.

Anyway, here are the corydoras I bought:

2 Bronze Corydoras

All 6 new fish

Till next time.

R.I.P. Bruce

Sadly, Bruce, my fighter fish, passed away a few days ago.
One of my original 5, Bruce was my favourite in the tank. Over the 4.5 Months that I had him he had grown stunning, flowing fins that were the envy of all in the tank.

After Gus had gone, Bruce also started to bloat.

Bruce on purchase date

Bruce in His Prime

Bruce the day he died.

We'll miss you Bruce.

I think I may forgo any sort of replacement for Bruce, and instead get some companions for Dory.

Excitement!

Well, a lot has actually happened since posting last.
Firstly is the fate of poor Gus and Cory. I realized after writing up the page for my fish that I had neglected to include Gus, my balloon molly. However I regret to say that I can't count Gus among my fish living in the tank even now that I remember him. For the bumbling fish has gone belly up on me.
I first noticed it a few days after last posting. Gus was hanging around near the heater a lot, I didn't think much of it, that's just the way I am. A bit later I noticed his scales were sticking out and he looked a little bloated.

Pine-coning Gus :(

This finally started the alarm bells in my head and I went to my trusty computer to look up these symptoms. I discovered that the scales sticking out was often referred to as 'pine-coning' and that mixed with bloating was a sure sign of the symptom 'dropsy'.
Dropsy is not a disease in itself, but rather just a symptom cause by a variety of things. A bit like sneezing and a runny nose are symptoms of something like a cold or some other virus.
However, as a symptom, it's usually indicative of some nasty virus, parasite, or bacterial infection having progressed too far to be recoverable.
So, I quickly put Gus into my spare tank as a quarantine so he could pass away away from my other fish, and hopefully I could avoid losing any more fish.After a day and a half Gus had finally stopped moving.
That very same night I discovered poor little Cory lying sideways on the bottom of the tank, quite obviously bereft of life. He had not been eating well and had been a bit bullied by the larger fish, so it was not overly surprising.

In perhaps some brighter news, I resolved to up the quality of tank water a little. Included in this endeavor was the plan to rid the tank of the nasty algae and snail infestation, and to accomplish this task... The addition of more fish! (Face-palm)

So, I ended up acquiring  2 siamensis catfish, not flying foxes. Looking around I found they grew to about 3.5 inches which isn't too bad for my tank. Then after I bought them I saw some at 5 inches and discovered they can grow to 6 inches... a bit bigger than I was anticipating.

Crossocheilus siamensis (Probably)

These 2 little fellows were very shy at first, but after a few days managed to garner the confidence to swim around, and have actually been eating the algae they were bought to eat. I imagine they may start growing quickly, but I hope not too quickly.

A week or so later I decided to buy 3 clown loaches to deal with the snail infestation. These fish will get big, maybe 12 inches, but should take a few years doing so. I hope to be able to house them in a bigger tank as they grow, but if circumstances prohibit that, then I can return them to the fish store for some smaller specimens again.

My snail crew.

These little (for now) fellows were incredibly skittish upon being introduced, and immediately hid in the fake log. I didn't see them much for some time till they eventually got the courage to step outside and explore. Currently they're still a little nervous about me and hide when I approach, but they do so less than they did, so hopefully within a few weeks they shouldn't flee when I approach the tank.
They get on well with each other, and have been working together to rid the tank of snails, and it is working, to a degree. I've named them Jenkins, Russel, and Larry, but I'm still having difficulty assigning the names to specific individuals because they all look rather alike...

Lastly, and not related to clearing the water quality, I got a couple new plants for the tank. First was a red tiger lotus lily as shown below. It gives a splash of red to the flora that was missing I think.

Second was some peacock moss. Not really sure what I'm doing with moss. I stuck it around various places in the tank, stuffed into a hollow in the rock, pinned under the wood chunk, just to see what would happen. Don't know what to expect so there's some exciting update opportunities there.

Well that's about all the news I have. I've been getting all excited about the idea of making my own tank, but that may not be a possibility until a few years down the track. We shall see. If you wer wondering I have 21 fish now.
Till next time.

Something's Fishie...

Well it's been nearly a month since my last update. Not a lot has been happening. Alan just keeps growing, and Bruce is just chill. The tetras aren't schooling still not sure what's up with that. Perhaps I just happened to pick up 10 fish that hated each others guts.
Snail explosion is amazing. I'm gonna regret it later but I haven't started any mass extermination plan yet. I lose some every now and then to the gravel vac, but there's got to be at least a couple hundred in there anyway. They don't seem to be messing with the plants in any meaningful manner. But I'm watching just in case.

I might have mentioned the large snail I found a little while back. But I didn't have a decent picture of it at the time so you wouldn't have seen him yet. So behold!

Zoom zoom.

After much deliberating on the internet I have discovered he is a Bladder/Tadpole/Pouch Snail, and potentially as damaging and prolific as the other snails in the tank, which by the way are planorbids.
I nearly lost this cute fellow the other day though. I decided to take out the plastic cave system I had up the back of the tank as Alan was getting rather large and might get stuck or cut himself on some of the edges. So I took it out, left it in the laundry sink and left for work. About the same time the next day I realized why I hadn't seen him for a while. I ran to the sink and found him rather dried up about 3 inches away from the dried out cave system. I put him in some water along with some babies that I'd discovered  underneath chilling in some water droplets. By the time I'd woken up in the morning he was re hydrated and ready to go. So I plonked him back in the tank, which I may regret later, and watched him re settle in.

I can't remember if I'd mentioned the black fluffy algae growing in my tank before but if not I will now. I started noting this black stuff growing on my plants, and didn't really like how much it liked to spread. Looking it up I discovered that there were in fact 2 kinds of black algae I was inadvertently cultivating.
Firstly:

Black Brush Algae

 And:

Staghorn

Nothing in my tank wants to eat them so I looked up other ways to be rid of them. From what I can tell there were 2 main causes for them, bad circulation and CO2 deficiency. Hence my trip to the fish shop today.
I fitted myself out with an nice external filter and set up the output to flow water at all levels in the tank. If nothing happens in a week or 2 I'll head back and grab some "liquid CO2" and treat my tank with it. Though if even that fails then I'll consider a third option they suggested. This was a little catfish that apparently loves to eat the black fluffy algae. Maybe...


Another reason I wanted better flow at the bottom of the tank, is my poor little albino cories (Now called Cory and Dory) are suffering in the barbel area. The big one, Dory, seems to have lost her (just guessing) barbels, and this may be due to mucky substrate and poor circulation at the bottom of the tank. Both seem rather stressed at times and I'm hoping they grow a bit bigger so they don't have to worry so much. Not too hopeful at the moment.


Fish photo time!

Go Cory!

He keeps growing...

Tank! (Pre-external filter)

Impulsivity

I ran out of algae wafers for Allan and Budgie last night, so I went to the fish shop to buy some more. Found me a nice big packet of them and stocked up on a big packet of flakes for when they run out too. However, I also found myself tempted to buy a fish or so for my tank.
I told myself, and one of the assistants, "No, I'll go home and think on it and just stick to the food for now." Later, I came to the front counter and purchased the food and 2 little albino corydoras catfish...Sigh.

 I don't know their genders yet, though one is noticeably smaller than the other. Both are quite young, I don't really know much about sexing corydoras, I hear males are smaller and thinner, but any differences I find now may not mean anything till they're both older. We shall see.

Aww, they're so friendly.

Currently they both only come to about an inch in length, but I'm told they may get to 3 times that.
The smaller one has been sedately exploring it's new tank, while the larger has been zipping up, down, left, right, all over the tank.

Oooh! A rock!

 In other news, the number of visible snails has leaped. They're all over the place, but not too populous yet. Though while I was cleaning the tank, I found a snail shell, nearly 5mm in diameter (compared to up to 2.5mm of the ramshorns), of a different sort. I figured it had been with the gravel as just an empty shell. But I later noticed that it was climbing up the side of the tank. No idea where it came from, nor why I'd never seen it before. Can snails survive for extended periods in the substrate? Ah well.

Snails!

Well...
I'm going to assume this occurred when I bought the plants. Apparently they had a cluster of ramshorn snail eggs. These eggs have since hatched, and for a little a couple of snails were visible at once around the tank.
After a week or 2 I still don't know whether or not this will turn out to be a bad thing or not. On the one hand, these snails will apparently breed like crazy if the tank isn't clean enough and may eat the plants to nothing (I hear mixed reviews on this bit), on the other hand I've heard they're good with dealing with hydras (those dragon things that gain extra heads every time you chop one off), which may or may not be a problem in my tank, and will help get rid of algae. Plus they're kinda cute.

First spotted out and about.

Adorable, no?

As I was looking around for the last 2 penguin tetras today (I lost them somehow, really couldn't find them, but they were there later so I guess they're good at hiding), I picked up the wood, and found no less than 8 or 9 of these snails of various sizes...
In other news, on one of my hair grass, and in various other places around the tank, there is, for lack of a better term, some 'stuff'.

Stuff on hairgrass.

Various other place, though this one is more hair like...

Well for all I know it could just be wet dust in the first pic and  a hair or a spiderweb that dropped in. Or they could be hydra related... Research time!

Om nom nom.

I leave you with this picture of Budgie the adorable Royal Whiptail.

21st March

I just had a couple things I wanted to note.
Firstly the plants are flourishing. I was looking at the photo in the post I first got these plants, and looking at them now... Well, the vallis has grown so that parts of it stretch across the entire top of the tank, and the millfoil now reaches the top.

Before

After

Note that this growth is within 2 weeks. Also, below is a picture taken from under the tank of the roots of some of the millfoil.

Now for someone that has never successfully grown more than a few beans for a high school science project, this is exciting stuff. I'm sitting here watching grass grow and ENJOYING it! Amazing!

Anyway second thing is less good. Poor little Gus has a little problem.

See if you can spot the problem.

That's right, he has a chunk of his tail missing! I noticed it yesterday while changing the water. It hasn't seemed to worsen overnight and hopefully I'll be able to get to a pet shop tomorrow to ask their opinion and get some medication if need be.
From what I understand this is either a case of serious bullying, or an outbreak of the notorious 'finrot', a necrotic fungus bad thing. The whitish around the 'wound' support the latter I'm led to understand.

I managed to get a photo that I'd been waiting to get for a long time. This is THE reason I bought a sucker catfish.

NOM NOM! Also you can see the start of the bristles here.

Last thing before I post this, I have just now noticed that the split that developed in Bruce's tail a while back has stitched itself together apparently. You can see the split in the old photo up the top.

New Fishies!

Yup, I got some.
Drove down to the local fish supplier after uni and stood there deliberating over exactly what fish I wanted for half an hour while an attendant grew steadily more impatient with me (probably).
Anyway, I felt I needed a small school of something in my tank to give a boost to the tank population and liveliness. But not too small a species as they might be bullied by some of the larger fish in the tank. So I settled on a school of penguin tetras, or hocky-stick tetras depending on whose naming them. I got 10 which I think proved a good idea in giving them security and not looking like a piddly attempt at a 'school'.

The school of Penguin Tetras

Those things are amazingly hard to capture in a photo without blurring...
Next on my list was a feature fish of some kind. Unfortunately I didn't feel a discus was a good idea in my size tank, as well as requiring differing water quality. After looking around at the shop I decided I quite liked this adorable 'royal whiptail' catfish. Which I have just now dubbed Budgie.

Budgie the Royal Whiptail Catfish

Upon introducing these newcomers into the tank, the tetras found each other and all huddled close but managed to explore the tank quickly, while Budge sat in one place nibbling on a pebble. Alan started non-nonchalantly pretending to eat algae that 'just happened' to be in the immediate locale of Budgie in order to sus out this new bottom feeder. Gus decided it'd be funny to chase the tetras, in a similar manner to a child chasing seagulls, no hope of catching them, but fun anyway. Bob and Will looked a bit wary of the newcomers and Bruce was apathetic as usual.
Exciting stuff really.

Pretty sure no one actually reads this...

... However I care not!

I was gonna wait till the weekend, but in a show of recklessness I put Bruce into the big tank to test the waters. Though after testing the waters and they looked fine enough. I planned on leaving him in there alone for a day.

It's Bruce!

Though a couple of hours later my recklessness reared it's ugly head once more and I put the rest of the fish in there as well.
Ah well...

All but Alan are visible.

Alan immediately took to the dark log and Bruce staked out the caves at the back. Bob and Will hung around each other peering at everything but not moving and Gus has some shading and isn't just a black silhouette.

Anyway, basically the tank is more alive and it looks neat. Also Alan has some bristles just starting to bud. Therefore Alan = male.

Progress!

Progress report on 150L tank.
I purchased a backdrop for it, similar to the smaller tank's back drop. It has been cycling (with little activity in terms of nitrogen) for a week today and I decided I might get some LIVE plants. This involved buying some lights and plant food too, but after setting it up with the new plants I don't ever want to go back to plastic ones.
It's amazing.

Light!

From left to right my plants are as follows; vallis x2, hairgrass, lothario sword, millfoil x2, and another hairgrass.
They just look so much better than plastic.
Anyway, should be putting fish in, maybe just 1 or 2 this weekend maybe. Till next time.

New tank.

I got me, or more accurately my fish, a new tank. See, my old one was this tiny little 10gallon or roughly 35L, and that's not really enough for the fish I have to live full and comfortable lives, that and the temperature in the tank these past few days skyrocketed with the heat wave that hit.
So in an attempt to provide a more livable environ for these critters, I went out and got me a 3ft 150L tank.
A nice big thing,  but I'd class it as a medium sized home aquarium. I am extremely unlikely to upgrade to anything larger unless I upgrade my own living space first, as there simply wont be room, and transporting anything larger would become a large issue. Largely.

New tank.

Still rather murky, dust and such from the gravel. That should filter out over the next few days. I'm planing to leave it running for a week or so to accumulate the bacteria needed to break down ammonia and nitrite. I hope to have it up with fish and possibly live plants in a few weeks. Then I might think about more fish.

It's a girl! Maybe...

So yeah... I do this thing where I look up stuff on the internet about things. In this case, fish. In particular, bristle-nosed pleco, and how to tell the difference between a male and female.
My findings:
      Male: Has bushy beard (feely tentacles on it's head for sensing food).
      Female: Does not has bushy beard.

So there is this other thing I do where I get confused about the gender of fish. I'm not too embarrassed, I'm sure it happens to the best of us at times.

Now this young pleco of mine I have so assiduously dubbed Alan "does not has bushy beard". This fact makes me think it's actually a female, and addressing a 'lady' as Alan is quite the faux pas.
That being said however, this is as yet a juvenile, and I don't know how long it will take for a male's 'beard' to grow. So for now I'll watch it, but I may have to change from calling the young pleco 'Alan' to a more appropriate 'Alina' or 'Alice' or simply 'Ali'.

Though perhaps I can just now switch to the gender neutral 'Alex'... Hmm thoughts...

It Sinks!

Big news! The chunk of wood I bought now sinks in water. Amazing!
Though it still stains the water so not putting it in the tank for another 3 weeks.
Got a leafy aquarium backdrop so it didn't look quite so bare, and acquired some more fake plants from a friend.

Tank backdrop.

 On another note, I need some way to reduce the glare from behind me when taking photos...

15th February

Surprisingly, all my fish are still alive. 15 days of having fish. As I conveniently got them on the 1st of February.
This is really just an update on how they're doing. All are fairly active now, for a while Gus had been sitting on the bottom not moving much. That's how he was when I took the first photo a few posts back.
Bob and Will are busy trying to be better than the other, though I've noticed that Bob has taken a liking to Bruce's tail. I'm concerned about that as his tail has been slightly damaged.
Photo time!

Bob, Gus, Will and Bruce all trying to hide from the camera.

Will 'n' Bob - The Dynamic Duo...

Alan

Wicked-like tank setup...

 Oh, I also finally got me a nitrite testing kit. Just so I can monitor the deadly chemical that is the result when ammonia is converted by certain bacteria. Ammonia itself is just as deadly to fish and comes about from the decay of their waste. Having incorrectly started my tank (not waiting long enough for the nitrogen cycle to properly establish), it's important for me to monitor this.
Here's a picture I found on a site called Wet Web Media about it.

Nitrogen cycle, showing peaks of ammonia, nitrite and 2 scenarios of nitrate accumulation.

The chemicals peak and drop as bacteria grows that 'eats' it converting it into the next thing. Ammonia --> Nitrite --> Nitrate. Nitrate is not toxic in small amounts to your fish. In a tank cycled before adding fish, ammonia and nitrite should be 0ppm and nitrate a bit above 0. Nitrate is kept low with water changes.
In my tank I added fish probably before the ammonia would have peaked. Which is why I'm doing water changes every 2 days at the moment. I'm not certain, but I think I've nearly got enough good bacteria that I can cut down to 1 or 2 water changes a week, but I'll keep going as is for another week.

I also purchased a chunk of Opuwa wood. This should look nice, and be a place for accumulation of algae. Or nom nom's for Alan. Maybe. Not really sure what will happen when I put it in the tank. However, I shan't be doing that for about a month. Everywhere I read recommends soaking for 1 month in water with periodic water changes before adding to the tank. This is for several reasons. Firstly, it doesn't sink... so soaking it, sometimes in boiling water, can make it waterlogged enough to sink and actually stay on the bottom of your tank. Secondly, the wood will 'stain' the water. So you basically want to get all the staining out of the way before putting it in the tank or it will take even longer to get the water to it's normal colour.

My chunk of wood.

Thw water looks terrible partly because it's stained slightly from the wood, but mostly cause that's water from the tnk during a water change, which picked up all the gunk and stuff. Not sure if that was a good idea...
Oh well. Till next time.

Don't wake the Fighter

So... I got home from work the other day and had to change the water of the tank. Now, I was working till 10 so I got home at about 10:15 ish and most of my fish had fallen asleep due to the low light. But if I didn't change the water now then I wouldn't ge around to it till halfway through the next day, throwing of my schedule and possibly harming the fish.
So I dutifully started pulling things out and changing the water.
After I had finished I fed the fish and observed. Now Bruce had been peacfully sleeping under a fake plant when I started this process and frankly, he didn't take to well to being disturbed... So he spent the next few minutes being very short tempered. If any fish came near him, he'd start toward them and then chase them and try and nip them, and otherwise just stalked around with a doom cloud over his head.
Normally he's actually quite peaceful and ignores he rest of the fish, so I just have to be careful.
Fun stuff.

Introductions.

Ok.
I started this current craze just before Australia day 2012. Or at least that's when I started doing things.
I went to a local aquarium, lovely place, told them "I have a tank, some money, and I want fish. What do I need?"
I then left the local aquarium with a filter, a 100W heater, 2 plants, a small Chinese lantern decoration, a water conditioning kit, and some gravel.
However, when I said "I have a tank", I really meant "I own a tank". But it wasn't anywhere I could make use of it at the time.
So I had to wait till Australia day when I met up with my parents cousins and grandparents for a lovely BBQ. There I picked up the tank and upon returning home prepared it for it's future inhabitants.
After a good hour or so I had a pretty little 36L tank floored with gravel, with 2 plastic plants sitting either side of the Chinese lantern. Filter was attached and running.
Now I waited. Oh how I wanted some fish straight away, but the guy at the aquarium, who I would be willing to bet knew more about fish than I, suggested waiting 5 days or so before adding any fish, to let the tank settle.
Me being my wonderful patient self went back to the aquarium exactly 5 days later to pick up some fish, and promptly forgot that I should perhaps pay attention to what genders the fish were.
I left shortly afterward with a pH testing and correcting kit, some fish flakes, algae tablets and 5 new little fishy friends.
Red wagtail platy, red betta, golden swordtail, black balloon molly, and a tiny little 2.5cm bristlenose pleco. Cutest little guy ever.
So I got home, put them into my tank. I'd read up how to do this, 'cause I'm wonderfully prepared when it comes to these things. Put the bag floating in the water for 20 mins, trying to slowly acclimatise them to the water by tipping bits of the tank water in... and then upended the bags into the aquarium, gently of course.
It was only later that day that I remembered seeing "don't let the water from the bags get into your aquarium"... Whoops.
Too late now.
Well here's some pics of the little guys, as best as I could take in the first few days. They're still quite shy, though getting better.

My tank setup.

Red Betta (Siamese Fighter) - Bruce

Balloon Molly - Gus

Bristlenose Pleco (Sucker Catfish) - Alan

Left: Red Wagtail Platy - Will, Right: Golden Swordtail - Bob

So, now we're all acquainted, on with the happenings.
The first fish to become settled and curious about it's new surrounding was Bruce (Fighter), but even he took a day before that. By then end of the second day most were happy and exploring. I then noticed some odd behaviour between Will and Bob. Bob would curve himself toward Will in a strange manner and then Will would dart off. Now Bob is obviously a male swordtail as the females don't grow the sword. So I took this to mean that he was trying to mate with Will... So Will isn't a guy and shouldn't be called Will. Hmm...
Later though I see Will(ette?) doing the same thing to Bob, so maybe I'm wrong, or maybe Will(hemina?) is getting into this whole "let's have babies" thing. I looked up on forums and found out that indeed Platies and Swordtails can produce viable offspring.

This morning I discovered poor little Alan was looking a little pale and colourless. So I went off to better equip the tank. Picked up a gravel-vac, a small net so I would transfer fish in a better manner in future, and a new plant that would provide better hiding places. I also left with some advice. Clean out the tank a little more often for about 3 weeks, and if problem persists, check nitrite/nitrate levels. Though I'm confident Alan will be back to normal in a few days if I keep cleaning out the tank regularly. I was also shown the difference between male and female platies, so a new assessment tells me that Will is a male, and they are just trying to assert dominance over each other. (Maybe Bob, mistook Will for a female swordtail at the beginning, but he won't make that mistake again I'm sure.)
I got home and probably nearly scared the fish half to death in the attempt to do a partial water replacement... But I think I did alright, I saw in the bucket that the water had gotten a bit dirty so this was probably a good idea.
None of the fish have yet ventured into the new plant, but I reckon they will by tomorrow night at the latest.

New tank setup

So I'm learning slowly. If money were not an object then I might be doing more to look after them, but I think that this ought to be acceptable for a while.

Ze blogfish.

Aye, I got me some fish.
This here shall be a place to put my thoughts about the fish I have as time goes on. I dunno yet how much I'll use this. I can imagine it going for long stretches at a time without posting anything, and then a flurry of activity when I get a new fish or a resident is ill. I can also imagine it never makign it past 2 posts regardless of how much goes on the tank (or in future "tanks").
This is more as a collection of my own thoughts than advice, or something funny, or anything else, but if I end up with a large knowledge base, or have some amusing anecdotes, it could be worth looking at this for that.
This my journey, from fish murderer to fish enthusiast to fish maniac and beyond... Maybe.