Well, at least I know what the problem is that has claimed the lives of five bloodfin tetras and two corydoras (including the one to the right).

Ich.

In an effort to stem the destruction, I have done several small water changes and treated the tank with some salt and ich medication.

The interesting thing is that the legacy corydoras, the betta, and all of the harlequin rasboras show no signs of ich at all.  Hopefully that’s a sign that they came from the store in that condition, although I’m not sure how likely that is since all four of the new groups of fish came from different tanks.  It could also just be that the tetras and corydoras aren’t as hardy as rasboras, but it’s been my experience that corydoras are quite hardy.

I awoke this morning to two more fatalities.  Another bloodfin tetra and a corydora (who was in the slate cave and was a real bitch to get out).

This is when a home aquarium gets frustrating.

I woke up this morning to find a bloodfin tetra on it’s back at the bottom of the tank.  When I got home from work, I found another one in pretty much the same location.  Two down, and I didn’t even have time to get them into the database.

The other fish seem mostly good.  Almost all of them went crazy when I added a wee bit of food to the tank, but there was one bloodfin tetra that didn’t seem to go after food unless it was right in front of him.  That’s not a good sign, although it’s not necessarily a bad sign either.

The Corys are a little harder to judge since they don’t swim around all the time.  In fact, the five of them are sitting under the slate cave like Tony Soprano would sit in Satriale’s.  All five could be dead, but I can’t tell without moving the rock.

Hopefully, that’s all the deaths I’ll be reporting for a while.

After drinking my requisite two cups of coffee this morning, I headed out in the snow and took a field trip to my local fish store (LFS).  After looking over all the stock, I settled on six bloodfin tetras, three harlequin rasboras, three corydoras, and one split-tail betta.

Split tail betta

Continue reading . . . 

When the little red light on your aquarium heater goes on for the first time in months.

I felt like my office needed something a little more lively than a Darth Vader action figure (with removable helmet).  We have a betta in an office down the hall, and I kind of missed having one in my office, so I decided that’s what I would get, but I didn’t want just a plain bow…I wanted something with a little more personality.  I found it in a gumball dispenser style fishbowl.

After cleaning it out and setting it out with some water to adjust to room temperature, I went to my favorite LFS and bought the best looking, most active betta they had.  He went into the bowl, and after leaving him alone for an hour to let him adjust to the new bowl, I noticed that he was active when I would walk into my office.  I took a closer look at him, and he was very interested in me, following me around as I moved around the bowl.  He even tried to “eat” a drop of water that was on the outside of the bowl.

I threw a few live brine shrimp into the bowl and he gobbled them up quickly.  He then turned his attention to a small bubble floating on the water.  He attacked it like it was food, which split it into two bubbles, and he attacked those, splitting them as well.  This bubble attacking turned into quite a few minutes of amusement for him.

I haven’t decided on a name for him, but I’m thinking I’ll name him Gumby.

Less than a month after noting that things are doing well in Karinya, the last gourami has expired.

No clear reason for it, but it seemed fine yesterday, and today it was hiding under a plant all day, and then started swimming erratically, and then was dead about an hour later.  I assume that’s old age, but that’s one of the frustrating things about this hobby…it’s often not clear why some fish die, some survive, and some thrive.

The timing is interesting because I was planning on stopping by the fish store today to pick up a betta for the office.  Looks like I’ll also grab some gouramis as well.

It’s been about five months since my last fish related post (besides food), and the reason for that is because nothing interesting is going on, which is a good thing.  Everyone in the tank seems fine.  They are all eating and swimming normally, and seem to get along with each other.

To break up their monotony, I’ve been alternating their food a bit.  I generally don’t feed them every day, but rather every other day. Normally, they get Tetra-Min flakes, which they love.  Once a week, I give them dried bloodworms, which they seems to like, but sometimes have trouble catching because the bloodworms act differently in the currents then they are used to.  In addition, once a week I drop in a sinking algae pellet for the corys, but the other fish take advantage of it, if they can.

Speaking of algae, the tank is quite clean of it, and I think that’s because of the limited feeding I’ve been doing, plus the regular weekly water changes.

The plant in the tank is doing well, and has not gone crazy with the offshoots that were cleaned in July.

This sort of update makes me happy.  I like seeing them swim around their tank doing their little fishy thing while I’m far away from the tank and not influencing them, and I like kneeling by the tank during feedings and watching them eat.  They really are very calming to watch, and I’m thinking of getting a nice sized betta tank for the office.  With the right attitude and maintenance, this hobby can be rewarding with a little bit of frustration thrown in.

For the past two days, I’ve been preparing for this.  I noticed that one of my corydoras had been sitting on the gravel at odd angles.  Upon closer inspection, I could see that there were several things wrong with her.  It looked like she was suffering from ich, fin rot, and fungus.  I added some medication to the tank, including MelaFix (tea tree oil), but since there were multiple problems, no other fish were showing symptoms, and judging the age of the fish (5+ years), it appeared that old age just caught up with her.

There are now three corydoras in the tank, and they really like to be with more, so I may make a trip to the fish store and get a few more.  One of the concerns with corys is that while they are generally the same, different varieties don’t necessarily like to associate with each other, so unless you get the same type, you could have two groups of underpopulated corys.  Some research will be necessary.

Yesterday at around 7pm I noticed that one of my honey gouramis was acting a little funny.  He was sort of sitting at the bottom of the tank on the gravel at an odd angle.  I thought this was particularly odd because I had never seen either of them sit at the bottom of the tank unless it was the middle of the night and they were taking a nap.

I fed the fish and the gourami swam to the surface and appeared to eat normally.  About an hour later I performed my weekly water change and noticed that the gourami wasn’t swimming normally.  He was swimming around erratically, sort of floating around with the currents with short bursts of power swimming.  I knew that was a bad sign.  I thought about moving him to a hospital tank, but I didn’t because 1) I don’t have one, and 2) by the time that symptom shows itself, it’s usually too late for fish this small.

Within 30 minutes he was in deep trouble, getting stuck to the filter intake pipe, but managed to free himself only to have fits of floating on the surface and floating around with the currents in the tank.

When I went to sleep, he was lying on his side on the gravel, still breathing.  He expired during the night.  I looked him over, but could not find any trauma that would explain his death.  This is the first fish fatality in over six months.  I hope this is an isolated incident and not an indication that there is disease in the tank.

On a similar note, I have not seen the one Otto in the tank for quite some time.  I’m going to posthumously mark his date of death at June 1, 2007, but I’m positive he died sometime before that.

Today I performed some maintenance on my 10g tank.  The maintenance should be classified as greater than minor, but less than major.  In a nutshell, the plant was getting out of control and needed to be reigned in.

There is only one live plant in the tank and it’s an unknown variety of sword.  Many years ago, it was potted and I left it in the pot, but during one major maintenance, I unpotted it and planted it directly into the gravel.  It did fine, for a while, but then within the last year, it started to really flourish.  The first growth I saw was a popping up of a group of leaves right next to the original bulb.  These leaves grew and grew, and now there are two twin plants about 8-9 inches high.

Continue reading . . . 

Gourami fish are in the same family as the Siamese Fighting Fish (betta splendens) and are almost as territorial. The level of aggressiveness is dependent on the exact species, but most will not kill or seriously harm others.

I have two honey gouramis in my 10 gallon tank, and since they are both males, they tend to get a little aggressive toward each other once in a while.  Most of the time, they don’t bother each other, but when they meet in the middle of the tank, especially in the area near the heater, the gloves come off and they go at it like Islanders and Rangers.

Most of the time, they “kiss” fight—meaning that they face each other, and sort of ram each other with their mouths.  The Kissing Gourami is named that way because they have large mouths, and it looks like they are kissing whilst fighting.  Honey’s have very small mouths, so you can barely see them try to nip at each other.

It’s tough to see due to the YouTube compression, but I was able to catch my two honey’s fighting a slightly different way.  Like some other labyrinth fish, they have modified fins that look like antenna, which they actually use to help find food.  On this occasion, I caught the two using their feelers to “slap fight” with each other.

Since the YouTube version is a little tough to see, I’ve uploaded a QuickTime version, but it’s 14 MiB, so be warned if you’re still on dial-up.

It’s been a while since I last posted about the tank, but you know what they say, “No news is good news.”

All the fish in the tank are still there and seem healthy.  Everyone is eating well at feedings, and the overall activity level is good from all fish.  Even the cory’s are active a lot.

This is a lot of algae on the rock, and on some of the leaves of the plant, but not much at all on the glass, which is nice.  I’ve increased the frequency of the water changes to two per week, but have cut the amount in half in an effort to curtail the algae growth without putting stress on the fish.  So far, it’s working because the algae on the rock is receding (not unlike my hairline).

The plant in the tank is getting a bit out of control.  The main plant has reached it’s peak, so it has decided to branch out and there are little plants popping up all around the tank, even under the rock.  I’m going to take some time this weekend and trim the main plant, and clean up some of the “plantlings” before it takes over the tank completely.

I’ve also been able to take some videos of the two gouramis fighting, and some weird behavior from the rasboras, which I will post over the next few days.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about my tank.  That’s partially because there’s been no news in the tank, and partially because the last time I told people about how good things in the tank were, there was a death the next day.

Well, everything in the tank is fine.  Fish seem happy and healthy, and are eating like they think each meal is the last I’m going to give them.

It’s been about a week since the last water change, and I’m planning on doing a 20% change tomorrow.  There’s a little bit of extra algae on the rock in the tank, so I may wind up doing smaller 10% changes twice a week to keep it under control.

Just yesterday I was telling my parents that everything in the tank is fine…

I just walked by the tank a few minutes ago and found one of the gourami’s lying on the gravel dead.  I didn’t see it earlier in the evening, but I didn’t do a head count either.

Not sure why it died.  There were no signs of trauma or disease, and all fish ate yesterday so I doubt it was really sick.

Maybe it was a Yankees fan and just couldn’t go on after all their bad luck as of late.