Apocalypse

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.  *EDIT:  Be aware that this is my own personal opinion. I can't say, truly, what cories "like" best, but I prefer to use sand for them, and soft sand that is not sharp.*

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

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

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......

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

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

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!

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!

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.