Updates

No luck trapping the Ancistrus so far, but as my daughter saw one of them go in the trap, and zip right back out, this is not much of a trap.

I believe that the bottle is too small, so once inside, the fish turns around and finds its nose right in the inverted bottle opening, and can go right back out. I will plan on making another trap with a larger bottle, so the fish will go inside and have to swim around to find the opening, hopefully foiling its efforts. These fish may be too smart for this type of trap, but I would like to give it another try.

Also, I have decided to hold off on moving the M. festivus out of the 150, since they are really not hurting anyone, and I believe a pair bond is forming. It may be that the best course of action will be to remove the extra third fish, rather than removing two and leaving one. I will have to monitor their behavior and make sure they are not stressing the tank or injuring other fish in their efforts to defend territory.

The domestic angel babies continue to grow and I am slowly selling them off. If I cannot get the Ancistrus pair from the 150 to move into the 37-gallon growout tank, I will find another bristlenose for that tank, as I think that is a very appropriate fish to keep the tank cycled until the next batch of eggs.

Agnes & Frank still have not spawned again, and they continue to gaze at the fry tank, so I am anxious to move the babies out and inspire the pair to spawn again.

Otis continues to be his awesome self. He enjoys his snails and the single thawed frozen krill I give him every other day or so. Those are a relatively large meal for him but he relishes tearing it apart, and I can easily hear his teeth crunching up the exoskeleton, as is the case when he eats snails, so I am comfortable his teeth are getting the maintenance they require. I do hate the idea of trimming them myself. Ugh.