The Drama Continues, sort of...

I decided it was high time I rinsed out the filters for the 37-gallon angel breeding tank. The two canister filters have been working overtime lately with all of the extra feeding of the fry, and the sponge prefilters on the intakes don't catch everything.

I have two Eheim canisters on this tank, one big old classic (love it - still going strong after ~12 years) and a newer Eheim Ecco filter (do NOT love it - very poorly designed and prone to problems). I thought it had been longer since I cleaned out the Classic than the Ecco, so rather than rinse them both out and risk triggering a cycle I'd clean out one, wait a week and do the other. I shut them down, clamped the valves shut and got the Classic out from under the cabinet.

Wait, what's that I see through the translucent outer body of the filter? Are you kidding me? Fry in the Ecco? Yep. OK. I guess I'm rinsing out both filters then.

I open the Ecco and pull out the trays that are snapped together, and in the space beween the tray assembly and the filter body about 25 fry are swimming around, apparently in good health. I have had the sponge prefilters on the intakes for a while now, ever since they became free swimming and started moving around the tank, so I don't know how to explain it, other than shortly after wiggler stage they traveled the distance through plants and behind large rocks to get to the intakes, and got sucked in, then continued to develop while inside the filter. Amazing. I netted them back into the tank and rinsed out the filter, which was not at all dirty as it should have been (due to what I consider a poor design - lots of open space where the water does not get filtered at all).

I opened the Classic, and of course that one was very dirty. There is no open space - the water must be shoved through the layers of filtration - nowhere else for it to go. Also, there would be no spot for fry to survive either, but quite honestly I'd rather have an efficient filter.

In the bottom of the bucket I had used to collect the fry, after I had gotten them out and emptied it the rest of the way, there was a bit of debris left in the bottom, and I noticed one particle was moving. Now I apparently have leeches. Or some sort of flat worm. It looks like a flattened out earthworm, except the head is vaguely spade shaped and the tail is more pointed, but you have to look at it VERY closely to determine that. Otherwise it is the shape and size of a thistle seed or something, except dark reddish brown. I figure it came in with the live blackworms I have fed the adult angels. *Sigh*

I am sure this is not the only one in the tank, but hopefully they will not do too much damage. I might have to go ahead and get the babies out and into their own tank. I still have many, many babies - too many to count.

What's That Sound?

Thank goodness my husband had a grueling flight out to Portland, Oregon, filled with many hours of delays, his plane sitting on the tarmac for a ridiculously long time, and an arrival in Oregon at 3:15 a.m. EST.

Why would I be glad of such a nightmare travel experience? Well, he gave me a call at that wee hour of the morning to let me know he had finally arrived, and literally 5 minutes after I got off the phone with him, drifting back to sleep, I suddenly heard the sound that no fishkeeper ever wants to hear - the sound of a garden hose full blast on the floor - in my office???

Rush out of bed, tear into the office and hit the power switch on the surge protector strip and shut the valves to the canister filter that was draining my 37-gallon tank contents onto the floor - this was done in record time.

The outflow hose had somehow come loose from the suction cup connection to the top back of the tank. If I had not already been awake I don't know that I would have heard the sound of the water at that hour of the night. It was serendipitous, to be sure, though I doubt my husband would agree that his horrible experience was for the good.

I pulled out the contents of the tank stand and mop up the mess (too close to the wall to try to get the Shop Vac back there) and leave the stand doors open with a massive floor fan running on it. I reconnected the filter outflow in a more secure fashion (I hope!) and got things up and running. Took me a bit to get back to sleep after that, though.

Swamp Filter!

I hate to say it, hate to, because I am a grown woman, but OMG is all that comes to mind.

I have a Rena Filstar XP4 that I have had for almost 10 years, and has served me very well. A most excellent filter. It was running on my 55-gallon tank when I transferred the contents of it to the 150-gallon, so I used the XP4 on my 150 initially (along with the brand new Fluval XF5 monster) to seed the new filter and jump-start the cycle on the new tank. I never noticed a cycle, since all of the objects, plants and fish in the 150 came straight from the 55, with nothing new, so with gradual additions I slowly built my biocolonies and never had a spike of any ammonia or nitrite. Over time, the new filter was seeded and I did not really need the old XP4, which seemed miniature in comparison, so I kept it running but figured I'd use it for very specific media, like peat, polishing, etc.

At some point not too long after I had the new tank up and running, I noticed the XP4 was getting loud. It was obvious that with the new substrate of play sand that tends to get into the water column initially, some grit had gotten into the impeller and was making more noise than I cared to put up with on a continuous basis. I shut it down and took it completely apart, removed the impeller, flushed everything out, greased the gaskets and started over. No dice. Still a loud, grinding noise when the filter was running. I was in a hurry, or something, shut it down, and left it where it was. Bad idea.

I got inspired last night to take the filter down again and clean it out a second time, giving things another chance. I disconnected everything, managed not to siphon the contents of the 150 out onto the floor in the process (don't ask) and hauled it to the sink. Everything stank to high heaven with that swampy, anaerobic sulfur smell you get when you dig into stinky black sand at the beach, and indeed, everything was covered in a fine black film. It reeked. The entire house reeked, and the kids were holding their noses for hours, even after I bleached everything and took all offending components outside, including emptying the trash with the floss. I also dumped baking soda and dish soap down both sides of the sink drain.

It took me a while to resolve that issue, late into the night, and even so, I still have the ceramic "noodle" filter media that has a black haze on it, and I am loath to soak that in bleach, since I fear bleach will get into the pores and be difficult to dechlorinate. I will rinse them and leave them out in the sun and see if good old UV and O2 will handle that problem. I am in no rush to set up the filter again, though I would like to do so at some point.

I hooked the filter, sans media, up to a large cooler I had on the deck, and ran it to be sure it was running properly and to flush out any residual soap or bleach that might be contained within, and at some point the pump seized. I bailed on the project, as it was after 11:00 p.m. and I was too tired to fool with it any more. I left the pump assembly out in the sun today and then packed everything up and put it away for another time, when I shall again take it apart and flush it out and see if I can get it running, or find a replacement pump housing. I don't need an entirely new filter, but only the very top part that holds the actual pump.

This weekend, hopefully (busy social schedule) I will try to get into the Fluval filter and see if it is indeed obstructed or if it is moving water like it should. I had a dream that there was a clog in one of the intake pipes and I might take that stuff off the tank and flush it out as well, though I can't imagine what could clog such large diameter hoses. They are like vacuum cleaner hoses, so it would have to be quite a bit of debris!

Time (Not) on My Side

Well, it appears that if these babies continue to grow as they have, in two weeks I'm going to need to split up the batch of them, but that might work out okay. I think that will be enough time in quarantine for the festivum. They will be small still, but there is plenty of cover for them in the 150 and I think they will do okay. These are cichlids, closely related to angels, so it might be different with them, but currently the leopoldi have eyes only for each other, and essentially ignore all of the other species in the tank.

I am not happy with the flow from the giant canister filter that is the Fluval XF5. I will probably clean it again, having done so a few weeks ago, but when I turn off the powerhead the water almost appears stagnant, though I know it is not so. You can feel decent pressure from the outflow. It may be that there is too much obstruction from plants and such, though I placed the intake at the center of and behind an archway of driftwood, so it is in deep shadow and not really visible but is not physically obstructed. I will look into it. I have my Rena Filstar XP4 (a wee tiny and adorable box next to the monster Fluval) that has grit (sand) in the pump housing, I believe, from when I used it on the new 150 setup. It works but is VERY noisy. I need to investigate cleaning that out and maybe using that for additional water flow and to house almond leaves or peat or something.

In my spare time....

Make Mine a Double

Lost one of the festivum today. It was not eating and swimming in a crazy manner, much thinner than the other two, and had been acting oddly for a couple of days. I will go back and replace him, since I do not like even numbers, and I think three will work well in the 150.

The other issue is the angel fry. It has been almost exactly two weeks since they were free swimming, and I don't appear to have lost hardly any. At least not enough to be detectable. What on earth will I do with them? I assumed that in this nontraditional breeding setup, with plants and sandy substrate, canister filtration, etc. that I'd lose quite a few, and I was warned of this. I figured I'd wind up with maybe 20 fish if things went well.

I don't want to jinx myself (that could happen!) but the babies seem quite hale and hearty, and are all eating well and growing. There must be more than 100 babies. You can discern their coloration now quite easily, and they are beginning to get the lateral compression that will soon identify them as angels. They do not yet have the ventral fins.

I guess anything could happen at any time, and two weeks is not very long, so I should quite borrowing trouble, but when I look in the tank I wish I had a spare 55 gallon in addition to the 37 gallon waiting for them (once the festivum are done in quarantine). There is still plenty of time. I will have to look into the typical growth schedule of baby angels and see how long I have, if things go according to plan, before I need to spread the babies out between several tanks. I'm already doing a lot of PWCs in the 40 to keep things under control.

I will get another festivum, hopefully in the next day or two, and be sure all three are healthy and in good shape, and wait until I need that tank to grow out angels before moving them into the 150, so they are as large as possible before having to fend for themselves with the leopoldi.

Festivum and Plants?

With the little trio of festivum in quarantine currently I've been, of course, reading all I can find about them, and something I have run across here and there is the issue of whether they will eat your plants. There is conflicting information in this regard.

Quarantine tank has a large wad of floating hygro, which takes up half of the top of the tank, and some A. nana here and there. I am not seeing any plant eating, but these guys are well fed so far.

It may be that wild caught specimens are more likely to eat plants than domestically bred, which mine certainly are, and it could also even be related to various species of Mesonauta, as several are commonly sold as "festivum" and you need to count stress bars and fin rays to determine what you have. I am not terribly concerned, but mine do appear to be M. festivum. I will have to see.

Another thing I am discovering is that though any fish profile you read about festivum indicate adult size of 4", hobbyists are reporting that they are 7-8" fish. That is quite a disparity! I think if they get anywhere near that size then I am good with only 3 and will not try to add to this number. There is no way for me to sex these babies, of course, though one has a beefier, heavier appearance, though not really much bigger than the other two.

I must also mention that one of them had something hanging from its chin after I brought them home - something I had not noticed in the shop. If you've ever seen a fish that had what appears to be nostril ridges, like some catfish do, then it looked like that, but on the chin, and only on one side. I would describe it as a skin tag if it was on a person.

I fretted over this thing, which I assumed to be a parasite of some kind, for about 10 minutes, netted the fish out, and attempted to snag the thing off with tweezers. I could not tell if I got it or not, but time out of the water was up and I returned the fish to the tank. Now you can see a tiny nubbin there but the majority of the thing is gone. I am, as mentioned, treating this tank with Ich-Attack and Melafix, and I am confident I won't have any particular trouble with whatever this little thing was. I'll be watching it.

So, I have not abandoned care or interest in my other tanks or other species. Otis, the F-8 puffer, is doing great, and I continue to slowly raise the sailinity in his tank. He is eating frozen bloodworms, live snails and live black worms, all with relish. I feed him twice a day until his little belly is round.

The leopoldi angels in the 150 are doing very well also (I do wonder how they will react to a trio of another cichlid species - it might be problematic!) and they spend their days picking tiny fights with each other. They are not overtly aggressive, but rush at each other, back away, turn, posture, and then glide off to do something else. There is no actual fighting, but just bickering. They all look happy and healthy. They enjoy a mixed diet of the frozen and live food that Otis gets (sans snails) along with New Life Spectrum pellets. My school of cardinals is growing as well, which is nice to see in the tank.

Also, I had not seen my cory cats (C. trilineatus) for possibly as long as a month in the 150, and was, in my pessimistic way, convinced they were all dead in a cave somewhere, but the other night, late, I saw 6 of them go trooping across the tank, follow the leader style, sifting through the sand for tidbits, quite merrily, I might add. There ought to be 2 more but they could have been rummaging somewhere that I could not see, which is easy in that large tank with so many hiding places. At the time, I was so relieved I jumped up and shouted "I see the cories!" and startled the family, with whom I was quietly watching a movie. Nobody quite understood what the fuss was about so I restrained myself, but I am quite excited to see that they are still doing well. I do not know why they are so secretive. I need to get some more of them and that might give them the confidence they need to come out when people are in the room. I'd really enjoy seeing them more.

The domestic angels in the 40-gallon are continuing to look after their babies, which are definitely getting bigger, and I do not think the numbers are decreasing, at least not noticeably, though I am sure I have and will lose some along the way. I realized that if the parents spawn again soon, which they likely will, I will be leaving the fluorescent strip on 24/7, which means none of these fish will ever get any "rest," and it is very unatural (not that there is anything remotely natural about a modern aquarium!). Last night I decided to take a chance and turn off the lights on the tank overnight. I have been told that turning off the light will cause the fry to drop to the bottom, where they rest, and come back up to the middle and upper levels when the lights are on. In gravel tanks, they get stuck in the gravel and run into problems, so many breeders leave lights on, or even if they have bare-bottom tanks (much more typical) they don't like the babies to come in contact with the bottom of the tank, which has bacteria that can perhaps increase the mortality rate of the fry. I have sand and LOTS of plants, in which the babies could become entangled, but I wanted to try it. This morning I could not see very many babies and was worried, but after about 10 minutes they all came out of hiding or whatever, and the parents had rounded them up, so to speak. I think I might get some sort of remote desk lamp to shine on the tank at night, not nearly as bright as the fluoro strip but something to keep problems from happening.

I have a lot going on with my tanks, and it is keeping me interested and busy. It may seem that I am fickle and obsessed with one tank one day, not caring a thing about it the next day, but I monitor conditions in all my tanks every day, and some days nothing notable happens, which is good! I do get bored easily, however, and that is why I like the fact that every tank is a "work in progress" and the only problem will be when things are done, or I have reached my goals for the tank, which will happen with the 150, and will happen with Otis. The quarantine tank is up in the air, as is the angel spawning tank.

Otis, in particular, ought to hang tight for many, many years, since he will hopefully to live a long time and his requirements won't change (other than possible beak trimming down the road?) and he won't be getting tank-mates (unless I upgrade his tank size and try a goby or large brackish snail species).

The 150 could evolve past the time I am done stocking it, due to the possibility of spawning behaviors from the leopoldi and/or the festivum, assuming that works out. My own plans for this tank are for a few more cardinals, more cories, and very possibly another P. cryptodon if I get my nerve up (and get some cash saved!) though a large school of cories does not seem to get along with this big, sedentary catfish, as much as I love them both.

The 40-gallon angel spawning tank will be constantly evolving as they breed, and I am not sure at what point they just wear out from breeding. How long can that go on? It must be exhausting to spawn, tend eggs, tend wigglers, tend babies, raise and corral fry, then do it all over again, month after month. I will let the fish be my guide in that regard, and I can inquire with my angelfish experts on the forums to see what they say about that.

Cardinals

Scored 4 cardinals today at a new PetsMart in the East End on Laburnum. Dosed the 150 with prophylactic treatment of Ich-Attack and Melafix and they blended right in with the rest.

Mesonauta festivum

I was out and about, checking stock in the various local fish shops, but not expecting anything interesting, as "interesting" is not typical. My final stop was to be at PetsMart, where they almost always carry cardinal tetras, as it has been over a week since my last additions and I am ready to had two or three more to slowly build my school in the 150. I am not sure ultimately how many I want in there, but I have 8 (or 9?) and am not done yet. I have found adding larger groups at one time seems to result in a higher casualty rate, and am following the sage advice of my friend, Deborah, who suggested I get 2-3 at a time, and increase their number slowly.

I was at the Broad Street Fin & Feather, a relatively new store where they are slowly building their own fish department, and spotted a trio of very small Mesonauta festivum, and was tempted. I have seen them in this shop before, but I had decided, I thought, that their similarity to angels made them a poor choice to add to the 150, detracting from the "feature" fish currently in residence. I really wanted to get more P. leopoldi, but their price tag is a major factor. I know people spend a heck of a lot more than $30 on fish (saw some wild caught discus recently being offered for $100 each) and many would consider that to be a reasonable price for a relatively rare wild caught species, but for me, right now, I have trouble justifying it.

I thought I had decided that I would get an Apistogramma sp. pair and add them to the 150, but in my research, viewing photos and seeing them in shops, they are just not sparking my interest at this time, for some reason. Fish need to grab my attention when I pick a new species to try, and these little dwarf cichlids are, currently not doing it for me at the moment. That is not to say they would make a lovely little addition to the 150, since it is a very appropriate tank for them, with all of the plantings, leaf litter, wood and caves behind the stands of stem plants. One day I will see some that will grab me, but not this time.

I have the 37-gallon in my office, in between my desk (with the 10-gallon tank containing Otis, the figure-8 puffer) and the wall with the 40-gallon angelfish breeding tank. The 37-gallon is aquascaped in a very spare and subdued way, but is very attractive, and is just sitting there with apple snails gliding by. It will be a while before I need the space for the angel fry to grow out, assuming I still have as many as I seem to have now.

To make a long story longer, I left the Fin & Feather shop to see what else was out there, to get my cardinals, and to see if I would talk myself out of the festivums. I went all over town and there is not a cardinal to be had, unfortunately. After I left the grocery store and was heading home, I decided I'd go ahead and get the festivum, and put them in the 37-gallon. What the heck. I really like them and want to keep them. They are small, about the size of a quarter, and are eating and doing well so far.

Instant BBS?

Today I received my shipment of BBS eggs for hatching, and a jar of Ocean Nutrition Instant Baby Brine Shrimp. Until I can hatch out a new batch of BBS, I decided to try this today, and I closely watched the fry as they encountered this jarred form of BBS. Most of it the babies took into their mouths and then spit right out, just like fish do when they test out something floating in the water and decide it is not edible. It is putting a whole lot of waste into the tank, with very little of it being eaten.

It may be that the babies need to get used to it or something, or it may be that the majority of this jar contains hulls or something that the babies cannot eat. I am holding out on a final opinion until I experiment further.

Angels and Puffers

The angelfish fry are still doing okay. I am feeding BBS and Hikari "First Bites" still, and this seems to be serving them well. This is the fifth day of free swimmers.

Frank & Agnes still defend their babies and hopefully things will continue to go well for the pair.


Next, meet Otis, the figure-8 puffer:

Updates and Disappointments

Today my first real angelfish spawn is still going quite strong, and there must be 100 babies. Now when you look at them, some look much lighter in color than others, and I guess that is an indication of what their color morphs might be. I realize that many of these are not going to make it the distance, but it is fun, nonetheless. As I have mentioned, I've had many a fish spawn in my day but never ones that needed any help from me, so every additional day that I see the cloud of babies makes me feel like I have achieved something.

Today I went to Azalea Aquariums and was, first of all, rather disappointed at the condition of the shop. Usually you would not see dead or ailing fish, at least not more than a few (who could prevent this 100%?) but today there were many problems I saw, the most dramatic of which was a FW ray that was dead, and appeared to be melting into the gravel. The rays he has there are about the size of a grown man's hand, so this is no little neon tetra lying belly up in the bottom of the tank. It had to have been ignored for quite a while to have that appearance. There were many other dead fish as well.

Another bothersome sight was a pair of green spotted puffers (GSP) that had such sunken bellies they were clearly starving, and one had a cloudy eye. Keith keeps several types of live food there - I do not know what they were/were not trying to feed these two, or maybe they were eaten up with parasites - who knows. They ought to be in the back in a quarantine tank or something, as they were obviously in poor health. There were several large plecos and other catfish dead in their tanks as well. I did not inspect the SW selection too closely.

This put an overall bad taste in my mouth, and gave me pause when I became interested in the tank with about 5 P. leopoldi. I have been seriously thinking about adding to the 5 I have, with an additional two, but I decided against it (not to mention the steep price tag of $30 each!) because I did not want to jeopardize my home tanks. I could put them in quarantine, certainly, but I had a bad feeling about buying any fish there today. They looked healthy enough, though their fins were not in the best shape - mine probably were not either when I got them, however. Life in a dealer's tank is not optimal for health. The disappointment is that Azalea is our default LFS, where we can almost guarantee we will find something we want, or at least could order it, the quality is good, and the tanks are clean, with knowledgeable staff. I did not see that in there today.

Why is this city so bereft of decent fish stores? This is not a small town by any means, and I don't understand why we cannot support a superior shop, like the one in Virginia Beach (Animal Jungle) and the one in Lynchburg (Pets & Aquatic Warehouse, P.A.W.). Lynchburg has a better aquarium shop that Richmond? Explain this? I have nothing against Lynchburg, but you'd think a larger city would have a high quality shop. Deborah's thinking is that a smaller, more isolated town might have a better LFS because there is less to do, and people spend more time at home pursuing their hobbies. This is a good theory, but it does not make me happy! I hate to have to drive so far to find decent fish.

Anyway, as for my situation in the 150-gallon, Rick's opinion is that adding more leopoldi will upset the social balance currently in place, and things will take a turn for the worse, just when I have enjoyed stability for so long now. He is probably right. I will set my sights on increasing the number of cardinal tetras, and consider Apistogramma sp. like I had thought of doing before. They will inhabit different areas than the angels, and is less likely to send everyone into a tailspin. I hope.

BBS and The Fry

I got a good amount of BBS (baby brine shrimp) to hatch today, and have been feeding freely to the swarm of angel babies. There really are a good number of them surviving. This is the end of day 3, and that is much better than the last batch, which by this stage had dwindled to a dozen. I am feeding very frequently, as I am home with them all day and the tank is in my office where I work.

However, I am keeping up with PWCs, and performed a large one this morning on that tank, the 37-gallon and on Otis' 10-gallon. The last half-gallon or so of Otis' tank I added the brackish water that I am using to gradually wean him brackish. This is to make it easy on him, and also to grow SW beneficial bacteria, which is not something you really think about when converting FW to BW, but I am taking my time. He is as adorable as ever. I don't know why it has taken me so long in the hobby to finally get a charming little fellow like him.

The 37-gallon has 3 large apple snails in it, and I found the 4th good-sized one on the filter intake this morning - not sure why - but I seem to have horrendous luck keeping snails alive, for some reason. So now we are down to 3 but they seem all right.

I got my CO2 back up and running on the 150-gallon (thanks, Rick!) and have begun contemplating additions to that tank. There is so much room, and not very many fish. I am going to Azalea Aquariums tomorrow with my friend, Deborah, and that is where you will often see P. leopoldi since I got mine those many months ago. Apparently Keith is still getting them in. I am thinking about getting a few more to add to my group (5) and put them in the empty 37-gallon for now to quarantine them. I don't know if this would upset the apple cart too much or not - it would be just my luck that there is a blood bath in there when I add 2 more - but I would like more if possible.

I inquired on the Angelfish Study Group/Finarama forum about this and I was told that I should to be able to add a couple of more, and then someone else inquired about how old mine are, because they had some that were much larger than domestic angels (5-year-old fish), and it was curious that mine were so small (much smaller than many domestics). I am now wondering where I have "gone wrong" and am investigating this. Should they be much bigger? I always thought leopoldi were the smallest of the Pterophyllum, or at least that is what you often read about them.

This then leads to the question of how old my leopoldi were when I purchased them. I assumed they were not juveniles, because they did not have that "look" that juvenile angelfish have, with fins too big for their bodies, etc. I have never kept these before, much less wild caught strains, so for all I know these were juvies and they are growing too slowly for me to notice. I am taking special care with their diet and they get a varied one, with NLS pellets, various frozen fare, live food, and occasionally freeze-dried tubifex. They also will play around with the sinking pellets I put in for the bottomfeeders. I do 50% weekly PWCs and feel like they are in the best conditions I can provide, so I am not sure what I'd do differently, but they sure seem stunted. It is possible they are like discus, and some sort of misstep early in their development will keep them permanently puny.

Babies and More Babies

So far, Frank & Agnes have a nice sized brood. For the third day I am impressed with how many appear viable. I am feeding them every few hours and they seem to be eating the Hikari Fist Bites powdered food. I am not having much luck with hatching out BBS, but I did get some to hatch, and fed them today. It was hard to tell which were eggs and which were BBS, but that's the best I can do for now. I will receive some fresh eggs in the mail at the end of the week, though that is too long for this batch if that's all they'll eat. I can't find fresh eggs locally, for some reason.

I will do a PWC tonight for that tank and for Otis the Figure-8 puffer's tank as well, since he needs more frequent changes with his meaty diet. I get a lot of pleasure having him beside me while I work all day! He knows where his food comes from, too, and is most often curiously watching me do my work, hoping I'll pop in some snails or worms of some kind.

I did a 50% PWC on the 150-gallon yesterday, and discovered, to my dismay that I am out of CO2, again, much too soon. I have to have some sort of leak and am going to need to get the regulator serviced, plus install new tubing to rule that out as the problem. Very pesky. I am not comfortable having this tank at 7.6 pH, and I am sure the P. leopoldi don't much care for it either. I need to get that issue resolved. I ought to be able to go 3 months on a single 5# tank. I also need a second 5# tank so when I run out I have a second one there to swap out while I get the first one filled (or Rick gets it filled for me!). There is not much that I do not do for myself, but that is something I like to get him to take care of for me.

Free Swimmers!

Frank & Agnes' brood is now starting to leave the leaf (lol) and will be free swimming by tonight. I am hatching out the BBS and hopefully this old mix will come through for me. I ordered fresh packets of eggs but they won't be here for 6 days, which won't help much right now, so I am off today in search of eggs locally. So far, the big box chains where I have seen them in the past no longer carry the eggs, so I'm going call around to some of the smaller shops and see if someone has them.

R.I.P., Whiptail

Alas, he is gone. I am very bummed. I think his launch out of the tank with a 5' fall to the ground may have done him in. I will do some more research and perhaps discover something that I was doing wrong with this species, but there is woefully little practical information about them out there. I'd love to talk to someone who has kept them successfully long-term and see what is necessary for them to be happy and live a long life, because I'd like to get another and try again. I am smitten with the Planiloricaria cryptodon.

Duckweed!

I have been trying to ignore the duckweed situation in the 150, but it is taking over my life, or at least the surface of the tank. Drastic measures may have to be taken - persistent little plant!

Uh Oh

I do not think The Whip (P. cryptodon) is long for this world. He was caught up in the floating hornwort this morning, and I discovered him by accident as I was harvesting snails for my puffer. He spooked and zoomed down to the sand, where he stayed, upside down, though respirating. I righted him but I don't think he's gonna make it. He ate well yesterday, incidentally.

I would move him to a Q-tank but I have no idea what I'd be treating, with no outward signs of disease or ailment, and the stress of being moved might be enough to do him in as well. I don't typically see fish recover and go back to normal when their behavior is as odd as this, so I will just observe him for now. Too bad. I have enjoyed him very much until now.

Planiloricaria cryptodon Antics

"Antics" may not be the best word for it, but something is up with this fish. He resides in my 150-gallon planted setup, with soft sand, good current and acidic conditions, along with blackwater extract in small doses. He has been very happy for 3 months.

As previously mentioned, one day I found him on the floor, having zoomed up and out for a 5-foot drop onto the rug in front of the tank. I had no idea I could not leave the lid up on this tank! Now he seems very easily spooked, and today when I went to feed him he spooked and zoomed over to the opposite end of the tank, and ZIP, he went right straight up the side of the tank. I quickly put the lid down and he did not get out, but now I can see how he launches himself. He has such a stiff body that has a very low profile, so he can really get some speed through water, and when he encounters the glass he just slips right up to the top of the tank.

He has not been, up to now, a fish that would spook at all, and I hand-feed him (well, forceps - my arms are not that long!) twice a day the pellets that he likes. He would sit calmly and wait for me to give him his pellet, but now he seems on edge. I do not see any harassment by any of the other fish, though the P. leopoldi would be suspects, as would the Ancistrus, since they've taken an interest in The Whip since I introduced him.

I will have to watch him carefully. There is woefully little practical information on the web (that I have been able to find) about keeping these interesting fish, so we'll have to see how things go.

2nd Chance for Frank & Agnes?

The more I think about it, the more I imagine that the last batch of angel fry simply starved, rather than having been eaten by Ma and Pa. I got in touch with the former owner of my angel pair, and he said that he would be surprised if they ate the babies, but not at all surprised if they starved. It is sometimes hard to get them to eat, and live BBS ought to stimulate them to feed - I realize now that I ought to have taken the advice of other angel breeders and used that to start with, but I thought I could get away with a prepared fry food product. Laziness!

Now I imagine that I might let this current batch of wigglers remain in situ with their parents and hatch out BBS to see what happens. I never actually witnessed any fry-eating going on, but simply assumed it had happened, since many angels do this, with eggs or with newly hatched fry. Ryan states, however, that Agnes and Frank have kept several batches of babies in the tank with them in the past, and have not eaten babies, though they will eat the eggs and abort a spawning if the tank has become full of juvies. I certainly can put bigger juvies in the 37 gallon once they are past the "fry" stage so the cycle can continue. The tank is sitting there running with some very large apple snails in residence, and I guess I can resist the temptation to stock the tank - I will need the space if I am to be raising angels for sale to the LFS. It might sit empty for a month or so, which will be hard to ignore!

OR..... I could let the fry grow out in the 40g and move Frank & Agnes to the 37. They will be a lot easier to move than babies will, and they can tolerate it easier than delicate fry. This was the suggestion of Ryan, the previous owner of these fish. I appreciate his input, and he is glad to remain involved, I think! It is certainly helpful to me in learning how to manage their spawns the simplest way possible. I'm not up for a great deal of fuss, though I would certainly like to see this work out.

Wigglers

Frank and Agnes now have a batch of wigglers, so it won't be long now before I have babies in the 37-gallon. I need to prepare to hatch out BBS, because that is apparently the best food for angel fry. Maybe Frank and Agnes did NOT eat their babies, but perhaps they starved? I was feeding them "First Bites" by Hikari, or something like that - powdered fry food the consistency of talcum powder. I have found BBS hatching to be a pain, not only the hatching but the mess in the tank with uneaten dead BBS. We'll give that a try, as it is strongly encouraged for these babies. I will siphon out the uneaten stuff and do big PWCs and see how it goes.

This is a large tank for a batch of tiny fry, but if most of them prove to be viable I will need a tank that big to house that many juvies before sale. I think this arrangement makes sense. I am thinking about trying the "instant" BBS that you buy in a jar, but perhaps that would not stimulate them to eat like live BBS. This may be where the "First Bites" failed them - not alive, not moving around, nothing to let the fish know they should eat it. Food for thought... ha ha. Can you tell I am new to this? Any experienced breeder must be groaning in torture to read this! I have, in the past, been a hands-off breeder, with livebearers and extremely competent African cichlids, so hopefully my ignorance will be forgiven as I bumble my way through the learning curve.

The pair of them right now are vigorously tending the wigglers, catching the fallen ones and gluing them back on the leaf. Very cute. I am glad I have sand and not gravel, though I have not had a gravel tank of any kind in a while now since I took down my planted 55. I am all about sand substrate! I don't think there is ever any real reason to use gravel, though I know there are some excellent plant substrates that are gravel-like.

More to come....

Ants Can Swim

I added a large piece of driftwood to the 37-gallon that was sitting out on a table on the deck for 6 months, since it was the floating kind and I could not get it wedged properly in the 150. I rinsed it off with the hose and took it inside, then rinsed it under the tub faucet to be sure, then put it in. It wedges quite well underneath the lip of the trim, holding it submerged to the bottom.

What's this? Ants? Yikes. The ants came pouring out of it, or so it seemed. I had no idea there were ants in there. I detected none in the tub when I rinsed it there. Well, ants have a remarkable swimming ability, and they have been making their way to the edge throughout the day. Many are dead, but I am standing guard and squishing all that I see. I am jacking up the temperature of the water and I added some Flourish Excel, since that is somewhat toxic to critters at high enough doses. We'll see if that takes care of it. I don't want to add salt or something because I don't want to have to then remove the salt later, but this might work.

Due to the quantity of dead ants in the water column, I added a Penguin 330 to the Eheim canister filter already running, so I could really move some water. My motto is, "when in doubt, overfilter!"

Updates at Last!

Way too much time has passed without an update here. I had problems with my Google account and time and work got the better of me. This is not to say that time has stood still in Liz's World of Aquariums.

The P. leopoldi spent a month in quarantine, battled ich, and were installed in the 150-gallon, minus many of the Endler's and all of the guppies. They are much, much happier in that tank, and in hindsight they'd have been better off going straight into that tank rather than spending a stressful month in the 40-gallon. I did not really have much I needed to protect in the 150, when I think about it. No delicate species, nothing fancy, and these wild caught fish sure seemed to be happier. I actually never did eradicate the ich, which may not have actually been that parasite, because I treated with temperatures in excess of 90F, salt, and finally Rid-Ich and Quick-Cure. Nothing touched it for a month, so who knows. It has now been 3 months later and a few of them still have a cyst or two on them, but they must be encapsulated, encysted scar tissue or something.

The next thing to announce is that I also obtained a Planiloricaria cryptodon, or a spoonfaced whiptail catfish.



He's a fabulous fish, and maybe one of the most interesting specimens I've ever kept. He spends his time buried in the sand almost completely, does not swim around hardly at all, and eats sinking pellets that I usually hand-feed him with forceps. I know he is capable of finding food, but I tend to baby this fish, since many people have trouble keeping them fed and thriving. After almost 4 months I feel quite accomplished to have him happy and healthy. He has a very long filament on the end of his tail, about the same length as his body, that he raises and lowers, just like cracking a whip. He also has a shorter filament on his dorsal fin that he raises when alert. He crawls around on pectoral fins, like a mudskipper, as he creeps towards his food. He mostly spends time like this (it makes me feel sorry for all of the other ones mistakenly kept in gravel):


In the 40-gallon Q-tank that held the leopoldi, I have installed a proven pair of silver angels, domestics, and am trying my hand at breeding them. I am accustomed to African cichlids, mbuna and haps and such, and they breed without any intervention from the fishkeeper, so I would wait until the babies were selling size, slip a trap into the tank and haul out the juvies to take to the LFS for cash. These angels are a different story. I got the pair from a hobbyist friend I met on a forum and who happens to live a few miles from me, and he assured me that they were good parents who would raise their fry. That is a good thing, since many domestic P. scalare do not raise their young and the eggs must be taken right after they are fertilized, and kept in a separate tank with measures taken to maintain water flow over the eggs and methylene blue added to prevent fungus. My pair, Agnes and Frank, have prove to be pretty good at this, though they apparently ate their free-swimming babies, since I had almost 100 of them and over the course of about a week they all vanished. I can detect no problems with water quality, and the parents are healthy.
They have now spawned again, and I have set up a 37-gallon tall tank that is mostly bare, save a thin layer of sand and a large chunk of driftwood with some Anubias sp.

Since Agnes and Frank are very good taking care of the eggs, and taking care of the wigglers, I will scoop the free-swimmers out when they are still being kept corralled in a bunch at the top, right after the wiggler phase, assuming Frank does this with them again. The first time I wanted to see how they did, and did not really have somewhere to put them, but now I will be ready. I will do a large water change in the 37-gallon using parent tank water so they won't have a shock, and hopefully raise these babies to sell. The parents are quite attractive, with excellent finnage, so I hope they will have equally attractive babies. This is prep for the eventual breeding of the wild leopoldi angels. No sign of pairing off in the 150, however.

The final update is that I have revamped the 10-gallon desktop tank and it now contains an adorable Figure-8 puffer named Otis (I don't typically name my fish but for some reason the domestic angels and the puffer seemed to require naming). I removed almost all of the plants from the tank, added base rock and coral to form arches and caves, and left some Anubias in there for interest. Puffers seem to like plants. He is a great little fish that keeps me company while I work. He eats live worms, live adult brine shrimp, frozen blood worms, and, of course, snails. He does a real job on snails. I have a bumper crop of ramshorns in the 40-gallon with Agnes and Frank (am working on a mystery snail farm in the 37-gallon fry growout tank as well) and I used to crush the larger ones for Otis, but today I learned that this is totally unnecessary. He can handle them with no problems, especially now that he is comfortable and settled.

Otis was sold to me as FW so I am taking my time to acclimate him to brackish. I have begun doing my water changes with a small amount of brackish water I have mixed up in a 5-gallon water cooler jug, and over time I'll get him to full brackish, which is SG 1.005. It takes 12 tbsp of saltwater mix to bring the 5 gallons up to brackish. I am enjoying this little fish, and am also enjoying the prospect of a brackish tank, which I have never kept before. It is said that I can possibly keep some sort of goby with him at some point (I have a nice sandy bottom) but I may need to upgrade the tank to a 15 or 20-tall to make room as he grows. His meaty diet means very frequent PWCs (partial water changes) already, so more water will make things easier. He is about 2" right now but hopefully will grow. I think he has grown already in the 3 weeks I've had him.

So, my only other plans tentatively involve adding some sort of dwarf cichlid species to the 150, like Apistogramma sp., since I could likely keep several pairs in there. There is quite a bit of room still, and they will stay on/near the bottom where there are plenty of hidey holes and caves. There is a local breeder I ran across on Aquabid.com, so I will look him up and go see what he has when I am ready to shell out a few shekels. Otherwise, I'm just waiting on Agnes and Frank to raise me a batch of babies, am wondering if there are any catfish (Ancistrus sp.?) that I can keep in the 37-gallon fry tank that will not eat fry but will hold a cycle for me in between times, and am contemplating a small tank upgrade for Otis.

Almost forgot - I have a story about The Whip. I had my friend, Deborah, over to pick up some of the Indian almond leaves I received so she could try them in her SA blackwater setup, and we were in the kitchen talking. I had the lid to the hood on the 150 open in the living room, since I had just fed them. We came back into the room because I wanted to give Deborah some of the hornwort that runs rampant in the 150, and I noticed my bullmastiff, Stella, sniffing the floor in front of the tank. She was sniffing in an unusual way, and that's because none other than The Whip was lying on the floor on his back! She was fascinated, but I was horrified, of course, since the top lip of that tank is 5' off the floor. I scooped him up and returned him to his watery home, and 4 days later he's doing just fine. Deborah and I could not figure out what caused him to leap out. We are not aware that these fish are jumpers - I'd not have kept the lid up on that tank if I'd have known - and since he rarely even swims I did not think him capable of such a feat. We also marveled that he did such a thing when we were proximal, since many long hours of each day I am upstairs and nobody is near the tank at all. We were very grateful for Stella to have pointed him out to us in that way, since the rug beneath the tank is a mushroom color and it was not immediately obvious that the fish was there. Serendipity!

Never a dull moment.