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)