Liz's Aquarium Pages

Central Virginia Aquarium Society

2012-01-23T12:18:00.000-05:00

Just like any "new baby," my fellow hobbyists and I are still trying to get our aquarium club on a schedule. The holidays proved to be too busy of a time to try to meet, so we finally managed to get most of the board members together and Sunday, February 26, 2012 is on the calendar for our next open meeting. This will be held at Cichlid Solutions, the business of Mark Snead, one of our board members.

He has very generously donated his shop to our club in the past, and it proves to be very well suited to our needs, so a big Thank You to Mark for his willingness to play host. Our members can bring livestock and float bags in his tanks, and it is always fun to see what species might be coming through the door. We also decided on a swap-type item exchange (bring something, take something) so we can all clean out our fish rooms and hopefully someone will find use for items we no longer need.

Our members are also invited to bring along livestock or items that they wish to sell, not swap, and this gives them an opportunity to network and sell some fish, plants, snails or equipment that they might have to place a Craig's List ad to sell. Our auctions have proven to be very successful in the past as well, but they tend to eat up quite a bit of time, and we need to streamline the process.

We typically have members from our sister chapter, the Tidewater Virginia Chapter, attend our meetings, and this is a boon for us; they are a group of dedicated hobbyists with a lot of knowledge and much to offer, so we appreciate them driving to Richmond. Our Central Virginia Chapter members also try to attend the Tidewater meetings as they get their own club off the ground. They'll be meeting this coming Saturday, 1/28, and since they're planning every-other-month gatherings we thought we'd schedule ours for February so there'd be no overlap.

The other item of business at our board meeting last night was getting our website off the ground. Mark has offered to work with me on it, and I do need some help. A related matter, and quite pressing, is the creation of a logo for the club. There are SO MANY options of how to go with this, so we're a bit stymied. We need some samples or mockups that we can look at to determine what type of logo we want. Do we want to go with something official looking, like the outline of the state of Virginia with our club name/initials inside it, and maybe the silhouette of a fish? Do we want something modern and stylized, maybe our club initials formed into the shape of a fish? We're not sure!

We could agree, however, that our logo ought to have the outline of a fish, and we settled on a freshwater angelfish, P. scalare, as a readily identifiable shape that anyone can identify as an aquarium fish. Many other species are simply torpedo-shaped, and could represent a sport fish, for instance, so we want to be clearly associated with the aquarium hobby in our logo somehow. The common goldfish would also work, as a backup plan if we can't utilize an angelfish. We decided that the board itself will come up with the logo (most of our members are on the board anyway!) and present it to the club once we have an image finalized, rather than have all our members try to agree on a design.

We can then get our website finished and also use the logo for a Facebook page, since that will prove to be a great resource to communicate with our members and announce meetings. We are certainly dragging our feet with this club, but we still manage to stay in touch and hold things together, so there's hope! Everyone has things going on in their lives that causes delays, but we'll get it established, I think. I'm always optimistic after a board meeting! We've got some great folks involved.

Figure 8 Puffer

2012-01-17T19:24:00.002-05:00

Here is a dim and grainy photo of Otis' tank. I've had him about 4 years now, and not too long ago upgraded him into a 20-long, which suits him very well (if you click on the pic you can see him at the bottom near the left archway). I am currently having a bit of a falling out with my camera and he is too fast for me to capture a clear image.

The tank is empty-looking, for sure, but this is a messy, busy fish that is constantly exploring and poking around the rocks, and keeping the tank clean is a chore with a smaller tank. Even so, I have a constant battle with diatom algae and hair algae.

The tank is open on all sides, sitting out on a desk, so the rockwork is stacked in the center of the tank, and Otis goes through the openings from one side of the tank to the other. He does not seem to have a preference for one part of the tank or the other, and he's never still that I can see. From time to time I rearrange the rocks in a new formation to keep him interested, and to change his paths of travel.

Otis will actually come up out of the water if you put your hand over the top, and he will also splash the surface with his tail to get my attention to be fed, even if he has recently eaten. I know fish are pets, but this fish is the most pet-like of any I have ever owned.

This is a brackish tank, and this is not a problem at all to maintain. The only complaint I have is "salt creep," which means caked salt accumulates around the rim of the HOB filter, and will literally travel, adding onto itself, until it flakes off onto the desk. The heater cord also is a conduit for salt crystals, and it will travel down the entire length of the cord, if I let it. I generally keep on top of it by flaking it back into the tank as it accumulates. I keep an eye on the salinity and keep it brackish, which means my water changes will utilize varying ratios of fresh to marine mix water. As the water level in the tank goes down due to evaporation, the salt that used to be in the evaporated water is still in the tank, so you can't simply use the same ratios every time.

Fortunately, he can tolerate some fluctuations in salinity (many swear these are full FW fish and keep them that way, though I'm convinced they are happiest brackish) so it is not terribly challenging to maintain a brackish tank for him.

I Have an Idea.... Keep the Fish You LIKE!

2011-12-09T17:05:00.004-05:00

I know this is an obvious statement, since most of us are keeping the fish we like, right?

However, I've recently come to the realization that there have been tanks I've kept with fish that I did not necessarily like, but that were appropriate for a setup that I liked. There are quite a few common aquarium species that I simply don't like, and I avoid those, since it is easy enough to do, with the myriad species available these days. On the other hand, once you've kept this type of setup and that type of setup, the community planted tank and the rocky Malawi cichlid tank, the species tank and the mixed tank, you start to have a desire for specific setups that appeal to you, or just ones that you've not kept before.

A couple of years ago I got a great deal on a large tank, a 150-gallon, with hood and stand, and suddenly I had new options. Fish that I could not keep before suddenly became a possibility. I started thinking how cool it would be to keep a large "tankbuster" type fish that would come up to me, begging to be fed; a fish that could be given a name and treated like a real pet. I thought about Astronotus ocellatus, the oscar cichlid, but they can be tough on tankmates and tough on aquarium decor. As mentioned, I like my aquariums to be as much an attractive display as a habitat, and I've heard stories of objects being banged around by oscars, heaters broken, plants uprooted, etc. Hmmm. Maybe not for me this time.

I've always had a thing for Tanganyikan cichlids, and the idea of a frontosa tank began to take hold. They get large and are relatively peaceful. The concept was born. I began my research and saw photos of grotesque humps on the foreheads of mature specimens, and was not terribly thrilled. Some people really like the humps - the bigger the better - but this did not appeal to me. These seemed to be most prevalent in the Burundi variety, and I set my sights on some other collection points, like Moba and Kapampa, which have a richer blue and less prominent humps, typically. I admired the look of some of the Moba setups, with rocks, dim lighting, sand and the graceful large blue striped fish cruising around. The tanks have a minimalist, simple look to them that appealed to me, after so many busy, high-light, heavily planted tanks that I've kept.

Since the frontosa get so big, it is not advised to keep smaller species with them, but often people have success with the Altolamps, (calvus and compressiceps), as long as you stick to the larger males. These are fish I truly admire, with their sloped foreheads and downturned mouths - the bulldog look that I like so much! So I set up the tank with frontosa and altolamprologus species, hoping that as the altolamps grew they'd hang out in the rocks for safety.

I had a lot of trouble with the frontosa. My first shipment of very young specimens died almost immediately - which was quite a bit of money down the tube, though the dealer replaced the fish. I was out shipping, and that was not a small amount, at least for me. I lost almost all of the second shipment too, but 4 survived out of 10. *Sigh* So, nothing but stress from the beginning with these fronts. Constant worry about whether they'd survive and thrive, and whether I could get this tank to where I wanted it. I had the monolithic rock formations, the dim lighting and the sand, and all I needed was the fish to grow and glide around!

One thing about Tanganyikan cichlids is that many of them are shy and dash for cover when you approach the tank. This has never bothered me too much, since they get used to you and will gradually come back out so you can see them. For fish like Brichardi sp., this was well worth it, with their interesting coloration and fin extensions - gorgeous. Same for the calvus and the comps. Such an impressive look to them, and some with polka dots and red or yellow hues. I could watch a mature calvus all day long.

Well, here I am with this large tank in my living room, and it looked completely empty! I had 4 Kapampa frontosa and about 11 various small Tang cichlids in it, most altolamps but 6 Paracyprichromis nigripinnis and one Neolamprologus leleupi. All of them hide, including the frontosa. While the fish were small they hid in the rocks with the rest of them, and would only dart out at feeding time, grabbing a mouthful and dashing back into hiding. Oh well, I told myself, once the fronts get big they won't be able to fit behind the rocks and they'll be forced to stay out in the open where I can see them.

Then came the recent dreadful tank disaster (I still do not know the cause of this tragedy!) and I lost all the Tang cichlids in about 12 hours. The idea of starting over crossed my mind, but slowly I realized the truth: I don't really LIKE frontosa! They have a blunt, bloated look to them that I don't like, but they needed to be the centerpiece to my Tanganyikan display tank, so I went with them anyway. Add to this the fact that Tang cichlids are sensitive to any change in water parameters, diet, etc., and I always had an underlying worry that something would go wrong with the tank; this was enough to lessen the enjoyment I got out of watching it.

This came into sharp focus when I got my new additions, the Geophagus sp. orange head "Tapajos." They gave me a very familiar scare initially (I was instantly brought back to the failed frontosa shipment) but came around once I raised the temperature, and now they are doing great. These are hardier fish than Tang cichlids, and I don't see a reason why I won't get them to maturity. They come rushing over to the glass at your approach, begging for food, and will follow you back and forth.

Also, I really LIKE the Geophagus and Satanoperca species complex, with the sloped foreheads, spangled and striped coloration, and oftentimes long, trailing fin extensions. Mature specimens are gorgeous. A couple of years ago I saw a mature Satanoperca daemon at a shop in Lynchburg, and ever since then I vowed I'd keep them someday. Fish that have a wild or native look to them definitely appeal to me more than some of the more ornamental species available now. No long-fins, balloon bellies, or koi colorations for me, thanks. I am not particularly opposed to hybrids, but I prefer fish as they'd be found in the wild.

I am now evaluating my tastes and preferences more carefully, and realize that I really like wild or wild-type angels, be they scalare, altum or leopoldi. I don't have much interest in domestic angels. I have come very close several times to purchasing some Apistogramma species as well, since my 40-gallon is a very appropriate setup for them, but I now realize that Apistos are not very appealing to me, surprisingly. They can be gloriously colored and have interesting personalities, but I don't really like them, much like I don't care for Kribensis (Pelvicachromis pulcher). I can't explain why I don't like them, but something about the torpedo body shape turns me off.

I do like my Bolivian ram, perhaps mainly because he's actually alive (if you've kept rams before you may know what I'm talking about) and because he's wild I consider him to be like they'd be in nature. That's as close to a dwarf cichlid as I'll likely get anytime soon.

Another admission I'll make: I'm not such a big fan of catfish. I like cory cats in planted setups where I'm not trying to raise a spawn, and I had a whiptail cat that was absolutely fascinating and a gorgeous specimen (look back in the blog to see that amazing fish), but currently I have no catfish at all, and though I'm not ruling them out completely, they are not a species I need to have. For many years I considered some type of catfish to be essential to most any setup, to occupy the bottom and to "clean up" leftovers. I've had some interesting catfish before but I don't require them. Maybe I've just not kept some of the more interesting species, like Hara jerdoni, or the Asian Stone Catfish. My friend has those and they are absolutely adorable! Maybe I'll limit myself to Corydoras species and hold out for a truly interesting specimen catfish.

This entire post is silly but I wanted to share my ideas and where I am in the hobby these days. I tend to set up tanks hastily, without a lot of planning, and just think it would be neat to have certain fish in a certain type of setup. Now I think I'll consider more carefully - not only because I have less time to devote to the hobby but also because I don't want to waste time on fish that don't make me happy. All my tanks, save the pair of N. leleupi that don't seem to want to spawn for me, make me happy, truly happy, including my two tanks of wonky round goldfish, and that's a good thing.

I've Got Sunshine - In a Cloudy Tank

2011-12-09T09:36:00.001-05:00

The Tapajos are still doing great, and showing more hints of color. They are very, very active, almost manic, and spend a lot of time doing what geophagus do - digging through the sand.

When I set up this tank with the frontosa, I rinsed this sand as well as I could, but eventually tired of the rinsing and gave up on it. It is extremely fine sand and contains a great deal of dust. Every time I would stir the sand to keep it aerated it would produce a mild cloud that would soon dissipate with the heavy filtration. For years the sand was no problem, without any fish disturbing it, so hours of rinsing was not required for the setup

Now, with the sand being constantly disturbed by this eartheater species the tank carries a constant haze. I was alarmed about it at first - thinking my water quality was suffering somehow, but diligent testing of all parameters showed normal and desirable results, confirming that there is no ammonia or nitrite, and 5 ppm nitrate. Hardness, buffering capacity and pH are all as expected - a little higher than a typical SA cichlid might prefer, but not too far off. I don't even suspect a bacterial bloom, since this tank is past that stage, which I went through with the goldfish..

So, the sand is the culprit, and I'm not sure what to do, if anything. I'm tempted to aggressively dig through it myself, attempting to release all of the dust at once, do a big PWC and see if that helps, or I can simply let the fish do it slowly over time, which might be the more sensible approach. My tanks are, for me, an artistic display as much as a habitat, so a cloudy tank is hard for me to ignore, but I don't want to cause problems for these wee fish, either. Massive disturbance of the substrate followed by a large PWC could upset the bacterial colonies enough to cause a mini cycle.

I'm sure over time the dust will be filtered out, but it could take a while. Right now the sifting of the sand by the fish is superficial, since the fish are so very small, and as they grow they'll dig down deeper and take bigger mouthfuls as they sift, searching for morsels.

In spite of all that, my little orange heads (the sunshine!) are content and give me a lot of pleasure, and this minor issue is one that will resolve itself before too long.

The Tapajos are Here!

2011-12-04T12:25:00.002-05:00

My shipment of Geophagus sp. Orange Head "Tapajos" have arrived, and they are marvelous specimens. I ordered 20, but our best count keeps coming up 26, so that's quite a few extra!

Initially they were cold, and I was concerned for an hour or two but once I got the temperature up to 82 they perked right up, and have been right as rain ever since. They are always ravenous, and seem happy.

Once they get some size I'll definitely need to remove at least 16, since I think 10 individuals will be plenty for this tank, but we'll wait and see. They're already showing a hint of the red coloration they'll have as adults, and are literally all over the tank exploring. I look forward to moving my leopoldi angel into this tank, and finding more wild or wild type angels, and am considering catfish, maybe panaque types, but not if I hope to raise a spawn, so that decision will come later. I may stick to only cichlids, and keep the geos for the bottom and angels for the top. I' may also move my Bolivian ram down into this tank as well to give the blue rams a little peace in the 40-gallon.

Right now the geophagus are settling in and I don't want to disturb the tank at this point, but will watch as they grow and the tank matures a bit.

Geophagus sp. Orange Head "Tapajos"

2011-11-21T21:14:00.000-05:00

Also known as "red head," these eartheaters (they are bottom dwelling cichlids that spend a lot of time sifting through the sand for morsels) are a species that don't get too large, up to about 6-7" for domestics, and have gorgeous red coloration. I plan on starting out with #20 1.5-2" fry next week and will grow them out in the 150-gallon, then sell off the extras later, when they start to get some size to them.

They do well in groups, so I hope to retain quite a few of them in this tank long-term. They are relatively peaceful, as cichlids go, and are not secretive, so they won't be hiding in the rocks. I had my eye on Satanoperca (they've their own genus now, out of the Geophagus genus for the time being) daemon, since I see them locally, but the more I read the more I find them to be particularly prone to bloat, and are much more sensitive to water quality. They also reach about 10", which is fine for my 150 if I limit them to about 5, but then I have to be very careful about sex ratios. I am not intimidated by fish that demand clean water, since my water change regimen makes my tanks clean and healthy (see below ember tetra and black neon spawns in my community 40-gallon!) but my recent mysterious disaster with my Tang cichlids has me a bit gun shy. I also prefer the red coloration of the Tapajos.

I will post pics when I get them. I'll likely move my wild P. leopoldi angel down into that tank with them, and try to locate more wild or wild-type (F1-2) angels for this setup - they will go well together.

For the purist making aquascaping recommendations for an eartheater tank, my setup has much too much rockwork - a shameful waste of space! When you look through Google images for eartheaters the tanks you see will most often be rather spare, with sand, a few flat rocks for spawning, a piece or two of driftwood, and that's it. This lends a great simplistic look to the tank, and is something I admire and tried to recreate with my Tanganyikan setup, but ultimately, in practice, I find the look too simplistic (maybe I'm doing it wrong) and my eye demands more vertical interest, with zones that draw the eye. Somehow this will need to work for the fish and for my stupid "eye," and I hope I can make that happen. Some of the Acaras are cavedwellers and I could stock some to inhabit the caves, but I might just stick with angels and geos (maybe some larger tetras?) and perhaps Peckoltia sp. catfish for the caves at some point, or even cories. That's for later - right now I'm going to concentrate on the geos, then angels, and see where things go from there.

Another Tetra Spawn

2011-11-20T19:33:00.000-05:00

I am happy to report that my 40-gal planted tank has new black neon fry! This is really amazing to me, on the heels of the ember tetra spawn. It is my experience that spawning tetras requires specific conditions and dedicated setups, but here they are.

I also have a couple of new additions to this tank, a pair of electric blue rams. They were given to me by a fellow hobbyist in Virginia Beach (thank you, Justin!) and have settled in very well in this heavily planted tank. There is a Bolivian ram (wild) in this tank as well, which looks absolutely beefy and monstrous next to the wee blue rams, as well as a wild leopoldi angel, with the ember tetras, black neons, het rasboras and a couple of cardinals. This setup is quite well established and is one of only two tanks I have that have remained as is for years, without getting bored with it and redoing it (or killing off all inhabitants....) so I think this goes a long way to making the environment hospitable for a tetra spawn. It's hit the "sweet spot," so to speak, and I'm just delighted. If the population of tetras can raise one or two of the fry to adulthood on any kind of regular basis I can maintain the colony for a good while.

New Incarnation

2011-11-20T18:27:00.000-05:00

Here's the 150-gallon, redone for my SA eartheaters and others. The water is cloudy because I just finished rearranging rocks and the sand being stirred up creates billowing clouds of tiny particles.

I really had to manhandle the rocks quite a bit, not happy with the first 50 placements of them or the wood, but finally got something that I'm happy with. The wood could be pointing 10 degrees up or down and look "off" visually, so I messed with it until I achieved some sort of visual balance, at least to my eye. I removed quite a few rocks that were cluttering things up. I don't need much in the way of rocks at all for this setup (maybe some acaras, since they like to use caves? Peckoltia compta or another "leopard" pleco type would work as well).

I will be looking for a species of Satanoperca (depending upon availability) and some wild or wild-type angels. I think they will look great in there together, with the angels occupying the middle and upper strata and the eartheaters the bottom.

I scored a sweet piece of branchy driftwoodrecently from Fin & Feather. Sometimes they don't have much in the way of wood and decor, other than plastic and colored gravel, but that time they were loaded up with wood, so I got it relatively cheap, since it was not the curly heavy Mopani wood ($$$$!!!) but just plain old driftwood. It was soaked first and is being held down with a rock for good measure.

When you go back to the beginning of the blog it seems like this tank has been so many things, and I suppose it has. I will say that I don't sit around and lick my wounds, though, and I became absolutely inspired by the idea of this next setup. The empty tank is like an artist's canvas, and I work with it and work with it until I achieve visual appeal. The aquarium hobby is an expression of art for me - living organic art - and my last project had the hardscape just like I wanted it but I was waiting for the large, full-grown frontosa to set off the monolithic rock structure and slate background - moving slowly around an almost moonscape of dim cool light, sand and rocks. Never got to see that.

Many aquarists consider themselves to have "arrived" when they are successful breeders, especially of the more delicate and unusual species. They set up fish rooms with row after row of tanks, nursing a mated pair and coaxing them into a spawn. It is almost as though this is the be all, end all for the hobby, and if you're not heading for that then you are not really serious. I don't really desire that at this point in my life, but rather I want to incorporate graceful living fish into my day to day life, like art on the wall. If the tank does not have visual appeal and does not fit in the room with the other functional and nonfunctional decor, then I don't like it.

So, for now, this tank is set up, and I'm waiting on a cycle to introduce some interesting cichlids, and I will continue to attempt to keep them alive!

DISASTER!

2011-11-20T10:09:00.001-05:00

This is hard. Really hard! Difficult to tell, I mean. This is the story of how I lost all of my Tanganyikans from my 150 gallon tank. Well, not really how I lost them, because I can't say, but the story of the death of an entire stocked tank in a matter of hours.

Here's how it went:

I did my weekly PWC on Sunday afternoon, 4-ish, and I do only a 1/3 change because these are sensitive fish and any more than that seems to stress them. My other tanks get 1/2 PWC once a week. I did not disturb the decor or sand at all this time (it remains relatively clean without debris accumulating), but I simply placed the Python siphon hose into the water and started draining, then when it was 1/3 gone I tested my new tap water for temperature match and started refilling, taking care to add the correct amount of Prime. I have to be careful about temperature in particular because, again, they are sensitive and they show it when you are not careful about it. I have a pretty solid routine down, since this is a valuable tank in terms of the cost of the stock, as anyone who keeps or has kept Tanganyikan cichlids can attest. I've made mistakes with Tang cichlids in the past and treated this tank like the prima donnas they were.

Everything went fine, and we went out to dinner. No one was at home while we were out. We come home later and I fed them, and they all ate normally. We went to bed, and when I got up Monday morning everything looked fine, and we all left for work and school. We were all gone all day, with nobody home. When I got home from work my daughter alerted me that some of the fish were lying on the sand. Uh oh. What could this be?

I did a big PWC, thinking that something got into the tank, even though another PWC this soon after the first is risky, but I had to do something to try to save the tank, which was in obvious distress. All members were either dead or dying. Every last one. This included four 3.5-inch Kapampa frontosa, six Paracyprichromis nigripinnis, one 3-inch N. leleupi, and about 10-12 Altolamprologus species of various sizes, from 1.5" to 3". The water tested fine, in that there was no ammonia or nitrite, and very low nitrate (it hardly ever measures much nitrate, considering how small the fish were for this much water). This did not look like a case of not adding enough dechlor, since the times I have done that the water starts to cloud up and you see the params go wonky, and the fish start suffering immediately. I suppose this may not always be how it presents, but just in my own experience. Chlorine present in the water is not something this group of cichlids would take their time to react to, in other words. Cross that mistake off my list.

What then? I tested the pH and the tap water is the 7.6 it always is, with the tank measuring only a tiny bit higher at 7.9. Sometimes I reach 8 but as the tank matures the sand is buffering the water less and less, it seems. At first I thought the tap was measuring way low, at 6.2, but my pH meter needs to be calibrated and the liquid reagent kit proved it to be more alkaline, as always, at 7.6 (I'm sending the meter off to Milwaukee to be properly calibrated, as the adjustment screws are not solving the problem).

Over a matter of hours all fish dead. Monday night I tore the tank completely apart, removing and cleaning all the rocks (there must be 300 pounds of rock!) and cleaning out the sand, then taking apart the filters, a Fluval FX5 and a Rena Filstart XP4 and sterilizing them, loading with all new media. This took hours to complete, and was quite a physical strain, but I could not sit there and look at this giant glass testament to my failure.

What went wrong? What happened to slowly kill off every last fish? I've been over it and over it, and even my husband, who was present during the PWC procedure, can't come up with anything that does not match with my recollection. When I fed them I used the New Life Spectrum cichlid pellet, like always, and this time I did not use any frozen food, which could potentially go bad and perhaps sicken the fish. I think it must have had something to do with the water change, but with these fish any mistakes made in that procedure are typically evident quite rapidly, in my experience, and not 24 hours later.

I suppose I will never know, but I will continue to beat myself up over it, and not only because of the massive financial investment that went down the drain. I feel like I ought to have been able to get this tank mature and grow out the frontosa to their potential size, and this goal is not going to be achieved, at least not in the near future. I just don't have the funds to invest in replacing the fish and starting over. Maybe someday I will git it another shot, but not now. It would be easier to take if I knew what happened, so it could be mitigated in the future, but I just can't think of what happened.

Incidentally, when I did the water change on the 150 I also did one on the 20h goldfish tank in the kitchen, and they never had any problems whatsoever. Not a ragged fin, cloudy eye or red gill in the bunch. That tank, in fact, was cleaned aggressively (this tank was cleaned after I was done with the 150) and I moved decor around to siphon out the copious debris that collects with these filthy fish, and wound up with about an 80% change of the water. This is a typical change for that tank, and the goldfish seem to thrive with this weekly routine. They are fantails, and their fins are in perfect shape, with no signs of any water quality issues. I would not dream of that kind of maintenance on a Tang cichlid tank.

It could be there was something in the tap water that affects Tang cichlids and does not affect goldfish, which is definitely possible - goldfish are known to be much hardier - but I won't likely ever know. Copper leaching into the tap water would affect many species, but with the higher range pH that is less of an issue. If we had soft, acidic water then that would be high on my list.

In the past when I have called the water treatment plant to inquire about certain values (some systems contain levels of NO3 -nitrate- that cause aquarists some problems, for instance) I am usually met with defensiveness, as if I'm trying to blame the water treatment people for health issues, which I'm not. I just like to know what I'm dealing with when I put tap water into my tanks. This is a huge part of the process and I don't have any control over what comes out of the tap. If they said to me, "oh yes, Sunday we registered a higher than normal level of ________ in the system. That might explain it" I'd be grateful and go on with my life. Maybe they could even tell me to avoid doing PWCs on a certain day of the month, perhaps. I just want to be informed so I can manage my livestock the best I can.

So, now I'm setting my sights on a less pricey species from the other side of the world, in South America. I'm going to turn this tank into an "eartheater" tank, with Satanoperca daemon, which sounds awful but actually is the designation of a species of cichlid that is attractive and peaceful. It has been known as Geophagus jurupari, but there is a lot of work being done on the taxonomy of the genus so it covers quite a few species. I have added wood and plants to the tank, but only plants that attach themselves to the wood and rocks, and nothing planted in the sand, because it will be uprooted by these sand-sifting cichlids. I will consider angels and acaras as well for this tank, which are other peaceful cichlids that are appropriate tankmates.

Right now the tank is cycling with some shubunkin (if you have been reading this blog you'll know that I do cycle tanks with fish and I'm not ashamed of it!) and after things have settled in the goldfish will go into a friend's pond. I'm doing large PWCs during the process, and we're about halfway there. The fish are about 3" long and there are only three of them in this huge tank, so nobody needs to get uptight about animal cruelty. I did the same thing with the goldfish I currently have in the kitchen, which started out cycling the 150 themselves a couple of years ago before I added my Tangs, and they are doing great to this day.

I am really trying to move on but will be affected by this traumatic event for a good while. I do feel like a failure but I'd sure like to know what I did. No broken heaters, no electrical shock, nobody spraying chemicals, painting nearby, etc. There was nothing in the water that I have a test kit for to explain it, so I guess it will always be a mystery, and be, to date, my biggest DISASTER!

The Puffers are Running!

2011-10-09T11:56:00.001-04:00

This weekend the family had a gathering at my childhood summer cottage on Mobjack Bay in Mathews County, Virginia, which is now owned and has been lovingly restored by my sister and her husband. Typically the cottage is closed for the season this time of year, but it was a special occasion and the weather was gorgeous, so we all met down there for boating, fishing and feasting.

The tide was out during most of the afternoon, and considering how shallow and treacherous most of Mobjack can be during low tide, we fished from the pier. We had lots of action, but ALL of it from puffer fish! We must have reeled in 25 of them over the course of an hour or two, sometimes two on one rig. All were promptly released back into the water, and considering that fact, maybe we were catching the same puffers over and over, but you could easily see them in the water from the pier, and there were many, many of them in the vicinity.

This is the Sphoeroides maculatus, or the Northern puffer, and is common to the Chesapeake Bay. Most of the specimens we caught were about 8-10" and for the most part they did not puff up, which made me feel better! I am torn in situations like this, since I truly do enjoy fishing, and eating fish, for that matter, but puffers are near and dear to my heart and I hated for them to be stressed in this way! However, try as we might to catch other species that we typically catch off this pier, nothing was biting but the puffers. The kids put several in a bucket to observe them more closely for a few minutes, and they are indeed fascinating to watch.

Since I already keep a brackish puffer at home, I was very interested in the possibility of keeping several of these in a tank at home, though I'd have to devote a very large tank to them, like my 150-gal. If I did decide to create a setup for them, I'd want to get them as babies and raise them in the tank, rather than try to transport these adults into captivity. However, since I'm sure they spawn in much deeper water, the chances of me finding juveniles is very slim, so I'll just have to enjoy them from the pier.

Incidentally, these puffers were a popular food source from the Chesapeake until about 40 years ago, when their popularity faded, though locally you'll see them offered as "sugar toads." Their meat is apparently very sweet and delicious, and they allegedly do not contain any toxic organs like some marine species, so you don't have to worry about this when preparing them. I've never eaten them, but my mother recalls doing so, and they used to be a popular fish to serve children, who might not enjoy fish otherwise. She said they were easy to clean, because they are simply skinned and the strip of tender meat is removed from each side of the spine.

We certainly caught enough of them to have made a meal for our entire crowd, but they all went back into the water, to puff another day......

Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

2011-10-03T20:02:00.000-04:00

Here's an awesome Pomacea diffusa/bridgesii snail that I received in a shipment of ramshorn snails. He's growing alarmingly fast! The large ramshorn at the bottom is at least the size of a US nickel, for perspective. The kids named him Giga.

This is a snail tank where I cultivate food for my F8 puffer, Otis. It is working out great! They are filthy little critters, though, and the tank needs much more attention than my others. A 50% water change weekly is not enough! Otis is a happy fellow, though, and I don't have to dig through my planted tank trying to find a hidden snail to feed him.

I hosted our local aquarium club meeting yesterday, and we had a good turnout. We are just getting started with the Central Virginia Aquarium Society, and building membership while working out a routine for our meetings and auctions. This was mainly a social gathering, with burgers on the grill and a little bit of swapping of items, including fish. I met new people and saw old friends after a summer break from our meeting schedule. We did not really handle any business and due to the absence of some board members we didn't really settle on a meeting date for the next one, but we all agreed we'd likely wait until January. Typically we try to meet every other month, but December is not good for most of us.

I was kidding about the puppydog tales. I thought I'd have a cute story about one of the dogs, but I don't..... Here's Sirius. He's awesome too.

Post-Irene

2011-09-01T13:49:00.001-04:00

We fared just fine through hurricane Irene, though many have not.

There was a lot of damage here in the central Virginia area, and many people are still without power nearly a week later. That is a familiar situation to what we experienced with Isabel in 2003. I moved to my current neighborhood not too long after Isabel, and they had power the day after the storm, but my old neighborhood, just a mile or two down the road, was without power for 6 days in 2003. That was not fun, what with all my fish tanks! I used a large plastic cup to stir the water, scooping it up and pouring it back into the tanks, aerating it. I lost no fish during that time, happily.

This time, the power went out around dinnertime on Saturday night, August 27, and was back on the next day about noon. Not too bad. Even so, as the storm was approaching I got out surge protectors and long outdoor extension cords, putting a surge protector in the middle of the floor of my office and connecting it to an extension cord that ran down the stairs and plugged into a surge protector in front of my 150 gal tank in the living room. This surge protector had a cord running outside to the small generator (800 watts). The minute the power went out I had my tanks running on generator power, since I did not wish to take any chances, and that generator is too small to run appliances with heating elements or the refrigerator. We have a large generator that we used for that.

So, my fish fared just fine this time, and hopefully the rest of our area will have power restored soon.

Earthquakes and Hurricanes

2011-08-27T16:28:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, August 23 our area experienced a 5.8 earthquake, which was a dramatic and very rare event for us. I was at my desk (where else?!) and the house began to shake with a rhythmic pattern, and the noise was deafening. I could not understand what was happening, and at first did not think of an earthquake. It is just not what comes to mind when you grow up in the mid-Atlantic area of the country. I tore downstairs as quickly as I could, since my reptilian brain wanted out of that house, pronto, and when I got to the kitchen I saw my sister, nephew and the twins in the pool, gawping up at the house in wonderment, mouths hanging open. I truly thought for a second that one of those large personnel carrier helicopters was landing on my roof or something, lol. Then I realized the sound and shaking was coming from all directions, and it must be an earthquake.

I made it outside, and they told me they could not feel anything while floating in the pool, but they saw the house and the plants and furniture on the deck shaking violently. The dogs were not particularly alarmed, though they were eager to head outside to confront this potential threat, until they got out there and could not determine where the threat originated! They were confused but not at all upset. I was very surprised that there was no damage to my house. The shaking was such that I immediately felt like my solidly built and well constructed home was the flimsiest thing ever built. Nothing even fell off the walls like they did in 2000 when we had a much smaller quake here.

Next up, Hurricane Irene. Today is 8/27/11 and the hurricane is pretty much here, at 4:18 p.m. A lot of gusty wind and we've had a ton of rain since early this morning. The pool is overflowing. A few branches down but not too bad. We still have power, but I expect that to change pretty soon - it has flickered off and back on several times already.

Rick is at the boat in Kinsale, where the storm is going to be much worse, and I wish he'd come home. He wants to be there to adjust lines on the boat as the storm surge causes the water to rise many feet higher than normal high tide, but I think it will be dangerous for him to be there. Also, if the gusts get more than 50 mph they'll close the bridges, and he needs them to get home. I don't want him to be injured or trapped in the direct path of the storm, where "devastating" winds are forecasted. We've got "damaging" winds forecasted here. This storm reminds everyone of Isabel in 2003, which caused us to be without power for 6 days, though not all neighborhoods had it that bad. My sister, who lived no more than a couple of miles away, lost power for only one day with that storm.

So, with Isabel fresh in our minds, we've made quite a few preparations, and I think we've done what we can. We have two generators, a small one that is relatively quiet and can be expected to run all of my fish tank filters, since they all have pretty low wattage, and also a fan or two, and then we have a very large generator we got when Isabel hit, and that one can run the refrigerator and a few other things if it looks like power will be out long-term.

Maybe I've got selective memory, but I grew up here and I don't recall hurricanes. Not at all. I'll have to ask my mother, who will be able to tell me more, but since we've moved back here after living in Florida for 9 years we've had more trouble with hurricanes here than in South Florida. In fact, the reason we moved back to Virginia at all was because of the devastation of hurricane Andrew in Homestead, which alarmed my husband enough to want to move away. He was in construction and volunteered his time to inspect homes there to determine if they could be saved or were a total loss from the storm. It hit him very hard to see first-hand what a storm like that could do to a community. Then we move back to Virginia and have had several hurricane scares, and a tropical storm (Gaston) that caused widespread flooding here.

I will check back in when all is said and done.

What goes up must come down

2011-08-08T14:21:00.005-04:00

This past weekend I decided I had to take down the 45-gallon with the leopoldi angel, black neon tetras and cardinal tetras. My work schedule is such that it has become tricky to maintain all these tanks, and the tank itself was not enjoyable for me. I had planned on stocking it more to make it more interesting, but I am going to have to put together a snail tank for Otis, so something had to go.

Since I'm down to only one leopoldi it was hard to justify keeping this tank up, when he could be moved to the 40 heavily planted community with tetras and one wild ram. My wild ram and the wild caught leopoldi angel are both snail eaters (more so than a domestic cichlid, interestingly) and I cannot keep a population of snails going for my puffer, Otis.

I've therefore taken down the 45, and relocated the angel into the 40, along with the black neons and cardinals, and all is well, for the time being. I'm not terribly optimistic about the angel, since this is a wild caught fish who has difficulty settling into new situations and does not like to be moved. On top of that I put him into a relatively brightly lit, heavily planted tank, and this is really not the ideal setup. He should have a deep, dim and branchy tank with floating plants only, but I can't really do that for him at the moment. We shall see. I put the 45 into the eaves for my next adventure!

I kept a dedicated snail tank once before, but it ran aground at some point due to my inability to keep it as clean as I'd like - the water likely became too acidic and the snails died out. I kept it on the floor (no available lateral surfaces!) so I had to use a Python to do PWCs, and this would suck up eggs and babies, but I could not get a siphon going with a regular siphon with it so low to the floor. *Sigh* Anyway, I obtained a very large supply of snails from an Aquabid dealer and she was VERY kind and informative, and gave me full instructions on maintaining a good healthy colony. She can be found on Aquabid under Nelly's Fishy Friends, so hit her up!

I have resurrected Otis' old 10-gal and set that up with calciferous sand, rocks and driftwood, and a lance-leaved anubias plant. This is home to some of my new ramshorns, most of which are a very good pencil-eraser size and larger, which impressed me. I have put about 25 of them into my tank at work, which is where I have been harvesting snails from for Otis of late, though they are thin on the ground. Now that I'm going to be working full time I can take special care to feed that tank and support the new population of snails.

Now I want some tankmates for the snails in the 10-gal at home, and envisioned a nano setup with celestial peal danios or some of the nifty micro rasboras, for instance, but I am picturing the wee fishies snacking on tiny snail babies, and decided I needed to rethink this. What about shrimp? Crystal reds? Would they eat eggs and babies enough to prevent my snail colony from thriving? I'm off to email Nelly and get her advice on this.

Update: Nelly does not see any reason why I could not keep shrimp with the snails, but she has not done it. She keeps guppies with hers. I do think I'll try some very small shrimp species and see what happens. I like shrimp anyway, and this will be a suitable setup for them. She mentions that the most important thing for a snail tank is the GRAVEL, since that's where they breed and the babies can safely hunker down in the crevices, but this is, as mentioned, already set up as a sand tank. I'm hoping this is going to be okay! There is irony in the reality that so many aquarists have nuisance snails they have trouble getting rid of, and here I am, trying desperately to cultivate them.

I've said it before, but here it goes again: If you have an uncontrollable snail population I promise you are overfeeding your tank. If the fish get all the food the snails will die right out. This is why I have had poor results at work - I'm there only three days a week and the fish don't get fed during that time, and they go 4 days without food when we aren't there every other Friday. I'm not getting the molly babies I'd expect, either. That's not such a big deal, but I'd like to have more than one tank for snails, since if something goes wrong I'll have a backup. My schedule is switching to 5 days a week at work, so I am positive this will result in a thriving snail population (that is a gravel tank!) and more molly babies.

The jury is still out with regards to the angel in the 40-gal, but this was the right choice for me right now and hopefully he will settle. An interesting thing is going on, though, and that is that these fish suddenly do not like flake food. I watch carefully and they all take it up and spit it right out. I'm not sure what's up with that. They also do the same with the tiny NLS "growth" pellets that are about 1-2 mm in diameter. I don't really know what kind of food they want.

Tank Updates

2011-08-01T18:18:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was devoted to tank maintenance in my office, where I keep a 40-gallon planted, which contains a single wild caught ram (the mate died recently of bloat - I may have mentioned I have horrible luck keeping rams alive, like many people), the ember tetras and het rasboras. This tank gets overgrown very easily with the plantings, and the floating salvinia needs to be scooped out regularly. There is a curious substance all over the sand that I can only describe as an algae, but the rest of the tank has no algae whatsoever. It is a debris that is dark and coats the sand in clumps, and it is not possible to suction it out with a siphon. I stir the sand regularly, what little there is, and I'm not sure why this tank suffers from it, though it does make the sand look "natural," lol. I'm increasing the PWCs in an effort to gain control of it. If that does the trick then I'll know there is some kind of nutrient imbalance.

I did a PWC for dear Otis, who is just a dream in his 20 long. No issues there other than the persistent diatom algae, but this tank easily gets higher nitrate levels due to his meaty diet, and the brackish water seems to have this problem more than a similar tank that was fresh. No worries, though - he's looking great and I'm content.

The HOB filter on the 37 gets clogged quickly and I'm constantly having to clean it out, when it does not seem that dirty. At least not dirty enough to cause the clogging. Even after I rinse everything out and put it back together it seems to run as if the filter pads are clogged. I don't have any extra media trays in it at all. Recently I noticed that the water level was dropping dramatically - more so than the other 3 tanks in the room, and yesterday I found out why: the curtain hanging next to the tank was being splashed by the filter, which was clogged and not flowing properly, and the curtain was sucking up the water up its entire floor to ceiling length! I cleaned out the filter, again, and did a big PWC, and took down the curtain.

The reason I did such a big PWC was so that I could pull the rocks and get out the extra leleupi, which was cramping the style of the pair that has formed. Slowly but surely all six have whittled down to two, and now that they have the tank to themselves they are much calmer and hopefully will spawn for me. Even the one stunted little leleupi left in there was a huge distraction for them, despite the fact that he kept to an upper corner, completely out of their way. They took turns all day long chasing after him. I sold (what appeared to be) an extra dominant male initially, once that situation made itself clear, then one day my daughter happened to find a leleupi on the floor next to the tank, and my husband was able to save it and got it back into the tank alive. It was quite clear that the fish was being bullied and chased and needed to go, so I put it downstairs in the 150 with the other Tanganyikans since I had nowhere else for it to go, and the frontosa and Altolamps in that tank are of a decent size now so as not to be bullied by the wee leleupi. That left 3 fish in the 37, and it soon became obvious which fish were the pair, and yesterday I got the third one out and put him downstairs as well. I'm not sure how that is going to work out, but, again, I have nowhere else for him to go and he is very small still, so he'll either sink or swim downstairs. I fear the leleupi and the Paracyprichromis in the 150 are doomed once the frontosa get bigger, but we shall see. It is remarkable how relaxed the leleupi are in the 37 upstairs now that they are alone together. They can concentrate on making babies now! If one of them decides it wants to "own" the tank and bullies the other, then I'll just sell the pair off and take down the tank.

That leaves the 45-gallon in the office, and sadly I lost another leopoldi angel last week. It was wasting away and looked like it had been beaten up, though I did not see the other bullying it. I think it was just ill, or old, and it did not make it too long after I noticed its deteriorating condition. I now have one single leopoldi left, with some black neons and a few cardinal tetras. This tank is a puzzle to me because I don't like the looks of it and would just as soon put all the fish in the 40 with the others, but I don't think the 40 is a good place for the leopoldi. Too many plants and too much light. I think I will create a community in the 45, with more tetras and perhaps some catfish of some type. Deborah will help me determine which species would work.

This week I'll need to do a PWC on the 150 and the 20 high goldfish tank (love this tank! Too cute!). The frontosa are getting big and it is nearly time for me to swap out the small, fussy stacked rocks for larger boulder type rocks so they don't knock everything over. I'm looking forward to going rock shopping, which is something I very much enjoy, lol. I've got a great landscaping place right up the street and they've got a huge pile of the right type of rock for me to look through.

I still have all of the Altolamps that I originally put in this tank, so there are 8 of them, and the 5 Paracyps, 4 Kapampa frontosa and now the two small leleupi. I just went down to check on the new leleupi addition, and what do I see? He's somehow gotten behind the overflow box where the filter intake is located! How on earth did he squeeze into that spot and how on earth am I going to get him out??? I just swore and walked back upstairs when I saw that..... I've got work to do first before I even begin to tackle that. The hood is in the way for me to lean over at the right angle to get a net back there, so I might have to get Rick to help me take the hood down first, and then I might be able to get him if I stand on a high stool. I suppose he was chased and he was able to squeeze back there. The gap is only big enough for fry, so I'm not sure how he pulled it off. I suppose I should have them siliconed in place but I wanted more flexibility with the setup so I have it wedged, hiding the filter intakes and heater. *Sigh* I knew there'd be something, since it is hard to add a fish to a well established setup without something happening. I'll need to get some pictures of the 150 soon to show how the frontosa have grown, and how great they look. I'm really eager to see them reach their final size, when the tank will really show off well.

American Cichlid Association Convention

2011-07-31T11:00:00.003-04:00

My friend, Deborah, and I traveled to the 2011 ACA convention held in Washington, DC a couple of weeks ago. This was a much anticipated trip for me, as a long time keeper of cichlids, and though I've wanted to attend this event for many years, it has never been this close to where I live.

Though the convention lasts for four days, we were interested only in attending on Saturday, so we left early that morning and made our way up I-95. There was traffic, as you'd expect, particularly in the Tyson's Corner area where there is a great deal of construction underway, but we made very good time and found our destination easily. We also found free underground parking just a few blocks from the hotel, which was a plus considering the nearly 100-degree weather; we knew the car would at least stay relatively cool while we were inside.

We registered and were given a very, very generous goodie bag, which contained our meeting credentials on a lanyard, a raffle ticket, a t-shirt from Drs. Foster & Smith, and quite a few samples of food and water treatments from various vendors, as well as periodicals, posters, coupons, stickers, etc. Not too shabby! The only downside to this was that the bag was heavy and we'd have to carry it around all day.

We then proceeded to browse the commercial tables where all of the familiar aquatic products were on display for sale at a reduced price. All the big names were there, and I must praise Aqueon for giving away full-size containers of food, water treatments and liquid plant food. They were very generous, though many of us were timid about taking two or three containers of food, as suggested, when the adjacent tables were selling their wares. Aqueon is really trying to make a name for themselves as they have expanded their product line, and they felt the patrons of the convention ought to come away with something to make the trip and the stay in DC a little more worthwhile. I agree, and these small gifts wound up being worth more to me than I realized at the time.

We wandered around, looking at the tanks set up in the hallways up for auction. They were pretty typical setups, though I think they were my favorite part of the convention, since you got to see some creative aquascaping (though some ho-hum setups were on display as well) and some interesting species mixed with other non-cichlid species, in some cases. I'd have really liked to have seen some more unusual cichlids, though, like Altum angels, for instance, and I was really expecting that, but did not see anything I had not seen before.

The main area was downstairs on the first floor, and there were also rooms set up on the 4th floor where if you rummaged in your goodie bag you'd find a ticket to receive a free t-shirt from the Capital Cichlid Association, who hosted this event. This giveaway was for a limited number of T-shirts, so at the specified time we all lined up to receive our shirts. I'm truly not sure why I wanted a T-shirt, since I don't wear that type of shirt, but I thought it might be an interesting momento, and perhaps Rick would wear it, or I could put it in one of my own local club's goodie bags at an upcoming meeting.

We finally get up to receive our shirt and see that they are standing you against a background and they have a photographer taking a picture of everyone who gets a shirt, and this was, apparently, required to receive the shirt. I'm not sure what this was about, other than some mention of the pictures going up on Facebook, but I thought it odd that you were not able to receive a shirt without getting the picture taken. I don't like getting my picture taken, so I asked, and was told that I HAD to if I wanted the shirt. I am a rebellious type but I went along anyway, and once I agreed two young men, 15 or 16 years of age, who were obviously assisting in the process of handing out T-shirts, asked if they could be in the picture with me. I readily agreed, and thanked them for the offer. I'm not sure why they did that, but they probably wanted to be in as many Facebook pics as they could.

Anyway, off we go, eagerly seeking out new gems, hoping to see more fish, and wanting to sit in on an interesting lecture. We happened upon the conference room where the lectures were being held, and we caught the beginning of what we thought would be an interesting lecture on pike cichlids, a variant that neither Deborah nor I knew much about. We were not impressed with the bawdy style of the speaker, whose manner would have gone over great in a hall full of college students, perhaps, but I'd have preferred more science and fewer "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" off-color humor. Our speaker is a chemist and runs a pharmaceutical company and may indeed have biology credentials, but we we left early, lol. We are SUCH snobs!

Let me interject at this point that a mitigating factor to our so-so reaction to everything was that the hotel's air conditioning system was not functioning properly, and, as mentioned, the temps were approaching 100 degrees F outside. Air was moving, but it was not cool, so we were a bit crankier and harder to please that day than we might have been.

We then made our way to the auction room, which had many tanks set up, stacked from the floor to head height, all with number designations and in many cases a species ID for the fish within. There were no lights on the fish so you had to really know what you were looking for in order to make a bid. This again reminded us of our own club auctions, where people bring in fish in bags and float them, and if you don't know the person to ask you might not know what fish you were bidding on.

I honestly can't say what I expected, and why I was disappointed. I guess I expected Heiko Bleher to be there with a beautiful river biotope containing Altum angels, rummynose and cardinal tetras, leaf litter and floating plants placed strategically to mimic his personal recollection of the cichlid's native home. Maybe I expected displays of fish with descriptions, like a public aquarium. Why did I think the whole thing would be bigger and more interesting? I can't tell you - nobody ever told me, but I thought there'd be more fish for sale, rather than the tanks of discus, oscars, jack dempseys, jewels and assorted mbuna like you'd see at any decent fish store. Don't get me wrong - they did have some less common species, but in the dim stacked tanks they were hard to see, as many of them hid behind the sponge filter or other structure, naturally, after their ordeal of being moved.

I think once you return time and again you begin to recognize the people who are putting the fish up for auction, and plan ahead as to what fish you want, so you can bid on them when you get there. I would have loved to have gotten some interesting Apistogramma species, which is something I'm in the market for, but there were only A. cacatuoides, and though I would not mind having that species I was hoping for something a little less ordinary (the specimen they did have was in marvelous shape, though!).

We wound up leaving earlier than originally planned, and made a side trip to Pristine Aquariums in Alexandria, since one of our favorite things to do is to visit hole-in-the-wall fish stores wherever we go. It left much to be desired, though when I checked the web before heading over there they got rave reviews. It was on the way home, so no biggie, but we'd have sure been pleased if they had some Apistos or catfish that caught our eye! It is a very nice, clean shop, and a large one, so maybe they were low on stock and having a bad week.

Next up will be the Catfish Convention hosted by the PVAS next year, which I hope to be didactic and fruitful, though now I'm jaded! I know very little about catfish in general, though, so I'm looking forward to it.

Pic of the Wee Fry

2011-07-26T17:00:00.004-04:00

This is an ember tetra fry that is one of a tiny batch surviving in my 40-gal community setup. He seems to be the smartest one, hanging out in the roots of the floating salvinia, but he eats well and is growing nicely. I had more but it looks like this is the only survivor. Pretty cool, though!

Back From Purgatory

2011-07-26T16:25:00.002-04:00

I must have been a bad girl because it indeed felt like punishment to be without my computer for three weeks while... (hmmm, should I give up the name of the esteemed personal computer megacorp as I tell my tale? No, better not. For ease of reading, however, let's say it rhymes with Hell) I waited for technical service and support to ship and install a new power supply.

Yes, the rare and elusive power supply that few IT people are ever able to get their hands on. Wouldn't you know that this was the very part that went bad on my machine while under warranty? Dang it! It stands to reason there would be a delay, since these crucial components are spun from the distilled condensation of the exhaled breath of the endangered Mauritius Kestral, then shipped to Bequia in the Grenadines for assembly by Rumpelstiltskin, who is the only individual capable of fitting the delicate parts together. Well, it takes a village, after all. So I waited patiently.

In all seriousness, the chap from service visited me twice after my initial call to Hell on 7/1 when my computer would not boot up at all. He came and identified the problem as the power supply, not the motherboard, as the chap on the phone in New Delhi diagnosed. In all fairness, the local service person said that it is typically one or the other, motherboard or power supply, and in his experience they always ship both, so there would be no delays, but wouldn't you know it - this is the one time they did not. "Oh well, they'll overnight it and I'll give you a call tomorrow to set up my return to get this all taken care of."

Ok, my business is almost impossible to run without my data (my careful backups I've been performing for years on an external hard drive are not recognized when I install the HD on my spare computer - that is an entirely different story!), but I'm remaining patient, cobbling together what I can from emails and my vendors to try to function with a fraction of my usual resources, slowing me down to a snail's pace but not letting my customers know there is anything amiss.

A few days later he returns with the box under his arm, and opens it to find, *gasp!*, no power supply. What the....??? He's just baffled. They sent another motherboard. He showed me his order form that clearly requested a power supply, but at this point I can't even deal with this fellow. I have no clue what the problem is but I need to complain about this. He said he'd place another order and apologized profusely. I'm frustrated and hobbled by an inferior spare computer (thank goodness I have one of those, I must say....) and I'm tired of this.

I call New Delhi once again and am told so many, many nice things. There is a script for the apologies, and also a script that goes something like this: "Let me give you my personal email, and you must use this from now on - do not call the number and get in the phone queue - I am taking personal responsibility for this case and I will see this through to resolution. My manager is also putting this as a top priority and in a moment I will put the call through to him so he can reassure you that he has taken personal responsibility to see that you are satisfied." I was told I'd be getting a call from him in the next few days to be sure my machine had been fixed. What can I say? I talked to his manager and asked to speak to HIS manager, and someone else got on the phone, etc., but they really can't say a whole lot to me except to express empathy for my situation and promise to rectify things.

Another week goes by, and I call again. They thought my problem was long since resolved! They thought I had another issue. Oh no, no resolution, no phone calls, no nothing. We go through the thing again, and I again get the same scripted "taking personal responsibility" thing, and I'm not having it. I explained that someone needed to get over here and put a new power supply in my machine so I can get on with my life. Their customer service had failed and I was not going to be quiet about it. Enough with New Delhi.

I went to the Hell website and began to search for someone who handles complaints. There are no individuals who do that - you can post feedback, which I did - but if you can't get any satisfaction there are simply no people who take responsibility for customer service, at least not that I could find on the website. I took myself over to the public forum, where you discuss with other Hell owners various computer problems and fixes for this and that. I ranted, and got some responses that essentially said I ought to have just fixed it myself and went on with my business, because this is nothing new. I suppose it is the principle of the thing now.

I got a call a few days later from New Delhi informing me that the power supply was on back order. That's right, back order. That's like going to Goodyear and being told they don't have tires because they're all on back order. Or Dunkin donuts has empty shelves because the flour is on back order. My &*%$ the power supply is on back order! They have power supplies stacked 25 deep, I promise. Contrary to my very immature opening of this post, power supplies are not fancy, not unusual, not an elite component whatsoever, and are as basic to a PC as a keyboard.

My feedback on the Hell website, which was comprehensive, sarcastic (you're kidding!) and lengthy, got someone's attention, but it was a very generic email asking me to provide contact info so they could call and get to the bottom of this issue. Hah.

Well, yet another week goes by and this morning my good buddy showed up again with yet another box under his arm, which did, in fact, contain a power supply and a motherboard, both of which he installed in just a few minutes. My computer is up and running, and I am giddy with excitement to be back up to speed. I have to update with all that went on while it was down, but that's no biggie. I'm an expert at this now. And all this only took 25 days! Amazing.

The best part? My monitor now works only at half brightness, so you can barely see what's on the screen. Perfect. Oh, wait, it was purchased at the time of my computer and is still under warranty! Thank goodness. Let me find that 800 number.....

A bit of catch-up...

2011-07-20T17:09:00.002-04:00

It has been a while since I've updated the blog, and there are many reasons. Kids, especially those who plan on entering college next month, have taken a lot of my time (don't. even. mention. money.), plus rising 5th graders out of school and needing to be kept busy when I'm not working myself, which is not much of the time.

My tanks are all still up and running, and I am proud to say, right off the bat, that Otis, the adorable F8 puffer, has now been upgraded to a double wide, with his 10-gal swapped out for a 20! The tank looks virtually the same, with his central rocky cave and tower structures so he can explore on both sides, but there is a ton more room and this is the right amount of space for the little bugger. I used to think it would be too big, but honestly these are very dirty fish, messy eaters of heavy proteins, so the water quality is much easier to stay on top of with more water, and I truly believe he needs the space to stay sane. He uses every last inch of the tank, too.

I have also had some pretty major computer issues that have cropped up recently and I'm trying to get those resolved. My spare machine cannot recognize my camera and won't load the software to run the driver, so I can't upload any pics, so I will hopefully get that resolved soon.

The big news is that I have ember tetra fry, in a community tank, no less! This is the first time I've ever been aware of spawning tetras. The only other fish I've spawned in a community tank that was not one of the usual suspects (cichlid or livebearer or invert) was white cloud mountain minnows, but I'm much more excited about the embers. I noticed a subadult lurking in the java fern one day, and he was just too small to be one of the ones I purchased. I was scratching my head over that one when I noticed a wee tiny little group of fry! About 4 mm long. I got very excited and took a pic but, alas, I can't post it until I get my computer back. As of today I seem to have only one fry left (wahh!) but that is to be expected in a community setup. Current residents include het rasboras and a pair of wild caught rams. The rams truly stick to the bottom and I never see them even in the middle of the tank, and the ember fry stick right up to the very, very top, so that's why it worked out as well as it did so far.

Keep in mind, I did not plan on spawning the embers. I did not do extra water changes or prime the breeding pair (I don't even know which fish are the pair...) but simply kept the tank like I normally do, with weekly 50% water changes and daily feeds of quality flake (Omega One) and pellet (NLS Grow). This was a pure accident, and I could not be more delighted.

I'll post pics soon.

Central Virginia Aquarium Society!

2011-07-20T16:54:00.004-04:00

It is finally here, the Central Virginia Aquarium Society, or CVAS. Someday soon we'll launch our website, cv-as.com.

I've been working with some awesome folks in the local Richmond and Tidewater aquarium hobby to make this thing happen, and we've had a few meetings already, which have been a success. Now our Tidewater contingency have broken off to start their own regional club, which I think is a rational decision considering what a pain it is to drive to Richmond for our club meetings - I belong to the PVAS and they have to have something pretty darn interesting happening for me to drive to Northern Virginia to attend. I can certainly understand. We will likely combine our chapters several times a year for a large meet and greet, but both our clubs need to get our footing.

We've mainly focused on holding swaps and auctions to raise money to fund things like our website, business cards, etc., and now that we finally have a club name (very recently) we can proceed with a logo and get our internet presence established.

This all could not have been possible without the aquarium hobby website USA Fisbhox, where we all met and realized that there are quite a few hobbyists in the central Virginia area.

It has taken quite a bit of time to get things organized. Right now we have a board, a secretary and a treasurer, but otherwise we don't have a constitution or a mission statement, bylaws, or any of that. I think we need to keep things simple right now as we grow.

This weekend is the big American Cichlid Association convention in Washington, DC, and I know I will be in attendance. This is my first ACA ever, though I've known about it for many years. This is the first time it was close enough to me and I did not have any conflicts. Love a road trip! I will try to post pics here upon my return.

They Ought to be in Pictures

2011-02-15T17:15:00.007-05:00

Well, for the legions of folks NOT reading this blog (actually, I think of this as simply a journal to keep track of my tanks, so do not feel bad for being one of the millions of people not reading it) I will post pictures of my tanks as they are currently.

10-gallon: Figure-8 puffer, "Otis"

45-gallon: 2 P. leopoldi, 6 Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi (black neons). Will likely add more neons and also some rummynose if I can find some nice ones. Considering Corydoras sp. Will be adding domestic silver angel from 40-gallon that gazes longingly into their tank almost constantly.

40-gallon: One P. scalare (domestic silver, bred by me), Hyphessobrycon amandae (ember tetras) and Het rasboras (not sure exactly which species). Soon to add 6 juvenile Apistogramma cacatuoides, when the lone silver angel will go next door to be with his mates in the 45.

As you can see, the angel is always found on the far left side of the tank looking over.

37-gallon: Neolamprologus leleupi, young colony (I hope). This is the feisty bunch that I suspect were the downfall of my Moba frontosa fry in the 150, but who knows about that. They need to be by themselves, unless you have a large enough tank and appropriate feisty species that can put up with them. They are pretty in this white tank, at any rate. If they spawn for me I MIGHT forgive them.

The adorable kitchen goldfish tank. This tank now sports two silicone "jellyfish" that are tethered to an invisible length of fishing line buried in the substrate, and they float in the water. Goofy, but I like them!

150-gallon: 6 Cyphotilapia gibberosa (Kapampa), 9 Altolamprologus sp. (gold head compressiceps, mystery compressiceps, black calvus, inkfin calvus).

In Other News

2011-01-14T11:46:00.005-05:00

Well, if you go back you will see a posting I made about the 150-gallon and the rock situation. I am interested in taking out some of the smaller, lighter colored rocks and replacing them with more like the one on the far left side, a dark grey boulder-like stone, which is very large and a great color. I went to Pete Rose Landscape Supply today, where I got that rock, and their stock is very low... DUH! .... it is only the dead of winter and about 19 degrees. Who is outside building rock walls now? I was very disappointed, because when I get an idea in my head it is hard to shake, and I had already planned out how I was going to rearrange things. I will have to wait until the spring when they will have quite an assortment to choose from, and hopefully they will have the same type of stone I got there previously. I do love picking through rock piles!

Also, I have placed an order for six Apistogramma cacatuoides for my 40-gallon. I'm interested in a male and several females, so I figure this is the best way to get that, waiting to see what I get as they mature. I remind you that I am an aquarium snob and the cockatoo Apisto is one of the most popular and commonly available (a "beginner" Apisto), but I can't help but admire its looks, and I'd like to start out with them. They are a bit more adaptable to various aquarium conditions, and though I am keeping wild caught angels without difficulty I don't want to start my Apisto adventure with the most exotic or challenging. The bottom line is that I admire them quite a bit and I think they will make a very nice addition to the 40, which is a bit bare currently. There are no species that spend much time in the bottom areas, and there are lots of caves and zones for small cichlids to claim territory. At the same time I'm going to build my stock of ember tetras, which seem very happy in this tank and have great color. The rasboras may still get some size on them and I'm not planning on adding to their number at this point.

That is about it. Otis the F8 puffer continues to thrive and for some reason I'm able to grow Java moss in his tank now (it would turn brown and melt previously - go figure) and it looks cool, almost like a marine grass, since the tank is 'scaped with coral rock. The leopoldi angels are holding their own in the 37, with almond leaves tinting the water and willow sticks providing reedy interest for them. The frontosa, leleupi and Altolamps are all doing well in the 150, though the leleupi (no surprise) are quite boisterous and may be a bit much for the rest of the fish. I don't see any particular trouble, but they have a very dominant presence. This will change as the frontosa grow and they don't! I'm watching things carefully, like a mother hen, I tell you.

I have recently joined an aquarium club that is the spawn of the forum USAFishbox.com, and our local chapter has quite a few interested participants, even after just one meeting. It is something we've needed around here for a long time. We'll see how it goes as we get out of infancy and develop policy and routines.

Bubbles for the Advanced Aquarist

2011-01-14T11:08:00.005-05:00

I added a fake plant and some driftwood to the goldfish tank in the kitchen to give it a bit more interest, but I'm still trying to keep it very simple. I had a bubble wand on hand that would go across the entire back of the tank, and would solve the "issue" of no tank background. I do not want a background on this tank, but something to add visual texture would help, like a curtain of bubbles.

For the life of me I can't understand why goldfish and bubbles seem to go together. I can't recall the last time I deliberately put bubbles in an aquarium, except when I got these goldfish recently. For me, the ultimate aquarium snob, bubbles are just tacky, don't actually add oxygen to the water, outgas precious CO2 in planted tanks, disturb the fish, etc. I've gotten to a point where I strive for natural appearance in an aquarium, where it might look like a slice of nature. I don't want to see hoses, cords, plastic of any kind, or other evidence that the tank runs on electricity. Bubbles were abandoned years ago!

However, I keep trying to put bubbles in my goldfish tanks. I don't understand it, but it is what comes to mind and I can't shake it. There is something goofy and "plastic" about goldfish, maybe, that demands the decor follow suit. Years ago (many) I had a rather fun goldfish tank, my first aquarium, with plastic decor and marbles. I had mostly plastic kid's toys, with some cake decorating toppers and other items that reflected a childish playfulness. And a beer bottle reflecting.... what? I was 21! What do you want from me?

I ought to come up with something clever like that again for this tank, but I will need to search very carefully for just the right items. Meanwhile, I do not care for the lack of background, with the wall needing to be painted and all, yet I don't want to tape a piece of patterned plastic sheeting on the back of the tank. I don't want to see something taped on, like kindergarten art on a refrigerator. No matter how carefully you tape it on, you can always see the tape, and the background never lies smoothly, and it bugs me - I want to rip it off. This tank is not tucked in a corner, but is quite visible on most sides, and when you walk by it you can see the back of the tank, so there is no way I'd be able to ignore the imperfection.

What I'd like to get is an Oceanvisions background, which is applied with soapy water and a credit card to squeegee out the bubbles, so it is sticking down completely to the back of the tank. I will have to mail order that item. You take a sharp knife and cut away the excess, so it is completely adherent to the back glass and a part of it, though it can be removed easily later.

In the meantime, I spent quite a while trying to get the green Top Fin bubble wand to work. You know the kind I mean - it seems like it is made of dense styrofoam or something, in a tube shape, and can be connected together for varying lengths. No bubbles come out with the small pump, none with the medium sized pump, and none with the GIANT pump. OK, I'll try soaking it for a couple of hours. No deal. I blow into the air hose and can barely get any air to come out, so I know this was made too dense and won't ever work - product defect - and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has experienced this!

I poked holes into the entire length of the tube, and that, of course, did the job, but the bubbles are huge and disruptive, and I can't get the thing positioned properly, so I got annoyed. Who needs bubbles? I did have a round pressed sand airstone that I am now using on the far left that is adequately operated by a completely silent small air pump, so that will have to do for now. I did not like giving up, the ultimate competitor that I am (!) and purchased a flexible sinking bubble wand from Drs. Foster & Smith, my dear friends. This won't need suction cups and alleges to work right out of the box. We shall see. I think it would be nice to have a gentle curtain of small bubbles across the back of the tank, so that's what I'll have, dammit! What has come over me???

In other related news, I'm just waiting for the algae to take over this tank. It is the first tank I've had in many, many years, maybe ever, now that I think about it.... that gets natural sunlight to any degree. This tank gets full morning sun, and the fish really seem to like it. I think it is good for fish to get sun, which is what would happen to them in the wild. Well, not like these goldfish ever roamed the rivers and lakes of our planet, but you know what I mean! It is proven that fish raised in outdoor tanks in tropical locales have great color, especially goldfish, and when we put them in our tanks with only artificial lighting this great color fades. At any rate, when the sun starts moving across the tank the fish always keep themselves where the sunbeam is, like a dog or a cat might.

I am a notorious algae grower, and I currently have, for the first time ever, 5 tanks without algae problems! However, this is most certainly not going to be the case here, with the 20 in the kitchen. It looks pristine now, but just wait. I am going to do what I can, by not using the fluoro light in the hood, and by doing plenty of PWCs to keep nutrients in the water to a minimum, but if the tank belongs to me I can pretty much guarantee it will have algae at some point. I'm expecting the diatoms to arrive any time now, this being a new setup. More on that as the brown and then green slime develops....

20 high! 20 high!, 20 high!......

2011-01-11T18:02:00.011-05:00

I have placed the three wee goldfish in a nice new home - a 20-high in my kitchen. This is more than suitable for them right now, as they are pretty small still, as you can see in the pic. You can see I took the pic not too long after setting it up, as those are bubbles on the glass in the tank.

It is a very simple setup, little in the way of decor, and I may keep it that way - not sure. I like things simple and clean-looking these days with my tanks, though I still have the busy, heavily planted ones as well. Somehow the goldfish inspire a simple, minimalist look. There is a bit of Anubias in the far left corner, along with some smooth river rocks. An Eheim Ecco canister is running the show, set on the lower shelf of a wire plant stand that sits next to the tank. It is not very visible, which is important to me.

Here is a pic of the tank in the room, the kitchen eating area, where I think it fits in pretty well. It will be nicer when the fish get a bit more size on them, as they seem a little lost in there at the moment.

I like how there is just about no equipment visible, which is important to me.

Don't know what to do with the decor - bubble curtain across the back? I want to keep things simple, without a fussy fake background. A mirror background would be cool if I can find a piece of mirror the right size.

Goldfish

2010-12-31T09:39:00.004-05:00

The darling goldfish trio keeping the cycle in the 150 are now parked in a ten-gallon bare aquarium until I work something out for them. I am fond of them and they are very attractive specimens, but I just don't have a good place for them.

I could bring them to work with the mollies, but that is not a satisfactory arrangement - the tank at work is set up specifically for mollies, with some salt, which is fine for the goldfish, but it is too warm (80F) and has quite a lot of tender plants, which would be destroyed by the goldfish, most likely. The goldfish would also eat the molly babies that we have so far. That's not a huge issue, but the patients at work like seeing the babies in the tank, and it adds something to the mood of the tank to have little baby fish tooling around. I've become a snob, and though many people mix goldfish with other tropical species often enough without any apparent trouble, I think a goldfish tank ought to have sand, no live plants (except perhaps some hardy and thick-leaved Anubias), and be cool and unheated. The decor is lmited only by imagination and safety for the fish. You can get quite fun with it when it comes to goldfish, at least for me.

My coworker is interested in setting up a tank and it could be that she will get herself something set up soon, in which case she can start with these three goldfish. I recommended at least a 29-gal, which is going to seem big for these small fish, but they should grow, and she can get her cycle going, with assistance from some of the biobugs from one of my tank filters. She may be able to add a few more small fantails in the future, but goldfish need a lot of gallons per fish.

That said, I am going to do my best to keep my opinions to myself and let her do what she wants - if she decides to throw some tetras in there with them, so be it, and it could work out just fine - it is only for me, who fusses over every detail and agonizes over every tankmate, that things go south and fish die. People who have a more relaxed approach to life, or at least to aquariums, often have perfectly wonderful setups that go strong for years and years, even though they don't have experience with fishkeeping.

Anyway, the goldfish are a bit confused about the transfer, but they are doing fine so far. I have to say they made the perfect resident for the 150 all these months, almost four, while I have gotten my ducks in a row and waited for the funds to stock it like I wanted. They have held the cycle nicely and been charming little outgoing fellows.

The very best thing about them is that in this very large tank with rocks and hiding places they were absolutely no trouble to catch and remove once the time came. If I had tried using mollies or something else they'd have dashed for cover the second the net hit the water, but these guys just toddled right over to investigate - I had all three out and in a bucket in under 30 seconds. I was almost embarrassed for them, since even the simplest, smallest, most biologically primitive fish would hide from a "predator" like a net, but these goldfish, I suppose due to having been tank bred and raised by humans for a couple of centuries, no longer fear the net at all. Oh well - I am glad I chose to use them to keep the cycle in this tank. It worked out quite well indeed. Maybe someday I will convert the 150 over to a large goldfish tank and raise some quality supersized specimens of my own. They are enjoyable and easy to manage.

Mmmmmm... Tangy!

2010-12-31T08:54:00.007-05:00

Everyone is settling in very, very nicely. The Moba fry arrived healthy and with great color already, and the leleupi are a lovely shade of yellow. I have a pic but it is a horrible one. It shows the color on the Moba, and how nice and fat they are, but it is blurry, with reflections and noise. However, the room is dim, even during broad daylight, the tank is dim, and I'm having a bit of trouble getting a good shot of the tank. I think I need to get a very strong light and put it on the tank divider, facing down, and brightly illuminate the tank for photos. The frontosa prefer a dim tank, since their wild-caught parents resided in deep, dim waters of the lake, and it is preferable to keep a dim tank for them, but for photos I'd like to show them off.

All fish are eating well and come out when I approach the tank, which is good. Usually these fish will be skittish and hide, which may happen later, but for now they know I might put food in the tank for them. The additions have even brought out the Altolamprologus, which are flaring and showing good color in response to the competition. So far no true aggression, but mild posturing as everyone stakes out their territory. I am quite pleased.

I am not very happy with the rockwork, however. There is a lot of it, which is good for all of these fish, but especially for the leleupi and the Altolamps, since they spend a lot of time in the rocks. Visually, however, it is messy and contrived looking to me, and in my tanks I strive for a balance of visual appeal and appropriateness for the fish.

In this pic you can see a large mostly black rock, with a small black rock to the right of it, and those are the rocks I want to get more of, and remove a lot of the small, flat river rocks. They are pretty and would be great for any tank, but I don't like how messy it looks in this tank to have a million flat rocks the size of the palm of your hand. Visually distracting and cluttered. I know I can get more of the black rocks from the local landscape supply, where I got these in the photo, and I want to get a half dozen that are watermelon sized, at least. Large rocks. This will greatly reduce the caves available to the small fish, however. I can keep some of the smaller rocks and build caves behind the larger rocks, and, as usual, try to achieve balance of what I want to see in the tank versus what the fish need.

That is for sometime in the future. For now, I'm going to leave things alone and let all members settle in. I'm very glad to have the frontosa, finally, and my large Tanganyikan community is ready to go. This has been a setup I've always wanted to have, and I'm thrilled to finally be getting there. I am NOT known to be a patient person, especially when it comes to my aquariums, so for me to wait all this time, cooling my heels, is unprecedented, and I'm quite proud of myself!

Cyphotilapia frontosa "Moba"

2010-12-30T08:31:00.002-05:00

Well, kids, it is happening, finally - I'm getting my frontosa today. I found a source not too terribly far from me and will receive 10 Moba fry, plus 5 N. lelelupi.

I had decided not to get leleupi, one of my absolutely favorite Tanganyikan cichlids, since they most likely will be meals for the frontosa a year or two down the road, but it could be a while before that happens, and I will enjoy them in the meantime. There is a whole lot of room in this tank for the time being.

I will figure out something to do with the goldfish, though I wish I had a little tank for them, too. I have grown quite fond of the three of them - they are happy-go-lucky little bobbling things and I will miss them, though they sure don't belong in the 150, especially now.

I will post some pictures when I get them settled.

....yay.....

Angels in the River "Sticks"

2010-12-12T14:31:00.008-05:00

I redid the angel tank, the 37-gallon, and removed all remnants of how it was when goldfish were in residence. That means no more bubble wand (!!), no more plastic plants, no more solid glass chunks, etc. I harvested some willow and oak branches and created an environment that seems to have made the fish more comfortable. This is more like the area where they came from in the Rio Negro, with floating plants, tall weeds and branches. It has certainly encouraged them to come out more and they appear more relaxed, less spooked and likely to hide. The pic is from my phone, so my apologies for the quality of the shot, but you get the idea.

The hornwort is melting since I reduced the lighting, so that will soon be gone, but the anacharis seems okay. I might get some more Anubias sp. to put in there as well, since I'm not exactly sticking to the biotope here, though I am making an effort.

Altolamprologus Time

2010-11-20T19:54:00.006-05:00

Back again, and the Altolamps have established residence. It will be another month or so before I will have any frontosa, so last month I decided to take advantage of some very good prices at the LFS on some A. compressiceps and a trio of what are alleged to be A. calvus "inkfin." I am not sure about the compressiceps, though they ought to be gold heads, but at the small size it is very difficult to tell what you have when it comes to comps. I got three that I thought were small at 2", but then I got another pair of comps that are much smaller, and wonder if it was such a good idea. The three larger ones are out in the open, waiting for food, but the smaller ones hide and are chased into rock piles. I have one very nice calvus that stays out with the comps, so it would appear that I have 3 2" comps and one 1" calvus, though there are two more calvus in the rocks and two more comps in the rocks as well.

I simply adore these fish. They have to be, without question, my favorite genus of aquarium fish. I used to be partial to calvus, but the comps have their place in my heart as well. There is something bulldog-ish and pugnacious about their jaw and head shape that I think is great, and I could watch them endlessly.

My rationale was that if I had to wait so many months for the frontosa, which are almost guaranteed to be about 1.5-2" in size themselves when I get them, then that would give me time to grow out some Altolamps if I found some at a good price, which I did. Finding 3"+ adults is harder, and the price is high for them, typically, due to what has been a lot of food and care put into getting them to that size. I probably don't need to point out that this genus is veeeerrrry slow growing. Very. Startlingly. A fish a year old looks like fry of other types of fish. Therefore, I risk losing these fish if the frontosa grow up quickly and decide to make lunch out of the altolamps. I hope the rockwork I have in place is adequate.

Now, if you notice from prior posts, I have not mentioned the goldfish. I had three rather sizable fantail fellows, great chaps, full of energy and good humor, quite attractive, in fact, and three of the same sort but smaller versions. I had to remove the three larger ones, because they seemed quite interested in the comps and calvus, and I was worried they'd try to eat them. The goofy goldfish do not take the cues of these pint-sized cichlids (okay, fingernail sized....) and I felt they were being stressed. Plus, goldfish have completely wrong energy for this tank, but I kept them in place to feed bacteria until I got my fronts. I sold them back to the store, reluctantly, because I found them so attractive, but had nowhere for them to go. :(

Now I have the three small goldfish still in residence, but they do not belong there, sadly. I don't know if they are contributing the wrong thing to the tank, with their filthy goldfish-ness. I don't wish to detract from their appeal, because they are very nice specimens and have beautiful finnage and lively behavior, but they JUST DON'T GO with Altolamprologus. I am sure I'd be hauled away in chains if any cichlid snob happened by the house - you just don't do this kind of thing! However, for the time being I'm keeping them together, as incongruous as it appears. I don't think these three goldies provide the same bioload as 10 1-2" frontosa fry, but it sure helps.

I have tried to get some pictures of the new additions, but they dart into the rocks when I bring out the camera. I need to get them used to it. Another issue is that the tank is very dim, by design. Well, it is not so dim as to not be viewable, but it is dim for taking pictures. The ideal frontosa tank, to me, is dimmer than your average aquarium. What I will need to do is mount some sort of lamp inside on the glass divider to put extra light when I want to take photos. This will spook the fish, though....

As for lighting, there have been changes, and I've got mixed feelings. I had amazingly simple puck lighting in the hood, which consisted of a round "puck" comprised of 50-60 LED bulbs, connected with a detachable 12" cord, which was in turn connected to another puck, etc. I had about 6 of them dotted around the inside of the hood. They provided almost a spot-lit effect, pretty dim, but nifty looking. You could unscrew and remove any individual puck without putting out the rest of the string.

Well, it was designed for under-cabinet use in the kitchen, and I suppose the humidity of an aquarium hood was too much. One by one each puck started going out. There was no scorched cord, no short that I could see, nothing visibly amiss, but obviously this was not going to work. I decided to rethink the prospect. I once again went online and began shopping for LED fixtures meant for the aquarium. Sticker shock! Really? Must I pay such prices for a light fixture? I suppose at some point they will become more popular and the price will go down, but honestly, I can't justify it. I'd sooner take one of my old fluoro fixtures and stick it up there.

Fortunately, or not, the Christmas Season is upon us, being a couple of days past Halloween at the time I was looking into things. The other fortunate thing, or not, is that LED Christmas lights are wildly popular now, and you are almost criminal for buying the regular old-fashioned kind these days. LED = Green, and, like Kermit says, it is not easy being green. Expensive, really. However, a string or two of LED lights, simple round balls, was not too much for me compared to the cost of a full LED aquarium fixture. For stringing around my tree and possibly (or not) throwing out with the tree, it is highway robbery. I digress.....

I spotted, at a very reasonable price, a ROPE LIGHT that had white LED bulbs inside. I have a rope light already, purchased several years ago with the intent of lively holiday decoration, but never used it. I plugged it in and it looks downright yellow for the aquarium application. The box of Christmas lights, all kinds of them, specify whether they are "warm white" or "bright white," so I chose bright, and installed the rope inside my hood. It came with the clips that hold the rope, so I had everything I needed. The light is perfect, though a bit on the dim side. How about two? Okay, better, but still...... I wound up with one of those net lights that you plop upon your unsuspecting azalea or boxwood, making your neighbors think (lol) that you individually strung your bushes with lights. I stapled one of those (LED, bright white) up inside the hood, and now we are, as they say, cooking with gas.

These lights, rope and net, all promise indoor as well as outdoor applications, meaning they ought to be able to handle some humidity, nay, pounds of snow and subsequent melt, or rainstorms, so they ought to work inside my hood, right? Let's hope. I am certain that they will last a few months, at least until the Christmas aisles are all vanished from the stores and the rain boots and fertilizer is on sale at Target, and then they'll give out. We shall see. I am determined not to pay several hundred dollars for an LED fixture for this aquarium, however.

Waiting for the Money Train

2010-09-29T20:18:00.006-04:00

Who isn't, right? Well, the tank is completely 100% ready to be stocked with frontosa, and it has been for a couple of weeks now. One day all parameters just magically slid right into place, and we are set. The pH is perfect (8.1) and I've got a hint of nitrate and zero ammonia and nitrite. Hardness is up there where I want it, and I am very pleased with the buffering properties of aragonite sand, and whatever calciferous rocks I have in there (not many - going for visual appeal and most calciferous rocks are too coarse and/or geometric for my taste).

I have now solved the problem of my background, and it worked out quite well in the end. One thing keeping me from taking the plunge (other than having enough money gathered together) and getting my Africans is that every time I walked by the tank I was bothered by the reflection of white sand on the back glass. You will recall that I simply had the plastic paper type of black background, taped to the back outside of the tank.

I kept kicking myself for not handling the background problem when the tank was empty, which is the rational and sensible time to do it. The idea of making a custom 3D background, all the rage on the aquarium forums, just gave me a headache to think about, and besides that I would always know it was not really rock, but faux rock. That, over time, would begin to bother me for sure.

I had the idea I was going to get sheets of Plexiglas and smear silicone on them, and then sprinkle black sand onto the silicone, and create a matte background that way. This could simply be cured and slipped into the tank as-is, without draining the tank and starting things all over.

I went to the hardware store and was alarmed at the cost of the Plexiglas. I saw next to the Plexiglas was some plastic board, which is hollow and made of styrene, I think. Very light and can be cut to fit with a hobby knife. I was pondering the idea of this material and its safety in an aquarium when the concept of slate crept back into my mind.

I had been to the landscape supply yard several times this summer and did not find any flat rock that was thin enough (I thought) for this application. After debating about my silicone and sand concept for a while I abandoned this and decided to head back over there and go ahead and get some slate - I knew I could get pieces 24" x 12", and that meant I needed 4 pieces, leaving room for the outflow box (this hides my intakes) and giving me a couple of extra inches that was not critical. I could place them along the back of the tank without having to drain the tank and starting over. They could be propped along the back and give a sheer solid wall effect that would not be completely natural looking, since the slate pieces are rectangles and very obviously cut by hand, but I thought they would blend in and be unobtrusive. They would be made of actual rock, and I preferred this.

I went to the landscape supply and picked out 4 slabs, and brought them home. They were very cheap. I scrubbed and rinsed, scrubbed and rinsed for a while and then happily began to install them.

Whoops! I know my tank is 24" tall and because of the large canopy I did not have to worry about the slate sticking up out of the water just a bit, right? Wrong! I forgot about the thick glass center brace that covers about the middle third of the tank. This means the slate was too tall, except on each far side. Ugh. You can't imagine my frustration. I just wanted a simple fix and plopping these straight pieces in side by side was going to be perfect. Now what? I hauled them out and decided I'd use a small hand held sledge type hammer (no shortage of hammers around here, of all shapes and sizes) and chip off the tops of these pieces. I thought about using a saw with a diamond blade, but that would be a delay, and I am not having delays once I get something started!

Also, I thought a jagged edge on the top would be a nice effect if it would be visible. I started by placing one of the slabs (1" thick) on the bottom step of the porch and stood on it, then leaned over and began to strike the top edge with my hammer. Nothing. Harder and harder I struck, getting out not a small amount of frustration on this stone. Nothing. The pieces were too thick. I tried to find the heavy chisel (it is actually a splitting maul but has worked well for me on stone in the past) and called my husband in desperation in case he knew where it was. To his credit, he did not even ask me why I wanted it! He could hear the stress in my voice and decided to leave the subject be for the time being. He gave me some clues and I hunted it down. This produced no results, either.

Well, the last strike of my hammer did not chip off anything from the top, but the entire slab broke in half on the diagonal! This was not a good thing. I needed 4 pieces, and now I was down to 2. I can't stack a triangular piece with the large side on top to match up with the opposite piece, if you see what I mean, so I was quite bummed.

Well, previously I had attempted to split blue stone slabs with a chisel, and though it worked to some extent, the pieces never split perfectly in half due to the fissures and other defects in the stone, and I gave up on that type of stone. I decided I'd give this a try on the slate. Well, let me tell you, slate splits beautifully! I had a 24" x 12" x 1" slab and next thing you know I had TWO 24" x 12" x 0.5" slabs! It is a lot of fun if you are into that type of thing. I don't know why, but it is very satisfying.

Anyway, I split the remaining three slabs and I wound up with more slate than I needed, and thinner pieces, which was better. The other good thing is that once they were split to half-inch thickness I could chip off the tops just fine, and I was able to line them up across the back of the tank without any difficulty. Whew!! Sometimes I get lucky, let me tell you.

You can see in the pic above (still home for the goldfish, which are going to go to a tank in my office at work when I get my frontosa) the finished product, with the slate and the jagged edges on top. The far right piece is one that broke accidentally on the diagonal, but I don't mind it and it is where I will suction my powerhead that is to go on that side of the tank. I am very happy with how this turned out, and am also happy that I have been able to wait an entire month to allow the tank to settle in somewhat. Another month would not hurt, and with my schedule as it is right now it may, in fact, be another month before I exchange goldfish for frontosa, as well as a trio or two of compressiceps, I think.

Please do not forget to admire how I have painstakingly managed to hide equipment. The outflow box on the far left that houses my intakes and heater is completely hidden in shadow, and the outflow pipes are next to it, but you can't see those, either, due to careful placement of my puck lights. This is a huge accomplishment for someone who really hates to see any equipment at all, not to mention this being a bare tank without decor to hide things like I have always done in the past with ease. Driftwood and plants have always been key players, but I don't have those in this tank, so hiding equipment has been on my mind a lot in the planning of this tank. It still looks bare and unfinished, but I can picture the blue and black frontosa gliding about, and it is going to look great someday!

Please answer in the form of a question.....

2010-09-01T21:40:00.005-04:00

Still waiting. This is actually not so bad - the fish are happy and cavorting around, and I don't have to do hardly anything. No wringing of hands, no anxious examinations of potential signs of illness, nobody off their feed, no algae, no cloudy water, just status quo. When the Africans come in it will be a different story, and I will be Nervous Nellie once again, but for now we just test the water and wait.

My husband had a suggestion, and it really demonstrated how much he has learned about a hobby in which he takes ZERO interest, and often seems to baffle him. He wants me to put a rock or two in the 150 from another tank, or run one of my many duplicate filters on the 150 for a little bit and try to jump-start the bacterial colonies. What brilliance! I have been avoiding doing this very thing (I have not cycled a tank the old-fashioned way in YEARS!) but I was actually wanting to see how it went, rocking it old school, so to speak. I just think it shows that some of this stuff is really sinking in with Rick, and I was very impressed that he came up with this (so was he).

Anyway, I decided to humor him and I put in two smallish rocks from the 40-gallon leopoldi tank and we will continue to test the water, and Rick can see for sure what affect this will have. I was a bit leery about moving these rocks, since this tank has quite a few Malaysian Trumpet Snails that I don't want in the 150, but I scraped everything off the rocks that I could see. Likely as not the 150 will become infested with MTS anyway - such is life with this particular snail species. I don't have any other large rocks that I am willing to move that might have less potential for transporting vermin. I mean snails.....

I could move the large glass chunks from the 37-gallon, but they do not have very much surface area in spite of their size, being completely nonporous and smooth, and also the leopoldi pair in that tank has just now started coming out into the open since being moved in there a few weeks ago, and if I go rummaging around and removing structures they will take to hiding again, and I hate to stress them. Wild caught fish have to be handled with kid gloves sometimes. I sincerely doubt I will get a spawn from them, but I needed to thin out the group in the 40-gallon and I have become so attached to these fish that I'm content to keep them in their own tank (I am positive it is a male and female, with one male and two females in the 40-gallon, plus the domestic of unknown sex).

So, we'll see what happens with the small rocks, and maybe I will move one of the extra canister filters from the 40-gallon to the 150 for a week or so and see what it does to the nitrite value, mainly so Rick can see that he was right, and validate this little chemistry/biology lesson. I think every science class in middle school ought to cycle a fish tank. Things like temperature and pH will influence the progress of the cycle, and you can get as geeky as you like with it depending on the age group. It would also drastically limit the Failed Fishkeepers of the Future. This group is vast, an epidemic, really, and though a reduction in membership would mean far, far fewer cheap tanks at yard sales and on Craig's List, more people would find success and we could raise the geek quotient. I'm just sayin.

I have not mentioned Otis the puffer in a while, but he's The. Best. Fish. Ever. He's fat and a good solid 2", probably his full size. He enjoys his brackish tank that is open on all sides to the room, and is wickedly overfiltered with an AquaClear 70. Yes, I said 70. As mentioned long ago I had great plans to transition Otis to a 20-tall setup, which is a huge space for a 2" fish, but after having him for at least 18 months now there is no question that more water is better for puffers. He is a voracious eater, and even has nipped me when he's hungry and I reach in to do maintenance. He is always hungry, by the way. He has nice bright blue eyes and an almost fluorescent green pattern to his Figure-8, so I know he's healthy. His tooth plates seem well maintained, with about 90% of his diet being snails, which I cultivate avidly. Ramshorn snails, specifically. Woefully, MTS are much too hard for him to manage, but if he could eat them I'd have plenty.

I have coral rock in the tank with a bit of java moss that is miserable, and one remaining sprig of java fern that is perhaps even more miserable than the moss. I don't know why I can't grow brackish-friendly plants in this tank, but I have a horrible time. The tank is lit by a 13w CF bulb, plus overhead fluoro lighting sometimes during the day, the temperature is good, etc., so I'm not sure of the problem, but I don't sweat it too much. The tank looks like a SW setup with the coral anyway, so plants don't look particularly correct, though the java fern has a marine algae-like appearance that works. I have made arches and caves in the middle, so he goes through them to get from one side to the other. This gives him something to do. I think it would be good to build up the central structure a bit higher for more architectural interest for him. As long as I rearrange the furniture from time to time he is kept content. I am enjoying this fish immensely, in case you can't tell! I worried about getting him at first, since I'd never kept brackish and I'd never kept a species with such particular needs before, but it is working out okay.

Jeopardy Music = Waiting

2010-08-29T11:00:00.005-04:00

Nothing new to report - the tank is experiencing a nice nitrite spike, and in the presence of nitrate that means we won't have much of a wait. The goldfish are happy and look healthier than ever, with careful PWCs and a LOT of water for them.

Many, many people disagree with using fish to cycle a tank, and woe unto you if you dare discuss doing this on an aquarium forum!! (Go ahead.... I dare you! :)).

There are many species of fish that cannot tolerate this process, but there are several that do. I have used ammonia to cycle a tank, the rotting shrimp method, fish food with no fish method, etc., and in a small tank frankly I would not use fish to cycle it unless they were extremely small ones (like Endler's or very small guppies) - it is close quarters and the effects of ammonia and nitrate are quite stressful to the hardiest of species. I have enough tanks running that I could start a decent sized tank with filthy filter media from my other tanks, but I don't have enough to get a 150-gallon started, and I have found, in this particularly large tank, that hardy fish tolerate the cycle.

So we will sit back and wait. This last part of the cycle can linger on and on for weeks, so patience is tested at this stage. Patience is not one of my strongest traits (!!) but there is no way I am going to put an expensive Tanganyikan in this tank until the water is very stable. They are extremely sensitive. When I was keeping calvus (one of my favorite tanks setups) even though I took care to keep the water change water as close as humanly possible to the tank water, with once weekly changes on a strict schedule, the fish would lie down on their sides on the sand every time I changed the water. Obviously there was some parameter that did not match, and the slightest thing sent them into dramatic exclamations. This did not seem to have any long-term deleterious effect on the fish, but I always felt horrible. I did not have this happen with N. brichardi/pulcher or with N. leleupi.

At any rate, the goldfish are showing no fin damage, no change in activity (can't get a decent still shot of them ever) and are eating like pigs so I'll soldier on. They look pretty cool in this tank, and I try to imagine what it would look like if they were much larger in this same tank (it would look COOL) but that is a tank for another time. This one is slated for Africans, specifically deep water Lake Tanganyika Africans, so I look forward to the day in the coming weeks when I can proudly post pics of my shiny new black and white with blue striped baby frontosa. Or Kodak box yellow leleupi. Or golden-headed compressiceps... spotted calvus... Ahhhhhh.....

Goldfish? Dew Whut?

2010-08-21T20:49:00.003-04:00

Here are some goldfish in the new setup until I decide what to do about the Africans. The pH is very nice and steady at 8.1, compared to 7.4 out of the tap. This is completely the result of the aragonite sand. I'm going to leave the goldies in residence for a couple of weeks and then order my frontosa.

I'm reading more and more about them and it seems that the best bet is to have no tankmates - they can be either nippy and damage the trailing fins, stressing the fronts, or they will be too small and become meals for the fronts.

I think I might try a colony of N. leleupi, some of my favorite Lake Tang species, and see how it goes, especially while the fronts are small.

Liz + Rocks = OCD

2010-08-13T21:31:00.008-04:00

I redid the rocks, again. I think if I'm not soaked to the armpit and pruny then I just don't feel like it has been a good day.

I scared up a few much larger stones to complement my plethora of small ones. I spent several hours stacking, restacking, adjusting, adding, removing, and scratching my chin and squinting at the tank.

Now I am happier with how it looks, though a rock background would really make me happy. That, however, is for another day. I will let the tank run for a while, but possibly I'll add some black mollies to see how things go. I have cycled this large tank with fish before, since the ammonia and nitrite are so diluted that the fish do not seem to stress or suffer, it seems.

I do not want to spend $$$ to ship delicate species (seems like Lake Tang fish are much more sensitive than other cichlid species, and thereby are always more expensive) and have them all keel over after being added to the tank. I need to put some inexpensive fish in there to ease my mind that all is well. The problem is that I will then need to remove said "test" fish and that might be quite a trick. Maybe I'll use the goldfish in my 37g and be sure they do okay, and they are easy enough to net out as they come bobbling over to see what that net thing is all about. I'll sit tight for now.

Leopoldi Crammed into a Closet

2010-08-12T21:06:00.004-04:00

Here is a pic of where the P. leopoldi now reside, though it is too small for them all and I'll need to split up the group in the near future. I like this tank, in spite of my previous comments about all my tanks being overplanted with no room for fish. This is a 40-gallon breeder and was the quarantine tank for these leopoldi when I got them.

Het rasboras and ember tetras are in residence as well as a balloon ram. I'm not proud to own such a fish (I'll admit I'm a snob and prefer my aquarium fish to be close to what is found in the wild - long-finned this, albino that do not appeal to me typically), but she was very pretty and I've never had luck keeping rams and hoped I could do it this time. I lost the male but she's been holding her own for quite a while now.

There is also one domestic silver/wild type in with the leopoldi and you can hardly tell him apart from them, except he has red eyes, leopoldi do not, and his nose has a bit of an upturn, whereas theirs is turned down a bit.

Apocalypse

2010-08-12T19:59:00.020-04:00

The 150 is emptied and reconfigured. I had quite an adventure in the process. Netting out each species for relocation to various locales, arranging meetings with other hobbyists and even turning in unwanted individuals for credit at the LFS, all accomplished in a day. Then I had to deal with the play sand. I highly recommend regular play sand for most any tank - it is very fine and soft so appropriate for the delicate barbels of catfish.

Aside: This is a very important aspect to keeping cories, in particular, and one that is very often overlooked! If you have cory cats in a tank with gravel, you will likely find the cories have a shorter lifespan, unless you observe meticulous maintenance habits. These fish sift through sand in the wild and they will very much appreciate sand in their habitat. There are many aquarium sands that are sharp and can damage barbels, so choose carefully. Play sand is one that works very, very well.

Back to the story! Why, you ask, do I not simply keep the play sand for my Africans? Well, originally I had planned black sand substrate, so I intended to remove every speck of play sand. Somewhere along the line when I bailed on my background project and realized I would have a solid black background and dark rocks, I decided black sand would be overkill and white sand would be preferable. Since my rocks are river rocks and are not calciferous limestone (like I was planning at one time) I decided to use aragonite sand, which is a buffering substrate, and will help me maintain a pH closer to 8.

I recognize that the fish I will likely keep have been tank bred in the US and may never have seen water as alkaline as their wild cousins in Lake Tanganyika, but it is easy enough to use a buffering sand and give the alkalinity a boost. Couldn't hurt. I do not have plans to go to great efforts to buffer my water at this point. The other benefit is that the aragonite sand I purchased (CaribSea) is white white white, and offers a very nice contrast.

Ok. Here's how it went. The tank was emptied and cleaned out.

The filters were also cleaned down to new floss and completely scrubbed out to eradicate the MTS infestation, and replaced under the tank. Heavy job! On the left is the Rena Filstar XP4, and on the right is the Fluval FX5. On the far left is my CO2 tank and regulator, which is parked in storage there for now, as I won't be using it on this tank in the near future. I am keeping the pH monitor running, as that is handy.

I used the overflow box from when the tank was drilled to hide my large and unsightly filter intakes. If you look closely in the center of this photo you can barely make out the horizontal slits cut into the overflow box. The vertical PVC pipe is the strainer for the drain in the bottom of the tank, which came in VERY handy during the emptying and cleaning of this tank. At the beginning of this blog you can see how this was configured, with a hose bib on the outside of the stand. I connect a garden hose to that and turn the hose valve to drain the tank out the door, and I used another garden hose connected to the outdoor faucet and washed out the tank, with the water going down the drain. Love that. The overflow box is not siliconed in place, but stands quite firmly in place with tiny gaps next to the glass to allow better water flow. I may wind up adding more slits to this box to increase flow to the intakes, but we will see how the filtration looks. I have quite a bit of flow in this tank and don't think the box gets in the way too much. It is very effective at hiding the intakes, and it blends right in with the black external background.

Here's where I started stacking rocks and adding sand.

The sand was just a bit problematic. I read up on it and decided not to rinse it first, since I wanted to keep all of the buffering properties. Everyone says how it "clears up in a few hours...." It didn't. I had to drain and refill and rinse the sand in the tank after all. This is not much of a problem, though, with my drain hose as described above.

Cloudy. Hmm. Better drain and fill one more time. This time I'll use the Python and fill it from the sink as well as use a garden hose from outside to make things move along more quickly. Oops.

Oh well - no worries! We have technology to suck water off the floor! *Ahem*

Anyway, I kept at it and finally it started clearing, and I started playing with rocks. I have to say I'm not entirely happy with these rocks, as they are too small and it makes the tank look cluttered in spite of the spare decor.

I redid it several times. And redid it several more times.... I had to stop because the wet arm and sopping shirt gets annoying after a while.

OH! I forgot about the lighting! I'm very pleased with that. I used "puck" lights from an under cabinet fixture. Each puck is daisy-chained together so you can add or remove a fixture as necessary. The fixture I have came with 4 pucks, each connected with a removable wire about 12" long. I installed them randomly in the hood. Each puck is about 3" in diameter and has I don't know how many individual LED lights.

Here is a shot of the lights. I have since taken out all but two of them (this tank needs to be relatively dim), though the fixtures are still there. The frame is screwed in and connected by the wires, but the actual light component can be unscrewed and removed, without the other pucks going out. Love this fixture, and it was under $20, unlike the LED fixtures made for aquariums ($$$$). I will install a small fan under the hood to reduce humidity that will no doubt damage this fixture.

I finally got the water to clear up after 4 days. Again, I'm not entirely happy with this tank at this point. I wish I had a DIY internal background, either some sort of real rock veneer or a carved styrofoam background coated in concrete and painted to look like rock, but I did not have the energy to deal with the styrofoam method and I could not find thin rocks that would 1) not be too heavy, 2) not break the bank, and 3) not look contrived or too deliberate. I don't really like the rock decor but they are growing on me.

I will put a trio of N. leleupi in there to start things off. Their bright yellow is going to show up very well in this tank, and they will love the rocks.

A word about the rationale behind how this tank is being 'scaped: C. frontosa are deep water Lake Tanganyikan fish and are accustomed to dim conditions. Again, I realize the fish I'll likely get have never seen the lake, and may have spent their entire fry-hood under fluoro lights, but I do think they will feel more comfortable in conditions closer to that of the lake. If you look on You Tube for Lake Tanganyika videos you will see what I mean. There are rocks and sand and that's pretty much it. Few plants, and certainly no driftwood and flower pots, lol.

I have kept aquariums for nearly 30 years now and as I've matured I've been leaning towards natural looking aquascapes, with lots of plants and wood and rocks and such, which is pretty, but it is one of the reasons I took down the 150 - I'm tired of the fussiness and overcrowded way I tend to keep aquariums: lots of lush plants layered together with artfully arranged driftwood and rocks, and hardly room for the fish. It is pretty but I yearn for a minimalist tank that is simple and clean. This will certainly be that! More later.

Switching Gears

2010-07-30T14:47:00.004-04:00

I'm afraid it's time to take it down! The 150 planted tank is scheduled for a makeover. I really hate to do it but I have to admit I'm bored. The setup practically runs itself and all I do is feed and do water changes. The fish are healthy and they all get along great. I've built my stock up and it is a very agreeable community. To recap, the inhabitants include:

5 wild caught P. leopoldi angels (2 males, 3 females as far as I can tell)
1 wild-type domestic silver leftover from some I bred
1 festivus cichlid (plant eater to some degree!)
School of loretto tetras that inhabit the upper strata
School of cardinal tetras and rummynose tetras that inhabit the mid and lower regions
School of C. trilineatus
School of C. sterbai

I now plan to completely take this down to empty and start over with a Lake Tanganyikan cichlid setup. I have kept Tangs before (species tanks of N. brichardi and pulcher at separate times, A. calvus and N. leleupi) and have always loved them more than cichlids from the other lakes (which I have also kept!). Now that I have a large tank, I'm interested in, of course, C. frontosa. You could have predicted that, right?

The plan will be to remove everything from the current setup (always save your decor, even if you don't think you'll use it again - you likely will) and net out the darling fishies. I would love to sell them to a hobbyist but I don't want to ship them and if I don't hear anything from my ad on Craig's List and the Exotic Fish Forum (many members local to me) then I'll take them to my LFS for credit. This is the shop where I got the leopoldi in the first place, so I know he knows how to care for them properly, and will hopefully find a proper home for them.

These are not very commonly imported and I would love someone to have them that knew about them and could look after them properly. If they are to spawn (which would be a real boon since the babies would go for a great price with their heritage) then you'd need to get the pH down, way down, in the 5's, and that would likely do the trick, at least according to Heiko Bleher, who was the one to positively ID these fish for me when he happened upon pics of them on a forum. If they are kept in higher pH they won't spawn, but they school together and live quite well in a group. For anyone who knows angels this is pretty much impossible when you have a group of mixed sexes. It is really neat to be able to keep a graceful group of good-sized angels together.

Anyway, after the fish are out and the sand is mostly scooped out I can then take a hose and flush out the last of the playsand down the drain my husband most thoughtfully installed in the bottom of the tank, since it had a hole drilled there already. It has a spigot on the side of the tank stand and if you attach a hose to that and run it out the door, you can scrub and flush out the tank to your heart's delight and not have to do any siphoning. I don't want a single speck of white sand to remain. In my 37g goldfish tank I had the same idea but was not quite able to get every bit of white sand out, and even though it looked like I had, now that I have black sand in there the white flecks are everywhere.

Then, I want to tip the tank on its side on the stand with the back of the tank facing down, and the top of the tank facing the room. This way I can silicone large flat, thin rocks to the back of the tank. I have visited the local landscape supply and they have some very nice rocks used as a veneer for faux rock walls and for fireplaces and such, and though they are heavy they would be appropriate. They will also create very subtle cave structures for the Altolaprologus calvus (or compressiceps) that I plan to add.

Where things get creative and perhaps impractical is that I plan to reinstall one of the overflow boxes in a rear corner to hide the filter intakes, outflows and the heater. It is black acrylic and was in place when I bought the tank, since it was drilled for a sump. I took out the boxes and siliconed thick glass over the holes since I was not planning that type of filtration due to my plans for plants. Now I plan to reinstall one of the boxes after sawing slits or drilling holes into it at the location of the intakes. There are already slots in the top where the outflow would be. I'm not sure if this will work or if it will impede filtration too much. I have a Fluval FX5 and a Filstar XP4 for filtration. I can also install a powerhead at the opposite rear corner to improve flow if that is a concern.

This overflow box I plan to disguise by either spreading it with silicone and sprinkling black sand on it, or gluing flat rocks to it like the background (that sounds better). This really depends on what rocks I plan to go with and how smoothly that procedure goes. I have read so many articles and forum threads about DIY backgrounds that I'm exhausted with the possibilities. Many people create them using styrofoam, using knives or saws to carve rocky shapes into it, going over it with a heat gun to soften the edges, then coating it with pigmented concrete or the like, to have a lightweight and removable background. Truth be told, if I'm going to be laying tarps down, with dust and bits of stuff flying around the house, cutting, drilling, sawing and mixing concrete I'd at least like to have a new kitchen when I'm done!!

This type of project is definitely up my alley, I must say, but these days I just don't have the energy or time to do it right. I also very much prefer the idea of natural rock. I know this is a somewhat permanent addition to the back of the tank, but I am not concerned. I can razor the rocks off just like I razored the overflow boxes off, and even if I go back to a planted tank the rocks will certainly be appropriate there as well, or even if I kept oscars or goldfish, for that matter.

So, I will then have black sand and a rocky background, and hidden equipment (huge, huge issue for me when aquascaping!). Next I will need a few large rocks for decor for the open part of the tank. This tank is going to have a simple, spare look to it, however, so I don't need much. What I'd like to use is limestone, since it will buffer the water and perhaps obviate the need for additives to boost the alkalinity. The tap water is already moderately hard with a pH of 7.4, so it won't take much to get things up to 8, but that's where I'll need to be.

At the same landscape supply yard (Pete Rose's in Richmond - awesome place) I found some limestone rocks that would be perfect, and they also contain tiny fossils that would likely show up very well when wet. These rocks are variable in height and dimension, but look easily stackable. I want to be sure to get at least one relatively tall rock or rock stack, since in such a deep tank you need something to draw the eye up to the top of the tank. I don't need but a few of these rocks, then I'll be done.

We are heading up to the mountains of Virginia for a day hike on Sunday and I hope to collect some rocks there as well, so my final decision will depend on what I see up there. Mostly what you see there are round river rocks, which may or may not work for me, but I'll see what I can find.

Once the tank is up and running I will want to stock with about 8 frontosa (not sure which type) as well as calvus or compressiceps, depending on availability and variety. I much prefer inkfin calvus but they might be practically invisible in this dark tank, so I'm leaning towards some of the lighter morphs, or the compressiceps species. This is going to be costly! I might have to do it in phases, depending on available funds and what I can get for my current stock upon turning them in.

I will take pictures along the way and we will see how it goes!

Festi-Wha??? Or, The World's Worst Blogger Picks Up the Story

2010-04-02T08:58:00.011-04:00

Well, back again for another update. The festivus in the 37-gallon DID spawn for me, and in a big way. There must have been 200 babies. Note in the photo the clamped fins and stress bars - the parenting thing really taxes the resources of these fish, apparently. They are very nervous, and prone to attack anything, including the Mag Float algae scraper, siphon hose, my hand, whatever. This is serious business.

The rummynose, which I have determined to be H. bleheri , were moved down to the 150 and are very, very happy there. They school with the cardinals and all is well. I very much like the visual interest their markings add to the tank, especially in contrast to the vivid deep colors of the cardinals. It has now been 3 months or so and I have not lost a single one of them, and have not lost any cardinals, either, which is unusual for me!

Back to the festivus. The babies grew, and the parents became more and more nervous as they spread out, in spite of the adults' efforts to keep them corralled. I don't know if I mentioned that also residing in the 37 is a Chaetostoma sp., whom I have named Chet, and I'm baffled as to why I purchased him! He's adorable, that's for sure, but it was an impulse buy, and anyone who has been in the hobby for any length of time knows that impulse buys are doomed to failure, in most cases. Chet would prefer cool waters with lots and lots of current, and though there is a lot of water movement in this tank the temperature is a bit high. However, I needed it so for the babies, which will grow faster and reach sale size more quickly.

Things were rolling along like this for a good while until the adult festivus, whom I dubbed "The Thugs" (I am not fond of these fish, having a thick, pugnacious appearance and aggressive personalities) spawned again. This caused confusion, and they started eating some of their first spawn in response to the arrival of their new batch of wigglers. No biggie, I thought, since there were WAY too many babies to grow out in this tank anyway, and I wanted to see what would happen. I did not have another tank to move the babies into, and no time to raise fry myself - if I was going to keep a breeding pair I require them to raise the babies, like the angels, Agnes & Frank, did so well.

Well, they ate the second spawn, and over time, perhaps several weeks, I began to lose more and more fry from the first spawn. At this point I was rather disgusted. Not only with these fish, which I did not particularly like (I DO, however, very much like the festivus that remains in the 150 with the wild angels, as I believe that fish is a different species and has a lovely, graceful appearance and a peaceful personality), but also with the tank itself, which had become overrun with algae of every description, and finally cyanobacteria. I have to blame the 24/7 lighting and the excessive waste in the tank due to the feeding of so many fry. You wind up putting a lot more food in the tank so all the babies will get access to it, and even with frequent PWCs you could tell there were way too many nutrients. I got some anacharis (not one of my favorite plants but in the right conditions grows like a weed and sucks up a ton of nutrients from the water column) to hopefully help with the algae and provide cover for the fry. This was left floating, and worked pretty well, thriving on the lighting and the abundant nutrients.

Also, pretty much the minute The Thugs spawned the first time they terrorized Chet, driving him into his cave network just about 100% of the time. I dropped food back there and he was eating, and after about a week of debating what other tank he could go in, I decided to just leave him be and see how he fared, and keep him there until I decided what to do. He adapted well and seemed to do fine. He was not a good choice for these cichlids, though I thought he'd make a perfectly fine tankmate for them.

Next, the cyanobacteria began taking over, and the tank looked a wreck. It was getting too hard to keep things under control. I made a big decision: I would take The Thugs in to the LFS for cash or credit, raise whatever babies were left, and then turn the tank into a goldfish tank. Raising fry seems profitable to me, as I did get good money for the large spawn of the angelfish Agnes & Frank, but I think it is a wash in the end after you consider the cost of food and increased PWCs. It's fun, but I don't really have the time, and I basically need my tanks to run themselves.

I thought I'd try to leave the anacharis and anubias in the tank (goldfish are notorious plant eaters but may leave these species alone), remove the driftwood, which was decaying and contributing in a big way to the excess DOCs in this tank, and switch to black sand. There is a black background, and I thought this would be a nice contrast to whatever goldfish I wind up getting. I can then lower the tank temperature to better suit Chet, and hopefully he can dwell with a couple three fancy goldfish in peace.

I caught The Thugs without difficulty and took them in. I am fortunate to have three LFS that will take my fish just about anytime, so that was done, and I was glad to be shed of these two. Sometimes certain fish just don't make me happy, and these two were those fish. I returned to the tank to assess how many babies were left, and was surprised to see I had only three left! Oh well. What now. Do I keep this tank going and raise the three? Get rid of them (they are about 5 mm long), OR...... put them in the 40-gallon angel tank?

Now, about that tank. I am sad to say that I lost Frank last week, apparently suffering from dropsy or something similar. The conditions in this tank are pristine, with very heavy plantings and a rigorous maintenance schedule, but for whatever reason he got sick and died. I could have removed him to a hospital tank and medicated him, but I have not had success in the past doing this, and you have to consider the stress of moving him combined with the cost of medications and time and energy, and..... oh well. He gave me one fabulous spawn with Agnes and that was a great experience. I still have one of their progeny in the 150 with the angels, and he is now about as big as the leopoldi. He's a very handsome fish and I'm proud of him.

Anyway, I thought I'd take Agnes in as well and completely restock the 40, but then I decided that she's such a nice fish (very attractive, IMO) that I'd just get her some schooling fish, maybe some type of catfish, and create a mixed community around her. The plants are doing very well in this tank and I hated to redo anything. SO, to make a long story longer, I decided to put the three festivus babies in with Agnes and hope for the best. The plants are so dense that I am hoping at least one will survive, and maybe I can keep one in there. This is depending on the plant-eating tendency of the fish, however. In the 150 the festivus has caused a great deal of damage to the "red rubin" sword plant that is a centerpiece of the tank, and there are holes in most of the other plants. They also tend to be snail-eaters, and the 40-gallon continues to be a snail farm for my dear figure-8 puffer, Otis. This may or may not work out, but we've got plenty of time to see what happens.

Well, above is what we have in the 37-gallon today. The Estes black sand is down, Chet's cairn/cave is augmented, and I added a piece of solid glass that is about the size of a football. This is waste glass from a glass factory, and is quite interesting. It is very sharp and jagged, but looks like ice in the tank. Chet seems to be holding his own after the redecorating and I am now ready for a couple of small fantail goldfish, I think. I hope they leave the plants alone but I'm ready if they don't. I have some pieces of slate that I thought I'd add, but when I put them in there I just don't like they way they look - even though they are broken they are too uniform looking and do not have an organic appearance, so I took them out. If the plants are wiped out I may need to rethink things, but we'll try it like this for now. I cut the temperature back to 76-78.

Above is the 40-gallon today. Agnes is somewhere in there, lol, but I just turned the lights on for the photo and she was still in the sword plant where she sleeps. I know it is very much overgrown but I like it. I might get some sort of schooling fish next - not sure - but for the time being it will remain Agnes' domain.

As for the 150, I wound up taking out both Ancistrus, since the male was too, too aggressive, charging at all of the other fish in the tank and keeping all of the cories in hiding. It was quite unusual behavior for this species, from what I understand. I then added another half-dozen C. sterbai since I had a credit at the LFS and they had some on hand. They are lovely little things.

Here is a short video (I was trying to capture the aggression of the bristlenose) of the 150, and in it you can see the red rubin sword in the back to the right, which is full of HOLES! It is a horror, but I can't bring myself to get rid of that lovely festivus, which is otherwise a perfect citizen in this tank. Note the difference in his appearance compared with The Thugs. Night and day.

Chh-chh-chh-chh Changes......

2010-01-12T15:24:00.003-05:00

It has been however long it has been, and the festivus still hide.

Friday 1/8/10 we lost our dear bullmastiff, Stella, to apparent metastatic cancer, which invaded her lungs in a very acute and dramatic way, ending her life in a matter of hours. We had no idea, as she had no symptoms, and the biopsy of a mass on her side was negative. The vet said she thought the mass was indeed cancer, and the small biopsy missed it months ago. She would have had her 4th birthday this week!

Anyway, Saturday the family decided we needed to get away, and we took a short road trip to Virginia Beach and visit the awesome pet store, Animal Jungle. If you have the opportunity to go there sometime, don't miss it. They have a very impressive stock of aquarium fish - not like anything you typically see - as well as reptiles, parrots and small animals, plus all of the supplies and gear you might ever need.

I was in the market for C. sterbai or trilineatus/julii, as well as cardinal tetras, all of which they typically have in stock, and needed to round out the 150. I had the guy catch me a net full of cardinals, but on close inspection most of them were actually jumbo neons, and the rest were not so great looking. Cardinals are tricky to keep healthy in dealer's tanks, and that's why you don't often see them at the LFS. I don't judge a pet store by a tank of bad-looking cardinals. I was disappointed, though, and set my sights on a female ancistrus, since they have a TON of bristlenose types, and I thought perhaps a mate for my boisterous and pesky male in the 150 might help distract him. Turns out I ought to have thought to get two or three females, as that would likely be better for this fellow, but I was so distracted by the many, many tanks of every fish you've ever heard of that I chose only one. I need to bring a list and stick to it next time I go in there - I get scatterbrained!

In the tank with the BNs was a small school of H. rhodostomus or H. bleheri, not sure which these are (!), AKA rummy-nose tetra. I have never kept these delightful little things as I have often thought them to have a somewhat odd appearance, with the greyish body, striking red nose, and white and black tail, but I knew they'd work well in the 150, with the soft, slightly acidic conditions and the plants, a complement to the cardinal school that currently resides there. They had about 10 and I took all of them.

Also, I knew I wanted to put a school of dithers in the 37-gallon with the festivus to hopefully calm them out of hiding. I was planning on doing this with cardinals but thought the rummy-noses would do just as good a job. Once the festivus either came out and got over their distress, or died, I would move the rummy-nose to the 150 and either let the festivus to their spawning duties or keep the tank in a holding pattern for (hopefully) another batch of angel babies that have been such a boon to me in financing various aspects of the hobby for me. Agnes & Frank have been good to me!

I got home with my finds and settled the rummy-noses in with the festivus, and the female BN in the 150. All seemed well, though the dithers did not seem to be having the desired effect in the 37-gallon. The festivus were still in full stress bars, with clamped fins, and cowering under the lip of the HOB outflow. Weird! The water is obviously in good condition, based not only on test kits but also the markedly red noses of the tetras, since poor water conditions are readily evident in these fish, as they lose their red noses when stressed or in unhealthy water.

This was just boggling my mind and I was getting impatient. I tried some delectable foods, and this did bring out the festivus briefly, but they'd scurry back under cover with the slightest movement from me. Obviously they feel very vulnerable and skittish in this tank, though it is not exactly bare - there is a huge piece of driftwood that reaches from bottom to the top of the tank, as well as a few Anubias plants.

I had an idea today, and fortunately was off work and had the time to implement it. I scooped some sand from the 150 (it has excess) and added it to the bottom of the 37, and planted a smallish Amazon sword plant that I robbed from the 40-gallon (you don't notice its absence in that tank - it is very heavily planted). I stacked the rocks attractively in the 37 and planted the plant.

Well, do you believe the festivus are now out and about? I also switched lighting on this tank, which had very, very dim lighting, since it had been a fry growout tank and I did not really plan on making it any kind of display tank, and did not need plants in it, either, but it seems these fish need the whole shebang to feel comfortable. They are acting almost normally, just with the addition of a single plant and slightly brighter lighting. Deborah said as much, that it was the decor that was throwing them off, and she was quite right.

I am so relieved!

Now I need to see if I can find another female ancistrus locally to add to my bullying male's harem in the 150, and I will continue to search for healthy cardinals. There is a local PetsMart that often carries them, and I'll check in with them. I will also soon add the rummy-noses to the 150 as well, and consider more of them. I cleaned out the Fluval FX5 on the 150, which is a HUGE job, and is physically taxing, in fact.

I am switching up filtration in the 10-gallon and 40-gallon. I'm happy with the small Eheim Ecco canister plus an AquaClear 30 on the 10-gallon (this seems SO ridiculous when I type it out, but honestly it is great for the messy little F8 puffer who makes such a mess - I still need to do PWCs about every 3rd day as well!) but I am not happy with the filtration on the 40-gallon. It has only an Eheim Classic 2213, and that is not enough. It is cheaper to put a monster HOB on the 10 gallon (AquaClear 70) and put the Ecco back on the 40 with the Classic than it is to buy another canister for the 40. I tried putting the Emperor 400 on the 40-gallon with the Eheim Classic, but the thing makes so much NOISE that I can't tolerate it. The grinding is just too much. I replaced the impeller but that did not solve the problem.

So, I've ordered an AC 70 for the 10-gallon (this too seems ridiculous!), and will again have two canisters back on the 40-gallon for Agnes & Frank. Hopefully they will spawn again for me.

This week I need to do staggered filter maintenance, since I still have the Rena XP4 on the 150 to clean (I did not want to do that one at the same time as the Fluval shop vac) and the 3 canisters running on the 10, the 37 and the 40, plus 2 HOBs (10 and 37).

I have made a lot of progress at my new job, revamping the solo practice of a doctor, which was slowly going downhill from lack of staff and neglect, and my spare time at home is more my own, so hopefully I can still devote a decent amount of time to my aquarium hobby. It took a while - I was putting in extra hours at the office in order to get some systems in place - but much of this work is done after two full months, plus the end of the year being behind me, and I am able to be more productive on the days that I do go in.

I was very concerned that I'd have to take down some of my tanks due to being too busy at the office and not having enough time at home, but hopefully that won't be the case. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! My tanks have been running on autopilot up until recently, and fortunately they are set up so that works out okay, but there were still things I want to do - always....

I also have a great dane at home, Sirius, who is getting much more attention now that Stella is gone, *snif*, and I hope to be able to devote extra time to him in his training. He's actually turning out to be much better as the only dog, since now he does not have to worry about "getting in trouble" with Stella, who was just as much a boss of him as his human owners are. Now he does not have to worry that obeying a command from us would mean stepping on Stella's toes, or causing her to lash out at him, so he's more relaxed. This is a blessing.

The Stress of the Fest

2010-01-05T17:35:00.003-05:00

I finally unloaded the last of my angel juveniles, 29 for this last batch, and the 37-gallon was free to receive the festivus pair from the 150. Typically, these fish are curious and relatively fearless, and it seemed I'd be able to net them out at feeding time. They are not as cautious and nervous as the wild angels.

This further proves my theory that animals sense energy, even the lowly aquarium fish. I have noticed over many years that when I attempt to net out a specific fish from a group, such as an ailing fish, or perhaps a gravid female that I want to move to her own setup, the fish I want is the one that hides, and the others swim about, minding their own business, oblivious to the dangers of The Net. When I kept many tanks of Endler's livebearers, I'd frequently redistribute the fish according to gender, or if I had a buyer for a quantity of males I'd be hunting all of the males, and the females would be unconcerned. If it was females I was after, the males would poke around in the open without a care. I know dogs perceive and respond to human energy, much more than we could possibly realize, and we hardly need to even vocalize to them our wants and desires. Cats likely perceive this as well but since they have absolutely no interest in pleasing humans or doing our bidding, we do not see their response to our telegraphed thoughts and emotions.

Anyway, the festivus pair knew I wanted them, no matter how much I tried to block the thoughts of moving them upstairs. I used mosquito larvae in a large net and the other angels and the spare festivus spent quite a bit of time inside the net eating, but the pair in question kept to the periphery. My husband, with infinite patience, managed to catch one, and later on I did a water change and took advantage of the lowered water level to remove decor and catch the other fish.

That done, I acclimated them to their new tank over a period of almost 2 hours, and things have not gone too well since. It has been almost 24 hours and they are wedged behind objects, full stress coloration, and fins completely clamped. Not happy. They were not looking good last night and I was prepared to find them expired this morning, but at 4:30 a.m. when I got up the both of them were out and swimming. I thought they had just been indulging in a little bit of a pout and would be fine, but an hour later they were cowering and gasping. I did a PWC like I do in the tank where they used to reside, but 5 hours later they are still cowering in corners with fins clamped and full zebra stress pattern. Ugh.

Well, it had to be done. Things could not continue like they were in the 150, and though the tank looks much more empty and way understocked, the mood is peaceful. I will obtain another dozen or so cardinal tetras and try to get perhaps as many cory cats, of the julii or sterbai species, perhaps. Most of the ones I have now are C. trilineatus but I do have one single C. sterbai, and he is adorable, so I'd like to have more of them. I have a large store credit from the sale of my last batch of babies, and I'll need it for sterbai cories, since they are expensive compared to your average cory cat.

Meanwhile, I hope the festivus pair recover from the move and spawn for me. If not, if they give up the ghost as a result of being moved, I am not sure what I will do with that tank. I want to preserve the cycle, so maybe I can find a breeding pair of bristlenose cats to live there, which could remain even if I put angel fry in there some day.

I will try to get pics one day soon when my schedule permits. I generally have to take about a zillion pictures, with four zillion changes of settings, in order to get one good shot. :-/

Minor Update

2009-12-31T19:05:00.003-05:00

It has been a while since I have updated, but I've started a new job and time has gotten the better of me.

The festivus in the 150 continue to spawn regularly, but the fry do not survive for very long after the free swimming stage. The parents are extremely stressed when they have babies, and I wonder if they don't just eat the babies at some point to relieve their anxiety over the huge job of constant surveillance of so many fry with so many predators. They do a pretty good job of keeping the other fish over to the opposite side of the tank, but I plan to move the pair out as soon as I move the last of Frank and Agnes' juvies out of the 37-gallon.

The angel juvies are ready to go and I have a buyer (about 30-35 remaining) but I have not had time to bag them up and tote them over to the LFS. What I plan to do at this point is to empty the 37 of juvies and place the festivus pair in that tank, and leave Frank and Agnes to do their thing in the 40. If I get babies, I get babies. If I don't, I don't. F&A have a good track record of rearing their own, so I don't have to worry about them, but the festivus pair are not proven and I have to see what happens when they are alone in their own tank.

I don't have the time or inclination at this point to hand-rear fry, so they will have to do it on their own. They do need to be removed from the 150, though, because it is a stress to have them in there. That said, I have to admit it is not as bad as I thought. The other fish have grown accustomed to the cyclical spawning aggression of the pair, and I am sure I could keep things status quo for a while without too much trouble, but it is upsetting the dynamic, and it is not ideal.

I must get photos of everything and post them soon. The fry of Agnes and Frank are just stunning - they truly look wild, save the occasional solid gold morph - and I'd be proud to keep them, but no space. I am enjoying watching the single juvie of theirs grow in the 150, however, and admire this fish a lot. He gets along just great with the wild leopoldi and he resembles them slightly, aside from his nose being upturned, and theirs "downgoing," as Heiko Bleher describes them.

Otis, the figure-8 puffer, is fabulous as ever. He's just the best and I'm so glad to have him set up in the 10-gallon. All of the Anubias sp. plants I have in there have circular holes in them, but no matter - he can do what he wants. He has grown and has a steady diet of snails of all description, plus the very small cocktail shrimps - raw and thawed from frozen. You can hear the noise of his teeth on shells when he eats, so I feel good that his teeth are being kept ground down.

One reason I am posting today is that I learned someone is actually reading this blog! I had no idea anyone was still following this, and it prompted me to post an update. Thanks for the poke!

Fly! Be Free!

2009-11-13T18:26:00.005-05:00

Free swimmers today, quite a cloud of the little buggers. The other occupants of this 150-gallon aquarium are jammed over to the far, far right, in an area about 1' wide by 2' high.

Spawn of the Nasties!

2009-11-10T18:12:00.003-05:00

So mean, but so true. The M. festivus that I added most recently paired off and are being more and more aggressive to the other fish. I had decided to net out the pair and leave the singleton that was in there originally, since that one seems like a nice enough chap and never caused trouble.

Today I had a little time and netted out 30 juvenile angels to sell to the LFS (I thought I had about 40 but after netting out 30 I still have what appears to be about 30 babies) and thought this would be a good time to net out the pair of festivus in the big tank and take along with me to sell as a pair. They are not afraid of the net and are always close to the top, greedy for a feeding.

I went in there to net them, and what do I see? Wigglers. This explains why they were keeping the angels from eating, and showing stress bars constantly. The area where they spawned is where I typically put the feeding cone. In the pic you can see the dirty pile of babies near the stem of the Anubias leaf, and there are more babies resting on the leaf above the fish's head in the pic. I did not notice them because of the increased algae growth on some of the Anubias leaves recently. The wigglers blend right in. They are close to free swimming stage. (Click on the pic for a closeup view of the babies)

I decided to leave the parents in there, and feed on the other side of the tank. The worst piscivores in the tank are the festivus, so if they are the ones doing the guarding we may get some babies that get to juvie stage, at which point I could net them out and put them in the 37-gallon to grow out. We'll see. I don't particularly want the 150 to be a breeding tank, since it is a display and breeding cichlids can cause chaos in any size tank, but we'll see how it goes. These fish are capable of injuring my wild angels, and I don't want that to happen. I'll wait until these babies are independent and fending for themselves, and then I'll try to net the parents out, and either give them a dedicated setup of their own or sell them as a breeding pair. They are chunky, brightly colored Mesonauta species, with very bright yellow breeding colors, so I think they are great specimens, but perhaps not the best fit for my 150 display tank. I will leave the third festivus, who has never bothered anyone and continues to glide around with the angels, avoiding the strikes of the Mesonauta pair.

Gotcha!

2009-10-26T08:04:00.002-04:00

I used a larger trap last night and was rewarded with a female bristlenose waiting for me this morning. I used a 2-liter plastic soda bottle instead of the 20-ounce, and this larger size means the fish can enter and swim around and have trouble finding the exit, whereas before the fish did not have room to move around much, so the exit was right in front of them.

I set the trap with zucchini before lights out, but managed to trap two festivus and the juvenile domestic angel! Why they were so very interested in zucchini I do not know, but I realized I needed to wait until lights out, and that was met with success.

I slowly acclimated her to the 37-gallon, since the pH is much higher and the temperature is about 5 degrees lower. Hopefully this will not bother her. I will attempt to trap the male now, and construct some simple caves for the fry growout tank, and perhaps the pair will spawn for me. Once I sell of the remaining babies (40+) then they will have no competition for whatever food I put in there, and they will have a spell on their own before the next batch of angel fry is introduced. Hopefully. If the planets align. I don't want to get ahead of myself (yes, yes I do!) so I will concentrate on trapping the wiley male bristlenose tonight.

Updates

2009-10-22T18:09:00.003-04:00

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.

Bristlenose say whaaaa????

2009-10-17T18:43:00.002-04:00

The bristlenoses are not having anything to do with my clever little fish trap that has worked so well for me over the years. They have not had their customary slice of zucchini for two whole days now, but they are not entering the trap, nor have they seemed to even approach it.

What now? I'm not willing to tear the tank apart to get them. We'll keep trying. I was careful to make the opening of the trap the right size for them, but maybe it is just too weird looking. I'll leave it in place a while longer and allow them to get used to it being there.

I'd sure like to get them moved, and once I make a decision like this I tend to obsess on it, but I need to be prepared in case I am unable to trap them and resign myself to leaving them where they are, and consider the cory cats the unfortunate ones in this scenario.

Ejected from the Game

2009-10-16T14:36:00.002-04:00

I have decided to move the Ancistrus pair from the 150 to the 37-gallon angel fry growout tank. I need something in there to hold the cycle for me until the next batch of fry, and their diminutive size makes them good candidates, but they'll still have plenty of room. Perhaps, in their own private digs they'll spawn for me. I'll provide a cave for them and see what happens. I have left a good deal of brown algae on the glass of this rank, and there is a large piece of driftwood in there (it is not possible for me to maintain a bare tank) so hopefully they will be content. It is very sparsely planted.

I can't tolerate the bullying of the Corydoras in the 150, and I'd rather make them comfortable and eject the Ancistrus, though I do enjoy them in that tank. They are out and about more than other Ancistrus I have kept, and they seem to do a good job of controlling algae on the glass, though I don't know how much algae I am growing, actually. I will soon find out, if I can get them moved.

The problem is trapping them. I set up my usual clear soda bottle with the top and neck section cut off and inverted into the body of the bottle, with a nice slice of zucchini inside, and a rock to keep it down on the bottom. No takers. I omitted their zucchini feeding last night to be sure they'd be hungry, but they are not going in yet. I don't have a practical way to get them out of the tank other than trapping. I will wait them out, I suppose.

The tank is too heavily planted and 'scaped for me to try to chase them down with a net. I'd have to drain the tank and remove all objects to do it. This is a problem when you have a large tank like this. Any fish I want to get out must be trapped, or they have to be relatively curious and not easily spooked, where I can lure them to the net.

I have discussed this whole thing with Deborah, my catfish expert friend, and she finds their bullying tendencies to be unusual, but she is an advocate for the corys and is in favor of moving the bristlenoses out - there ought to be no issues whatsoever between them and the angel fry, no matter what the size of the fry might be.

She is also considering other options for me in terms of a suckermouth catfish for the 150, if I should desire to replace them. I also may wish to consider a replacement for my beloved Planiloricaria cryptodon that I lost not too long ago. I do miss that fish, and it might be a better environment for one now without the Ancistrus, which did seem to pester him a bit, though he did not put up with much from them. He was much bigger than they, unlike the little cory cats, which are intimidated by the Ancistrus. I could try to find another whiptail like before, or go with one of the twig catfish or Sturisoma species, but I need something that does not mind the balmy 82F water. I would not mind an algae eater, but I don't know that there are that many species that do a particularly good job of that, except for the Ancistrus sp. I may be very wrong about that, however, and will discuss it with Deborah if I do manage to remove the catfish pair and I find algae growth to be a problem. I will hold off on it and hopefully will see the cory cats scooting around in total comfort, knowing no spiny face will be coming after them and keeping them in hiding.

When Too Much is Not Too Much

2009-10-15T06:41:00.004-04:00

Could an Aqua Clear 30 and an Eheim Ecco 2232 be overkill for a 10-gallon aquarium? Sounds like it, but it does not appear to be the case.

I do not intend to keep the AC on the tank, but for now as I grow brackish bacteria in the Ecco I want both filters running. Puffers are sensitive to water quality problems and I don't want to take chances. Are the plants blowing all over? Is the puffer being buffeted about? Nope. Otis actually appears quite perked up by the additional water movement, and the tank is definitely cleaner.

The rocks no longer have the fuzzy accumulation after I began using a toothbrush and in small areas at a time, scrubbing off the fuzz and silt (this stuff is still a mystery to me). Over time I have cleaned all the rocks, but whereas the debris used to fall to the bottom and I'd have to siphon it out, now the offending stuff is carried off to one of the filters. Love that.

In an effort to provide the angel pair more room to swim I pulled a large piece of wisteria out of the 40-gallon breeding tank, and since it was covered in wee tiny snails (the 40-gallon is my snail farm for Otis) I just chucked the whole plant into his tank and let him go to work on the floating snail barge. He is an active hunter type, so this was supremely enjoyable for him, if a puffer can be joyful. He seems to be smiling all the time....

I left the plant in place, hoping it will survive, and now I put his snails on the plant itself for him to find. This keeps him busy, which is good for a figure-8 puffer.

Meanwhile, I put the Emperor 400 on the 40-gallon in conjunction with the Eheim Classic canister, but the Emperor is just too noisy. I ordered a replacement impeller assembly for cheap and we will see if that helps. In fact, the Eheim ought to be plenty of filtration for this tank with just two fish in it, albeit relatively large fish. It is hard for me not to overfilter my tanks. Did you notice?

More Options for Otis...

2009-10-08T12:33:00.004-04:00

The AC 30 is not big or bulky, and aside from the flexibility with how media is loaded this does not seem like it is any more powerful than the Penguin 125. It is certainly no bigger.

I run an Eheim Classic plus a small Eheim Ecco on the 40-gallon breeder tank, so what I will do is pull out the Emperor 400 from storage, dust it off and put it on the 40, keep the Classic, and put the Ecco on the 10-gallon, and see what I think. I can tuck it under my desk, and it might do the trick. I have been very disappointed with the two Ecco filters I own, finding them remarkably underpowered and cheaply constructed, but the lack of power may be to my advantage when putting a canister on a 10-gallon tank.

If that is too much current (I believe puffers enjoy some current) then I'll stick with the AC30, or maybe sell some more angel babies and get the AC50. That way whenever I upgrade the tank I'll have a filter that can be used on the larger tank, plus the canister would certainly be appropriate for the 20 if it is not for the 10. I doubt it will be too much for the 10, however. I admit it - I'm an Ecco hater.

I have been having some algae problems in the 10-gallon, and since it is definitely not brightly lit I know (or suspect) it is an excess of nutrients. The Anubias is not growing fast enough to combat it, and itself is covered in a fine fuzz. The tank looks horrible. I puts some hornwort in there but it promptly melted, as it is wont to do.

I will try very judicious dosing of Excel (no, I have not forgotten the disaster that I attributed to the use of Excel earlier in these pages) and will be very careful with it. This is easier to do in a 10-gallon, where we are talking very small amounts, so there is no casual "glugging" of the container into the aquarium. I will see if this helps combat the algae and the Anubias to do better. It seems to be struggling terribly in the tank, even though it is supposed to be a plant that does well in brackish water. I don't think it is the SG causing the problem, actually, but I sure don't know why it is not growing. If it has nutrients and light it ought to do fine.

I have a 13w CF desk lamp over the tank, but it is raised way up above it, and there is a fluoro ceiling fixture in the room as well, but that is not on all the time. I will try turning off the desk lamp when the ceiling fixture is on, and basically just cut down the artificial light. You would think the light would be low enough not to have algae be a problem, but as is often the case for me, I have unwanted algae that I can't figure out how to cure. In my tanks where I have been successful dealing with algae, I have A LOT of plants present, and medium lighting. I don't want to heavily plant this little tank, since Otis needs his swimming space, so I will have to figure out what is causing it.

Two-inch Tank Buster

2009-10-06T08:54:00.009-04:00

Otis, the figure-8 puffer, is 2 inches of cuteness, and is busting out of his 10-gallon aquarium. The bioload of these guys is tremendous, and the little HOB (Penguin 125) is woefully inadequate to handle it. I need to do 50-75% PWCs every other day, and could stand to do them every day. The filter clogs frequently, and it is obviously not moving enough water.

I don't want to put him in a bigger tank because this tank is the perfect size for the location (my desk) and I do feel that it is enough space for his needs at this size. I realize that when he grows bigger we will need to move up (a 20-gallon tall would be perfect) but for now I'd like to make things work as they are.

I want to increase filtration and am researching my options. I think an AC 30 might do the trick (too big and bulky? need to go look at one), since it has a lot more media capacity and moves more water. I am also considering an extremely small canister filter, if I can find one. I need to get this done soon, though, because in spite of the frequent water changes the tank always looks (and is) cruddy. Amazing what a single fish can do!

Drama! Life in the ER!

2009-10-05T12:19:00.005-04:00

I don't know if I have brought this up on these pages, but I am allergic to bloodworms. I have the usual airborne allergies, like pollen and ragweed, and have also relatively recently developed some allergies to certain fruits and nuts.

One other new allergen for me is bloodworms. I discovered that when I pop a frozen cube out of the tray and put it in a cup, if I don't wash my hands they would become itchy where they came in contact with the cube. Then I started sneezing when I handled bloodworms, especially the freeze-dried type, the particles of which can be inhaled as you shake out the treat into the tank. I decided to be extremely careful, and use gloves or have my husband feed the frozen bloodworms, or if I did use them I'd immediately wash my hands. The last time I forgot to wash my hands I rubbed my eyes and they swelled up, and I sneezed violently for a good 30 minutes.

I have not handled bloodworms myself for a month or two, and for some reason last night, late, I decided to give the 150-gallon a treat - frozen bloodworms. Everybody knows how fish go nuts for these bright red morsels, and it makes you feel good knowing how much they like it.

I forgot to wash my hands. It was bedtime, and I rubbed eyes, and they became itchy, and I realized what I had done. I washed my hands thoroughly and flushed my eyes thoroughly as well. I took 2 Benadryl immediately, but by then my eyes had swollen almost shut. Then my voice started going scratchy and I could feel my throat closing. I lost my voice almost completely as I was being driven pell-mell to the nearby ER. Not the way you'd want to spend your evening. I think if I had waited any longer I would have had to call 911, because it was progressing very, very quickly - by the minute.

I know it is not common to be allergic to bloodworms, but you do read about it. If you Google "bloodworm allergy" you will get lots and lots of hits, so it is not unheard of. The ER staff did not seem confused or surprised when I explained what had triggered this severe response.

For obvious reasons, I won't be feeding bloodworms in any form ever again. It is not worth it! My reaction to each exposure is more severe than the last, so next time I would be in even more trouble, I fear. I have also heard tales of people being allergic to bloodworms and blackworms, so I won't feed those anymore, either.

The only fish that worries me is my Figure-8 puffer. His diet is very limited, unlike my other fish. He enjoys snails, for sure, but I am not sure if that is a complete diet if it is all he will eat. He loves blackworms and bloodworms, but those are no longer on his menu. I will see how he does on raw shrimp and that kind of thing.

I know, from my research, that some people discover their allergy to bloodworms late, since if you have an allergic reaction like that you don't first think of fish food. You try to think of something you ate or drank as being the culprit, or an insect bite perhaps, and you may blame it on something completely different initially. Who would think frozen bloodworms could cause this? Not me.

So, if you find that you get sneezy sometimes when you feed your fish, you may correlate the symptoms to the use of bloodworms. If so, I'd nix them. Oftentimes allergic reactions are progressive, as in my case, and worsen with each exposure. If I had been stung by a bee and had this reaction, then I would just write it off to random misfortune, but I brought this drama on myself, and it could have easily been avoided. It is not worth my life to keep aquarium fish happy! It sounds so crazy to think that fish food could literally kill you, but I think, in my case, that could happen if I get exposed again and am not able to get help rapidly.

I reckon it is time for me to visit the allergist and address these sensitivities of mine, and perhaps be prescribed an Epi-Pen for emergencies.

Baby Pictures

2009-10-04T14:11:00.003-04:00

Here are a couple of pictures of the new addition to the 150 - the domestic scalare, which is about 2-1/2 months old (since free swimming stage).

Note how his stripe pattern closely resembles that of the P. leopoldi in the background.

Bullies : I've Got Your Number

2009-10-03T20:47:00.003-04:00

No, not any of the cichlids, even though some of them are trying to pick on the new little juvenile angel recently added, this is more important.

I have been wondering about the fact that the school of C. trilineatus hide virtually all the time, even though I have what must be 11-12 of them (I lost track - maybe reading back further on the blog will reveal the actual number) but I never see them, except when the tank is dark, and only fleetingly.

The first time I noticed this was when I got my awesome Planiloricaria cryptodon (RIP), who one day launched himself completely out of the tank for reasons never to be revealed. After I introduced him to the tank, the cories hid. I figured the whiptail cat was just too big of a presence, and perhaps represented some sort of competitor for resources that they could only understand. Well, he's been gone a while, and still, no cories out and about like they should be. I have accepted this, and continued to feed them out in front of their lair (I can't see into the rock cairn where they hang out), but it has bothered me.

I was watching the tank today for a good long while, sitting very still, and lo and behold, out come the cories! Tres adorable! As soon as they start hunting for morsels, the Ancistrus, both of them (but mainly the male) rushes over and scares them off. Repeatedly. Roughly. Using undue force. I have found the culprits, and they have no whips on their tails, but rather a face full of them.

So, I am not sure what to do about this. The bristlenoses have plenty to eat - they have their choice. They enjoy zucchini, bell pepper, seaweed and cucumber in the veggie clip, always present and available, they enjoy veggie wafers that are dropped in once daily, and they also partake of the sinking particles of food or pellets that were intended for the more carnivorous occupants. They eat everything, including algae on the wood and glass - the male today was obviously eating the floating particles of daphnia (from the frozen cube fed to the angels) out of the water column, which is an interesting sight to see from a suckermouth catfish.

Why would they feel threatened by the cories, or otherwise be trying to prevent them from eating? It makes no sense to me, but I don't guess it should. I am sure it makes perfect sense to them. There is no question that they are chasing the cories off, however. I may wind up putting this pair, or maybe just the male, in the 37-gallon fry growout tank to hold the cycle when I don't have any babies in there, and he can't harass anyone. I like having an algae-eater in the 150, though, but I also like the cories (spent real money for every darn one!) and want to be able to see them, and want them to try to have a less stressful life, as much as can be possible in a glass box in my living room.

I am glad to finally discover a good reason for the cories to be hiding all the time, and now I just have to decide what to do. I will have to research Ancistrus type species (I will check with Deborah but there are probably hundreds) and see if there is something, or even some other type of dwarf pleco that would eat algae and otherwise keep to itself and mind its own business.

She has gone and done it now....

2009-10-03T13:01:00.006-04:00

The domestic angels, Frank & Agnes, spawned again, a very nice sized spawn on their usual sword leaf. However, this apparently did not bode well for the remaining baby from the last spawn that I left in situ when I removed his siblings to sell (I left him behind because he was a bit smaller than they and I figured I'd give him another week or so).

I then noticed he was not coming out for feedings, and he was up in a top corner, uninterested in eating. Cichlids in top corners of aquariums are being harassed and are under stress - this is a very common sign and one that should prompt removal of said fish.

So, I did. I netted him out rather easily, as he must be too young to fear The Net. I was carrying him over to the adjacent 37-gallon growout tank when Liz's Evil Twin grasped her by the ear and dragged her downstairs briskly, and thrust the net into the 150! Oh no! What has she done?!

I had a momentary lapse of judgment, OR, this is no biggie - the jury is still out. There is plenty of room in the 150, and this baby looks remarkably like a wild scalare, with the slightly turned up nose and the bold stripes on silver. He has a very, very prominent dorsal fin that has a red tinge. He's gorgeous and though I should resist trying to keep fish that I'm supposed to be selling, I could not resist (newbie!). At some point I will learn.

My actions will inspire scorn from the purists - if you are keeping wild-caught P. leopoldi angels, they should have a dedicated setup, the correct biotope, and ought to be properly bred; they should certainly not be mixed with common domestics. Tsk tsk. It is like mixing Endler's with fancy guppies, or even, as the very serious hobbyist would no doubt think, like a major metropolitan zoo breeding a tiger and a lion together for one of those charming (!) ligers.

I have no idea if the leopoldi will breed for me and see no sign that they will (Heiko Bleher says they won't in this setup due to the water that is too hard and alkaline for them - I tend to believe him), and mainly just want an attractive display. I will be able to easily remove this individual fish if there are any problems, since he is so different from the rest, but given the amount of room available in this tank I wanted to see how these babies would turn out. He seems to be a real stunner so far, almost the size of a quarter. I have tried to get some pics of him but no luck yet - he's spending a lot of time in the weeds right now, as the most diminutive cichlid in the tank. His amazing sail of a dorsal fin, perfectly erect vertically and quite broad, makes him appear bigger than he is, and that gives him an advantage.

Alrighty, then....

2009-09-27T23:44:00.004-04:00

After spending some time observing the goings-on in the 150, with the new additions of the festivus, I see that these charming little guys with the racing strips are rather tough customers, as I have been warned.

I note that since the addition of the single festivus a while back that I have not had the number of Endler's babies that I typically see in this tank. I have to net Endler's out of this tank from time to time, trading them and giving them away, and I have not had to do that since putting in the festivus, even though he's barely 2" long. OK, that's fine - I had too many Endler's in the past, and was disappointed that the wild caught angels did not reduce their number like I hoped. The festivus is up to the challenge.

Enter two new festivus. Feisty little fellows! They are lunging towards Endler's, they are lunging towards cardinals (someone on a forum commented recently that I might find myself without any tetras as the festivus matures) and they all seem quite interested in eliminating the snail population.

Hmmm. OK. I'm cool with this, actually. I won't cry if they wipe out the Endler's population -they are not appropriate for this tank anyway, and I can start a dedicated setup easily if need be - no problem. I have enough friends and relatives with my Endler's offspring that the group won't be lost forever. Better to not have a population explosion that is not being dealt with. I'm a bit torn about the cardinals, though. They get along famously with the wild angels - no sign that the angels have even the slightest piscivorous tendencies - and they look SO pretty. That will be a trick to get over, but I recognize that they might be eaten by the festivus as they reach mature size. The festivus have already shown strong tendencies towards hunting down small fish. I will have to switch to a larger, swifter tetra, and there are many species to choose from, so this won't be a big deal. I'll get over it! I still love the festivus, and want them to work out in this large tank.

Festivum for the Rest of 'Em

2009-09-27T19:00:00.005-04:00

Or, more correctly, "Festivus for the Rest of Us." Festivum is an old moniker that I have trouble giving up.

Yesterday I spotted some very fine-looking M. festivus types at the LFS. They had excellent color, good size, and were reportedly eating anything that went into the tank.

Several months ago I expressed an interest in getting more when talking to the people at the shop, since I took all they had (3) and subsequently was left with only one, but as time went by they did not get any more in, and I thought I might just stick with the one, since they are likely to get bigger than the leopoldi angels, and I did not want pairing up of that species in this tank.

Lo and behold, they got more in. The chap told me he ordered them "specially for you..." and I immediately felt guilty! I should not have - these fish move pretty well for them, and they were stocking them long before I came along, but...... I was tempted. They really are very nice looking fish.

I went home and decided to trade some angel babies for the festivus. Today I netted out 4 of my largest babies, which could be considered quarter-sized, but not quite. I was hoping for a good price for them. They were very well received, and even though I was quoted a price much less than the price of the festivus, he took the 4 angels in a straight trade. He commented about how nice the angels looked, and how they had red in their dorsals, which is not often seen in domestics. These really do look more like wilds than you commonly see in the shops, so I know they will be good sellers. He wants all of them, and I assured him I had many more.

I am going to sell a few more that are of a decent size, but I still have many that are extremely wee, and I hope they will grow as the tank thins out a bit. Once they get a bit more size on them I will be happy to pass them on. This has been a very interesting experience, and I look forward to future spawns by Frank & Agnes. They are throwing very fine-looking fry, with hardly any culls.

Plant Choices

2009-09-25T20:09:00.002-04:00

What kind of plants are good for a beginner? This depends entirely on the light available. If you have a typical hood on a typical aquarium, the lighting is likely going to be considered low, and that's fine to start with. More light almost always brings unwanted algae, and algae problems can discourage a fishkeeper enough to tear down the tank and post the thing on Craig's List.

If you start out with low light, you have options. The tried and true species are Java fern and moss (Microsorum pteropus and Vesicularia dubyana, respectively), Anubias, Cryptocorine, and Aponogeton bulbs. The javas and Anubias species do not use roots in substrate, but rather are tied to structures or jammed into crevices, where they will attach themselves. That makes them great for camouflaging filter intake tubes and other equipment. You can also try stem plants like Hygrophila species but they often get a leggy appearance without enough light. Floating hornwort is a fabulous nutrient hog, but can also have slightly higher lighting requirements, and when it does not have enough, its tiny leaves make a real mess in the tank. The last two plant types have been outlawed in many areas because they have invaded local waters and have choked out native plant species. See what is available in your area, or what you can get from other hobbyists. Plant a lot of plants and see what works in your tank.

Check out sites like Plantgeek.net are a great source for information about plants. You can select the light level you are dealing with and get some suggestions. However, I'd strongly recommend the plants listed above, since most shops carry them and they are not difficult.

Q & A - Undergravel Filtration

2009-09-25T20:03:00.001-04:00

I would like to bring up the concept of undergravel filtration. I am not a fan. I do, however, think they can be beneficial in a non-planted, rocky type African tank when it is used as a reverse filter - water is forced up through the gravel from beneath. This keeps the substrate clear of debris, lifting anything resting on it into the water column to be picked up by the main filter. This is not practical in a planted tank, where you would not want to disturb root growth and there are too many obstructions in the tank to make it function properly.

For the same reason I would not use a UGF in a planted tank. The roots need to be able to grow in the substrate, and they'll clog up the filter plate beneath the gravel. Then there is the unavoidable situation of detritus collecting beneath the filter plates, which at some point needs to be addressed, and generally requires a complete tear-down of the tank to accomplish. That will almost always involve re-cycling of the tank, though not always.

There are so many filtration options these days, and alternatives to gravel as well. Don't tell anyone, as many would argue until they are blue that I am wrong (I very well may be), but it is my secret belief that the only purpose of typical aquarium gravel is to aid in the use of an undergravel filter, where the coarse texture keeps most large debris from falling down to the filter plates, but at the same time allows good movement of oxygenated water through the gravel, building bacterial colonies. Now that those filters have gone out of style, so to speak, everyone is still clinging to the use of gravel.

It is coarse and allows much too much debris to collect in it, no matter how diligent you are with your gravel vac, and it is a poor plant substrate (not horrible, just poor). Finer gravels and sands are what I prefer, though it has been only in the past 5 years or less that I have come to this conclusion. I have abandoned gravel to be used in the tops of my potted terrestrial houseplants - it covers the ugly dirt just great!

Q & A

2009-09-25T19:45:00.002-04:00

I have received some questions that I would like to address, with the first being the proper cycling of a new aquarium. Keep in mind this is all anecdotal - I am not an official authority on the topic and have no fancy degrees - I am simply relaying information that I have verified through my own experience over 25 years. I have killed a lot of fish in my time! ;-p

If you set up a new tank, get the filter running, substrate in place, heater going, plants planted, etc., you are not technically cycling the tank. Even if you place beneficial bacteria in the tank it won't be cycled without a source of biological waste to feed it. The bacteria will die and you'll start over, with the process not beginning until you have a source of nitrogenous waste that will feed bacterial colonies.

However, if it is a planted tank you desire, there is a lot to be said for getting the tank "established" with plants - a LOT of them - prior to adding fish. Plants need nutrients as well, but they can certainly get started, especially with the judicious use of fertilizer, sparingly. The more plants you have to start with the better things will go in the tank. It is typical (I have done it plenty of times) to plant a few plants and assume they'll grow, fill in, and slowly create the look you are going for. I am of the opinion that a cycle goes much easier if you have a ton of plants. Go ahead and load 'er up.

Another benefit is that this will hopefully obviate the evil algae issue, as the plants will be starving out any algae spores that are present (they're there, trust me, just waiting for an excess of one or more nutrients and any available light).

If you DO have a source for beneficial bacteria, such as gravel, I'd place it in the filter, if your filter is one that can accommodate it (in a piece of pantyhose or similar bag) and do so when you add fish, stocking slowly so as not to overburden your beneficial bacteria. I don't find that placing bacteria-laden gravel directly on the bottom of the tank will assist the cycle in the most efficient way, since water needs to be moving over and through it quite well for it to flourish. Once the tank is established there is plenty of bacteria on and in the substrate, but for the purposes of cycling some oxygenation is helpful.

Some of the best bacteria that you can get from an established tank would be found on grody, gunky, slimy, nasty filter floss. That stuff is gold. That is what I use to cycle new tanks, and is one of the benefits of having more than one aquarium. You can cut the floss off of a used filter cartridges and rubber-band it to the frame of another, putting that in the new filter, or if your filter has a compartment for media you can just stuff it in there.

Again, this bacteria is valuable and you don't want to use it in an empty tank - it will simply die. Put it to use when you stock the tank. Start off slowly with hardy fish. It is impossible to describe the ratio of your beneficial bacteria culture start to a specific number of fish, but don't try to stock fully right away - depending on the size of the dirty floss you robbed from another tank, you could start with, say 3-4 platys for a wad of bacteria-laden floss the size of your entire hand.

There are also commercially available bacterial starts, my favorite being Bio-Spira (Marineland). This you add straight to the tank water at the same time as you are stocking your fish. It may take several days, but you are not going to have the drawn-out 6 weeks (plus) of cycle that is harmful to fish. I have done many tests with this product and use it anytime I do not have bacterial cultures already going, like setting up an aquarium for someone after I have recently cleaned out all my own filters, for example. With Bio-Spira you have the benefit of fully stocking the tank from the start, though I do not advocate doing that. (I do not work for or have any interest in the Marineland company, lol, just a satisfied customer)

I have learned over the years that aquariums attain (and require) balance, and this can only be achieved with Tincture of Time. I am not a patient person, and frankly I don't know that many patient people, but this hobby demands patience. A lot of it. Months of waiting. When I got my 150-gallon you can believe I wanted to slap a gillion fish in there pronto. It is hard to resist.

If at all possible, things will go SO much better in the long run to start out with the no-brainer, tougher fish, typically the schooling fish, and let them be for a couple of months if you can. It takes time for a new tank to settle and achieve balance, and you can't rush it. You'll have far fewer fish deaths if you can restrain yourself.

2009-09-24T16:35:00.004-04:00

Here is a very nice photo of the leopoldi my husband got with his iPhone. Check out the blue opercula!

Sand Snags and Setbacks

2009-09-23T18:17:00.002-04:00

Sand gets a lot of discussion in this house. You'd be amazed at the varying qualities different types of sand possess. When I was setting up the 150-gallon, when the issue of substrate came up, I knew I wanted to use sand, because I like it, but I also wanted to choose carefully, because though I had no particular catfish plans at the time, I knew that if I wanted to keep certain catfish and/or loaches I ought to have soft, beneficial sand for them to sift through. There are a lot of choices for sand in the aquarium, from Caribsea's Tahitian Moon sand to inexpensive pool filter sand.

I have tried keeping Corydoras cats for years with little success. I never knew why, until I realized that I was keeping them in coarse gravel tanks, where their little barbels suffer, and they are unable to do the sand sifting that they do in nature. I decided that it was easier to get appropriate sand at the beginning than it would be to change it out later, so the research began.

My dear friend, Deborah, is quite expert when it comes to catfish, and based on her research and discussion with other catfish hobbyists, regular old play sand from the hardware store (Quikrete makes it) is nontoxic, inert, and the granules are soft so they will not damage the delicate barbels of catfish. Burrowing fish and eartheater type fish will also do well with this sand.

I knew I put too much in the tank initially (it is cheap and I wanted to be sure I had enough) but as I was putting it in the cloudiness kept me from seeing how much sand was accumulating. After it was rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, and things settled, I saw that I had way more than I needed, but it looked pretty, and I figured with the rooted plants I had planned for the tank they'd need the depth, and the roots would keep the sand from compacting.

Fast forward 8-9 months, and we have some problems with this sand. It has many, many areas that are anaerobic, and bubbles are released when these areas are disturbed. These areas include those with dense root growth from Crypts, swords and other stem plants. Anytime I'd move a plant, or stir the sand in the open areas, I'd find black pockets that bubbled. Uh oh. Fortunately, there have been no problems with the fish associated with release of these bubbles, with the characteristic sulfur smell of anaerobic pockets. The death of the festivum noted earlier was not related to disturbance of the sand, and that fish death was solitary. I think more than one fish would die if toxic gas was a problem.

I have begun an ongoing project involving removing quantities of sand that are not required for plants, leaving a layer perhaps 0.75" deep- no more than that is necessary. In removing the sand, which I have done slowly over time, taking out perhaps a dishpan full at a time, the stench is profound! It smells just like low tide at the brackish bodies of water near me, which also have black anaerobic pockets in the sand. The sand coming out is black, and only the top layer has the whitish-tan color. I must lave a certain amount of sand in place for the plants, especially the Echinodorus, but I am trying to remove what I don't need.

The problem is that it has settled in places where, quite honestly, I cannot reach. I am short in stature and getting access to the back of the tank is a challenge. I need long tools to get there. There is no need for there to be 2" of sand or more under a pile of rocks or wood, so if I don't redo the aquascape completely I will continue to work on getting some of this excess out of the tank. Alternatively, I will leave things be and just remove it when I completely redesign the aquascape, since the sand beneath wood and rocks in the very back of the tank is not likely to be disturbed anyway.

Meanwhile, Deborah has provided me with a plethora of Malaysian Trumpet Snails of all sizes from her own tanks, hundreds of them, and they have all vanished beneath the surface of the sand to escape the light. She gave me some in the recent past, but we agreed that more MTS were my best hope for a compromise until I can resolve the issue of excess sand. I wonder if they will even venture into the blackened, anaerobic pockets? Will they avoid these areas? No matter - they will be helpful to whatever areas they DO occupy, and their nocturnal nature will mean they have some measure of safety from the M. festivum, Snail Slayer. I think their incredibly hard shells will protect them as well, and maybe the festivum will prey only on the ramshorns, with their softer shells.

We will see what happens. I must say that the coarser sands, inappropriate for catfish, do NOT compact, as I have used them for years in my other tanks, and do to this day. Various sands for the aquarium work great for planted and non-planted tanks, and I have no issue with them compacting or going anaerobic, though you can be sure that I am taking extra care to stir the sand in all my tanks after this experience in the 150.

Festivus vs Plants vs Snails?

2009-09-23T15:36:00.003-04:00

I had heard that M. festivus were known to eat plants (there is too much info on the web sometimes, and here I am muddying the waters further...) but I have not found that to be the case in my very well-planted 150-gallon.

What I have found to be the case, and something I did not expect, is that the festivus is an avid hunter of snails. The ramshorns are having a very difficult time of it in this tank lately. I noticed the sand to be somewhat littered with empty shells, and thought the tank conditions to be less than optimal, causing a die-off, but after watching the tank for sustained periods I now see what is happening - the festivus hunts them down and eats them, snatching them right out of their shells. He employs the same technique that is used by my figure-8 puffer, with a slow approach and windup, then SLAM! right into the aperture for a meaty bite.

So, at least for this festivus in this particular tank, plants are safe, snails, not so much.

150-Gallon Stable?

2009-09-23T09:15:00.017-04:00

Things are doing well in the 150. I have removed all calciferous rocks/shells and the KH is coming down a bit. I took down and rinsed out both the monster filters and I believe I was drawing air from somewhere, because now the filters are almost silent and there are no free bubbles in the water column.

The fish are all happy as can be. I have added another species, M. festivus, to the mix, though I lost one of the two not long after adding them. I am not sure what happened there - the fish simply stopped eating and was less active, then turned up dead. I examined it carefully and could find no evidence of ailment of any kind. I would have liked three for the tank (I don't like singletons or even numbers!) but the LFS had only three, and one died in quarantine not too long after I got them home . The other two spent about 3 weeks in Q so they seemed fine, only to lose the second one shortly after being moved.

The one that remains is a fabulous fish, however! He blends in very well with the school of angels, and his behavior is comparable. He has a similar look to the leopoldi, as Mesonauta are a relative of angelfish, with a somewhat blunt head, and the telltale trailing ventral fins. This is a species very commonly found with angels, though I am told that the portion of the Rio Negro where the leopoldi are found does not generally have Mesonauta species. They get along great, however, and that is the main thing. I am very fond of festivus and I would not mind getting a few more, though I hope NOT to get a breeding pair, since that will complicate the social structure in this tank, and I do not wish to do that - everyone gets along fabulously now.

I am not as concerned with the pH in this tank as I have been in the past. The fish have tolerated a period of wild fluctuations in pH, while I had issues with CO2 leakage (fittings were not tightened properly) and what I thought was an issue with my regulator, so there was no CO2 running at all for a couple of weeks, followed by re-instituting its use, and once again dropping the pH. At no time did the wild-caught angels appear stressed or in any way bothered by these pH changes. It made me feel a little less urgency about keeping them in extremely acidic water.

I know I ought to be using RO water (as I have mentioned) and mixing it with my tap to try to recreate their natural conditions, but the fish are happy and so am I. If they don't need me to jump through hoops I'm not gonna. I still like to use CO2 because the plants grow better with it (I noticed the difference when I was not using it) so I will continue to do so, but I am not using as much, since the amount of gas I need to get the pH down to under 6 requires very frequent bottle refills and becomes a bit of a pain.

Right now I am very pleased with how this tank is doing, and am enjoying it very much. This is a rare time for me as an aquarist, since most of my tanks have something that needs to be done, or changes that need to be made, or some sort of goal in mind. I do have changes in mind for the 150, but I am going to wait until I become dissatisfied with the status of the tank. This won't take too long, likely as not! There is nothing static - plants overgrow their location, other plants fade, sands shift, etc.

The next phase will involve abandoning the aquascaping technique utilizing the open central area, and create a central branchy structure, since the Corydoras and angels all would feel more comfortable. I currently utilize almond leaf extract, and may go back to putting the leaves directly in the tank for leaf litter, as this is something the corys will like, as will any future Apistogramma species that I introduce. As for the plants, I will eliminate the Hygrophila species, and keep Anubias, Cryptocorine, Echinodoras, and "the javas" as I like to call them (fern and moss). That will be it for plants, though knowing myself I am sure there will continue to be plenty.

I am currently on the lookout for branchy driftwood, which I will probably collect myself. Most driftwood available commercially for the aquarium is blocky, and I have plenty of that already. I will be looking for pieces that have multiple thin, reaching, branches, and may even wind up collecting sticks and tying them together. The Mopani driftwood I have in the 150 now is very attractive, but it does not "go" with the SA theme at all, though I do plan to keep it. The Ancistrus enjoy scraping in and out of the nooks and crannies created by the curlicue shapes of the wood.

All of these plans must, I'm afraid, involve taking down the tank to bare bones. I am loath to do this currently, but at some point I'm going to get annoyed with the tank, unable to create a visual balance, and in my frustration be ready to do things over. The fish will all have to be collected and placed in tubs. I have had the angels long enough now, and they have handled themselves very well in the past when I have disrupted their environs, that I think they will tolerate being moved out in this way. When I first got them they seemed to be incredibly delicate and sensitive, but I don't think they really are - they are like any P. scalare - one of the hardier SA cichlids.

This is a big tank and for me, at 5' tall, it is a chore to 'scape. I need to be ready and have a plan in mind before I redo things. I am torn between my desire for aesthetics and a comfortable, healthy environment for my fish. Currently the tank is attractive, but it has a Willy Wonka or Dr. Seuss feel to me than what a SA setup should be, with overly bright light, too bright green in the plants, and wood that is almost a caricature of itself.

As I've said before, an attractive planted tank is pretty far from anything a fish would encounter in the wild, and I'm trying to have it both ways. The effort continues....

2009-09-23T08:54:00.006-04:00

It has been a while since I have had time for updates! Everything is moving along quite well. The fry of Agnes & Frank are just about ready to go, and we had a bumper crop, as far as I'm concerned. There got to be too many (100+) for the breeding tank so I set up my 37-gallon and put the majority of them in there via soda bottle trap, which worked well, or too well. I was busy doing other things and every 10 minutes or so the trap would have a good number of babies in it, so I'd move them over ("hey, this is easy!") and did not realize that I had moved over almost all of the babies to the 37-gallon, which was not my intent. I wanted to split them up somewhat, so there would be adequate space for them to grow in each tank. I had 6 left in with Ma & Pa, it turns out, and I honestly wanted to leave at least 25. The tank is so heavily planted, though, and it was hard to see all of the babies at any one time, so I did not realize how many I'd moved. I then was worried that if I put some of them back in the breeding tank that the adults would reject them, so I decided to go with what I had, though I think it would have been fine. After they were moved, the parent fish would literally stare over at the fry tank (next to the breeding tank) through the glass, apparently pining for their babies. It seems far-fetched, but I am not making it up.

I lost one of the babies in the tank with the adults, as it somehow jumped out and I found it on the floor, but otherwise the remaining 5 are robust and healthy, with excellent finnage. They seem to be larger than the largest ones in the fry tank, which I am sure is due to the overcrowded status of the 37-gallon. In that tank there is a wide disparity between the smallest and the biggest fry, so I will sell off the bigger ones and gradually make more room so the smaller ones can catch up. Next time, assuming there is a next time, I will divide the fry more evenly between the two tanks. Agnes & Frank do extremely well with their babies and even now that the fry are juvies they are tolerated and not harassed in any way by the parent fish. It is a remarkable pair! Just about all of the fry are silvers, with markings similar to wilds (I am very happy about this, though I know these days the more elaborate morphs are much more popular) and there are about 10% solid golds. I have interest from several LFS in these fry, as well as several individuals, so I don't think I'll have difficulty selling them. It will be hard to part with all of them! There are a couple of them that have caught my eye as having particularly nice fins and markings, even down to the slightly reddish tinge in the dorsal - again resembling wild scalares.

Minor Improvement, Elevated KH

2009-08-06T14:25:00.002-04:00

There seems to be a minor improvement in the "carbonated" look the 150-gallon has had. The bubbles are still present but not so many. I also tested my KH and found it to be 8, which is much higher than typical (4) and the tap is higher than usual as well at 6, though not as high as the 150.

I don't particularly mind higher KH, as it lends stability to pH, but I think it is time to remove the calciferous rock I placed in the tank a few months ago to deal with an almost unmeasurable KH - it took only one drop to turn the solution yellow/orange, and it seemed like it was turning even before the full drop was dissipated, which I would call a value of <1 degree KH. I did not like that and am not sure at all why it was the case. Tap, at that time, measured solid 4 dKH. I think perhaps the tap KH may rise in the summer versus winter, but I will have to measure this over a period of years to see if there is a pattern.

When I talk to the water treatment people they deny that there is any fluctuations and they seem to read from a script when answering questions. I don't think they understand the purpose behind my questions, but rather are automatically defensive when discussing the quality of water with their customers. Nobody I have spoken to can relate to an aquarist manipulating pH and trying to have an understanding of the chemical makeup of tap water.

I recognize, too, that I ought to be using RO water and treating it ahead of time, getting the values I desire before it goes into my tank. However, I am just not interested in keeping 30-gallon tubs of water in m living room. It is not practical. I don't keep a fish room, but instead my aquariums are living art that are part of how I decorate my living space. If I had a basement I might consider setting up a mini water treatment plant, but I don't, and my home is spacious but lacks any kind of utility space or storage space.

So, I can't keep delicate species but am trying to compromise when it comes to the P. leopoldi. I don't think my chances of them breeding are very high in this setup, but I am okay with that right now. I would like to be able to drop the pH and raise the CO2 concentration, as this has helped immeasurably in keeping algae at bay, and I have been able to do that for years in this and other tanks, so my current issues with pH and CO2 are puzzling. Mainly, I find the bubbles annoying!

Agnes & Frank 'n Fry

2009-08-05T17:43:00.005-04:00

Here are pics of the breeding angels in the 40-gallon.

The plants in this tank have grown markedly in the past few weeks, I am assuming from the extra nutrients provided by the fry and the frequent feedings. The fry are numerous and all look like miniature angels, with ventral fins and all. Most appear to be marble, but they may wind up being silver if the striations consolidate into stripes.

Here is one of Agnes, and though the fry do not show up very well they are literally everywhere in this pic if you look closely.

They have turned out to be most excellent parents, and will bite you if they can when you put a hand in the tank. They attack the glass when you approach, and I am very pleased with how well they are handling their job.

I do believe I will pull the next batch of eggs and give them a break. They have spent so much time tending eggs and looking after fry, most of that time spent with lights on 24/7, that I feel they need a break. It must be a strain on them physically. I do try to keep their diet varied and high quality. I do daily PWCs on this tank.

Carbonation!

2009-08-05T17:30:00.003-04:00

So the latest news is that the female Ancistrus has not expired, and I have seen her recently. She does not look that different but maybe perhaps a little less rotund. Not so much like a Weebil anymore....

Also, the 150-gallon tank appears to be full of carbonated water. There are tiny bubbles everywhere. This is not a case of excess waste that can contribute to a collection of filmy bubbles at the top of the tank on the surface, but this is in the water column. I did a big PWC after I found the dead cory (see below) and moved the CO2 diffuser into a less visible location, which was next to the intake for the Fluval XF5. It could be nothing more than the bubbles collecting in the filter and being dispersed, though the quantity of bubbles seems excessive.

I am, at the same time, having trouble getting my pH to drop with CO2. It would typically run for a while and then shut off, and turn back on only when the pH crept up past 6.4, but now it has to run all the time, and I can scarcely get it below 6.9. Not sure about that, other than that my tap water is moderately hard and alkaline (buffered) and this recent PWC sent the KH and GH up (possibly, did not test), making it difficult to manipulate pH with acid. That seems like a stretch but my chemistry is rusty. I have added more Indian almond leaves, which ought to contribute to lowering pH but no dice. Incidentally, I did calibrate my pH sensor and it was not off at all - it was exactly correct.

So, the tank looks cloudy with the tiny bubbles. The fish are acting normally. The tank used to be rather clear prior to this episode.

I have also fixed my old Rena Filstar XP4 that I had running on the 55 prior to getting the 150, and got some new tubing for it, and have started that running on the 150 as well in case that will assist with resolving the bubbles issue. It mainly has mechanical filtration to remove fine particles and we will see if that helps. There is right much water movement in this tank, which is not necessarily what the leopoldi would prefer, but it seemed like I was not getting adequate turnover with the FX5. This is likely my imagination, since the thing is the size of a large Shop Vac and must be blasting water in and out. I thought there was too much debris not getting filtered out.

Updates and Additions

2009-08-01T12:04:00.003-04:00

I added 8 more C. trilineatus to my group of what I think must be 6-7 in the 150-gallon tank. The school hides so effectively and often that I go for days or a week at a time without seeing them. I am hoping these new guys will coax the rest out. The new ones are very small - almost half the size of the adults I have in residence. Almost a day later it does not appear to be working, but we shall see....

Also, I am dismayed to see that my female Ancistrus has some sort of bloat. Her belly is distended and she is on the sand, poised atop the belly so that her mouth does not quite reach the sand when resting so. I have been feeding zucchini and romaine, along with veggie wafers, but the bristlenoses do not seem terribly interested in them. I have put bell pepper in there from time to time as well with minimal attention by the catfish. The snails enjoy these offerings, however.

I am assuming she is not going to pull through but I have been unable to catch her, even to put her in another tank on her own to observe her. She will be out in the front and as soon as I approach she zips into the depths. I would have to dismantle the tank completely to be able to catch her and I am not willing to do that. More PWCs and hoping for the best.

The Drama Continues, sort of...

2009-07-28T20:45:00.003-04:00

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?

2009-07-26T09:46:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-07-23T22:48:00.009-04:00

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

2009-07-23T15:30:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-23T13:26:00.003-04:00

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?

2009-07-20T11:36:00.005-04:00

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

2009-07-19T21:57:00.002-04:00

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

2009-07-19T09:59:00.005-04:00

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?

2009-07-17T16:01:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-16T20:24:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-15T17:58:00.005-04:00

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

2009-07-14T18:38:00.004-04:00

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

2009-07-13T17:28:00.004-04:00

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!

2009-07-11T11:54:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-10T21:14:00.002-04:00

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!

2009-07-10T12:00:00.003-04:00

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

2009-07-10T11:35:00.002-04:00

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

2009-07-09T17:16:00.003-04:00

"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?

2009-07-09T13:58:00.004-04:00

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

2009-07-08T11:48:00.004-04:00

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

2009-07-07T12:56:00.003-04:00

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!

2009-07-07T11:19:00.008-04:00

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.

Settling in - New Additions

2009-03-23T19:04:00.009-04:00

Some time has passed and things are settling in rather well. The CO2 is running, the plants have filled in (almost too much - I thought this was a 150-gallon tank? Looks like a 55 to me....).

I believe the Play Sand substrate has introduced a quantity of organic compounds to the water column, causing a general drop in pH (prior to CO2 injection). This does not worry me too much, and over time will resolve. I am not going to fret too much about something that is not causing any actual problems. I'm still dropping the pH down to 6.4 with CO2, regardless of where it was to begin with. I purchased, quarantined and added a pair of Ancistrus sp., juveniles, about 2.5". They are doing a good job of keeping the glass free from the slight algae accumulation, and when I keep an eye on NO3 (adding it up to 10 ppm, that is) then I don't have much of a hair algae problem. The plants are growing like gangbusters - I have to hack them back out of the way. There are a million Endler's/guppy babies, not quite so many adults of same, the cory cats and the cardinals, as before. Things have been stable in there for quite a while now according to my log, especially once I started dosing nutrients. It still has what I would consider moderate lighting, with 4x65w CF in the hood. I added a 108w T5HO fixture, but that did not seem to help anything but the algae, so I removed it. I don't think I need the extra lighting.

One day about a week ago I was posting on a forum regarding our favorite LFS, Azalea Aquariums. There are several locals on this forum and we had been discusing the merits (and demerits, lol) of the shops in our area. One fellow posted that he went over to Azalea to look at the wild caught Peruvian P. altums he was waiting for, and when he got there the owner explained that they were not altums but P. scalare, or the wild version of your basic angelfish. The ones you see in most every shop are P. scalare, though they have been genetically engineered to produce the marble, koi, veil, ghost, black, gold, etc. specimens that you see. I had planned on angels in the future for the 150, and I wanted wild types - I don't particularly care for the modern morphs. I went straight over there and purchased 3 - they were expensive and larger than I would have preferred - so 3 was all I was able to get at that time.

I put them in quarantine in the 40g tank, after spending at least an hour catching every single one of the "mystery fry" that I was growing out in there. I have become quite attached to these little guys, and I knew they'd be eaten if I left them in with the angels, so I put them in the 10g Endler's growout tank. They blend right in - I have to really look to find them since they are the same size and general shape as the baby Endler's.

The three angels had a rough start. These are wild fish and completely unaccustomed to people and glass boxes to live in. They hid for 36 hours. In my research I had upped the temp in the tank to 82, and chewed my nails over them. I found an angelfish forum and posted about them, desperate for a magic trick to get them to swim around and eat. I could not even see them properly, because if I put my head beside the tank to look in the cave where they hid, they'd spook and risk injuring themselves, so I would not even look at them.

I got some great advice, and it was suggested to raise the temp in the tank to 85, just for an interval as they acclimated to life with Liz. I would always need to keep the temp higher than I typically do (~76-78) but it would not have to be 85F forever. There were also other fish in the tank that showed signs of ich, and the owner admitted that they were in rough shape for the 10 weeks he had had them, but had recovered and were doing great now. I thought I'd treat with salt and heat, since the heat was already up anyway.

After a fashion they finally ventured out, much to my relief. I was able to get some pictures of them, and when I posted them to demonstrate that they had finally come out, it was suggested that these fish were not P. scalare, but actually P. leopoldi, due to their fainter markings and prominent spot at the base of the dorsal fin. I was thinking they had just faded coloration due to stress, but it was possible, based on the pics I saw on the web.

A forum member indicated that she had an acquaintance with Heiko Bleher, who is a renown explorer and has discovered many species of freshwater aquarium fish. He is known specifically for particular knowledge in discus and angelfish strains. I could not imagine that such a fellow would take the time to look at pics of my fish, but I told her I'd be delighted if she contacted him!

Lo and behold, she did, and he replied to me regarding my fish. He assures me, without any doubt, these fish are P. leopoldi, and not from Peru at all, but from Bolivia. Here is an excerpt from his message:

They are definitely P. leopoldi - no question whatsoever, and you have some beauties there. Also you tank is very beautiful. I am sure your shop does not know where they come from, but they are from the Rio negro system, not from Peru. His shipper (importer/wholesaler) received them surely from Brazil.

You know P. leopoldi are only found in the Rio Negro and Solimões regions. They never grow very large (not as P. sclare or P. altum), have always their head/nose slightly downwards pointed (all populations of P. leopoldi have) and although their colour pattern may vary somewhat (depending of the collecting spot, I think yours comes from an left affluent of the Rio Negro near Barcelos, I colelcted same colour pattern their), but all will also have always a black spot on the base of the dorsal fin."

This is great information to have, so I went back to the LFS and the owner was glad to learn about the correct ID, and I got two more to join the group.

Mystery (mostly) Solved

2009-03-03T15:25:00.004-05:00

I believe I have discovered what caused the recent disaster in the 150. Since the aquarium tested fine (cycled, low NO3) throughout this event, I had to believe that a toxin had gotten into the tank, and I was blaming Melafix, even though I could not imagine how that stuff would become toxic.

What I failed to recall was that I had dosed the tank with Flourish Excel and in hindsight, I must have just "glugged" it into the tank straight, not diluted , and the rainbows got a toxic dose of it, coming over to see if it was feeding time. How could I do such a thing? I did not double dose the Excel, like some do to treat algae, but was giving it a regular dose. I have read many accounts of accidental overdosing of Excel, with the delightful result of eradication of algae problems, so I know it is done, and double-dosing is a widely accepted method of treating all kinds of algae. Well, I believe this is the culprit, on further study of the nature of this aquarium product. I have installed my pressurized CO2 equipment now and will not use Excel in this tank, though I may use it in my other tanks, carefully, diluted, if algae is an issue, and to help plant growth.

I have no more rainbows - they all succumbed. Now the tank is a happy collection of many, many Endler's livebearers (several females have dropped fry - the tank is loaded up with babies), a couple of male guppies, three white cloud minnows, the cardinals and the cory cats. We will leave things alone for the time being.

I will await the maturation of the wee tiny fry in the 40 gallon (still no idea what they are) and hopefully they will be of a type appropriate to put in the 150, then I will begin using the 40 as my quarantine tank, and begin completing the stocking of the 150.

2009-02-25T19:03:00.003-05:00

Lost another rainbow - I believe all of the rainbows are done for, but that seems to be it. This whole experience, whatever caused it, was apparently too much for them.

I have decided not to stock my 40-gallon as I had planned (with puffers), and once the 150 stabilizes, maybe in a month or two, I will restock it but will use my 40-gallon as a quarantine tank. This will permit the mystery fry inhabiting it now to declare themselves and mature to the point of identification, and perhaps introduction into the 150, since they are undoubtedly tetra/rasbora/danio type schooling community fish and appropriate to move into the big tank. This remains to be seen, of course, but their behavior and appearance indicates as much.

This way, I can keep the fish in quarantine as long as I like, and gradually introduce them to the 150. I purchased the cories and the cardinals with the same thing in mind - these do best in large groups and they might not be available later if I purchase only a few at a time, so better get the bunch all at once. I thought the 150 could handle it.... Now I can still get the larger groups but put them in the 40 with BioSpira and let them settle in there for a while, and be sure they are not ill or otherwise problematic. If there is a problem I can treat the 40 and not bother any of the other fish in the process. I can use heat and salt and whatever else at my disposal, but there will be enough water to handle the load of a single group of fish at a time.

Over time, I will have my 150 restocked and where I want it, including angels. At that point I can switch the 40-gallon over to a puffer tank. I still have a 37-gallon tank that can be used for quarantine/hospital purposes. That does not need anything in it; a bare bottom and a couple of sponge filters would probably do the trick. I have sponge filters already, plus a spare small Eheim Ecco canister filter that I can use. I have several spare heaters also.

Once again, I am very happy I did not sell off my equipment when I thought I was done with it, even though at times I wanted to do so but did not have the time or energy to make such arrangements. I came the closest to selling off my CO2 equipment, and am SO glad I did not. That's probably the most valuable stuff I saved, and I will likely be using that on the 150 in the future when it is balanced. I am generally the type that likes to purge stored items, finding clutter and collections of belongings to be unsightly and a waste of space, but in this case something told me to hold on to it.

Disaster Strikes - Surprise Blessing

2009-02-25T11:38:00.003-05:00

I knew those cardinals was a bad idea! Things have gone dramatically south. I found another cory with a mysteriously cloudy eye and pale gill plate revealing reddish gills, yet on the other side of his head he was perfectly normal. I am not terribly experienced with cories but a unilateral illness seems odd to me, especially since it looked exactly like the ailment suffered by the first cory casualty I had, both times on the left side of the head.

I therefore decided to treat the tank with Melafix, and after doing that the rest of the tank began to suffer. I don't find anything published about Melafix being harmful to anything but labyrinth fish, so I did not expect this, but the Boesemani rainbows began to act oddly, gasping at the surface, and over the course of about 2 days the entire tank was doing this. I cannot find any abnormality on multiple test kits - no ammonia, no nitrite and only trace nitrate. This tank was essentially cycled silently due to the same decor and the same fish, along with the powerful filter from the 55 running in concert with the new filter. I did not detect any blip in the water params after adding the cories. I have been testing over and over, since the fish seem to be acting like nitrite poisoning. I did a PWC and lowered the water level, and now I have even added a bubble wand at the filter outflow, since they seem to be struggling.

For insurance, the tank had a dose of BioSpira added when I added the cardinals, and I trust that stuff to cycle any tank - I've done a lot of personal study on this product, and engaged in many online debates on the fish forums in years past about this stuff when it first became widely available. I am sold on it and am very grateful to have it available, though with multiple tanks I have not had to use it in many years. I had taken down several tanks at the same time, revamping my collections across the board, and found myself without a supply of bacteria. As long as you add the correct amount for the fish load (this needs to be carefully thought out) it will cycle your tank.

I have lost 3 Boesemanis and a couple of cardinals. A couple of the Endler's look bad but the majority of them, as well as the guppies, are acting normally. The cories are acting normally.

Last night I did a 50% PWC and am no longer adding Melafix, and the fish seem happier, as if the water was somehow toxic. I still have one rainbow that appears to be heading for the end, but 2 are acting normally now. I can't think of what I have done, but adding too many fish too soon is ultimately the reason. There are too many possibilities, even though the typical issues associated with overstocking are not present. From now on I will quarantine new fish, and add them more slowly. I erroneously thought that with this large of a tank, with this much water volume, I could add more fish at a time than I would have in a smaller tank, but something has upset the equilibrium, and the premature addition of new fish has got to be related.

Incidentally, the ailing cory was found dead, wedged against the heater. This was something that had occurred to me when I saw the nature of the left-sided wound/ailment. I thought it might have been stuck against the heater. There is no reason for this - I know that sometimes plecos have this happen, suctioning themselves too close, but why the cories would be crowding around the heater is beyond me. The thermometer is currently mounted at the other end of the tank, in the front, as far from the heater as possible, and the temp is at about 76. I have moved the thermometer around, up high, down low, one end to the other, and cannot find a spot that measures any different than the next spot. The tank seems to be quite evenly heated, in other words, so that the cories would not tend to huddle around the heater.

I have a crazy theory about the cory cat ailment. Cory cats tend to move around the tank in little gangs, following certain paths. Up over this rock, down behind that plant, following along the back glass, and around again, like that. Maybe they would travel under the driftwood arch, which hides the filter intake basket (a very large object) and the heater. If they were moving through there and were startled, they might choose to dart behind the filter intake basket, encountering the heater, and get stuck there. This is what came to mind when I had to extract the dead cory from between the glass and the heater, with the left side (same side as the wounds found on two cories) pressed against the heater. I moved the heater away from there, needless to say.

There is nothing to do but speculate. Repeated water parameter testing is normal - dead normal.

Now on to the Surprise Blessing. Speaking of revamping my tanks, I had taken down my 40-gallon ARLC (African Rift Lake Cichlid) tank, and sold off the Africans, along with the Buenos Aires tetras I had for dithers. Since the tank had a history of cyanobacteria issues, I removed all of the old substrate, sterilized the tank, put the rocks out on the deck for a week in sub-freezing temperatures after scrubbing, and sterilized the filters. Starting over from scratch, I used Play Sand for substrate, a few of the rocks from the old setup, taken from the deck, and a few plants from the 150. I purchased several other plants to go in this tank, and I decided to sit on it for a while and let the plants get established while I decided what to do with it. I believe this is going to be a South American Puffer tank, so I wanted to have time to get a snail colony going in another tank to supply crunchy food for the puffers.

After it had been set up for a couple of weeks I decided to test the water, just for the heck of it, and what do you know, off the chart nitrite, and high nitrate. Why? I had not added anything but plants and some clean rocks and driftwood. This was odd, but something must have been in there decaying to provide ammonia to create this cycle. I still do not know what it was, though it would have had to be something significant to get those levels of nitrite. Very toxic levels. Oh well, I could not get an answer to that, so I kept waiting. The levels came down, finally, and I added some ramshorn snails since I had so many extras. They have been tooling around in there happy as can be, and now the cycle seems to be complete. No nitrite and trace nitrate. Perfect.

Yesterday I was looking over at the tank and thought there was more floating debris than usual, and what do you know, I recognized that the debris was fry! There are six wee tiny fish fry in this tank, near the surface, darting around. They are glass clear, though today I am starting to see the hint of coloration. One seems to have a stripe running down the side, like a zebra danio would, and another has the merest suggestion of a triangular dark marking on its side, like a Rasbora heteromorpha. I am really pushing it, since these are so small, but it is fun to wonder what they are. I would love some Het rasboras.

Rasboras are a good possibility, since they lay adhesive eggs on crypt leaves, often, and they do not scatter their eggs. I think eggs rode in on some plants (snail shells?) and were able to hatch. I don't have another explanation. When I discovered them they had obviously been hatched only a few hours, possibly a day.

I feel like such a newbie now - making newbie mistakes and having so many mysteries to solve that should not be mysteries, but there you have it. At the end of 2008 I was bored with my same old tanks that had been chugging along, stable for years, and wanted something new. Now I have it! Fish are dying off mysteriously, and fish are hatching mysteriously. Lots to keep me interested.

Snails

2009-02-21T19:30:00.009-05:00

I have acquired a batch of lovely ramshorn snails, which are mostly residing in my 10-gallon planted Endler's tank with a large batch of baby Endler's. They are making short work of the algae in that tank. This is algae that is not really a nuisance, but has grown on a couple of the rocks, and is slightly attractive and natural looking.

I put one in the 150, and several in my 40-gallon breeder that will ultimately house South American Puffers (Colomesus asellus). I am hoping to establish a thriving colony of snails in their own setup as food for the puffers.