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.