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.

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

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 . . . 

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.

The morning of the 13th, I turned off all my computers, cable box, cable modem, aquarium, and sub woofer, in short, anything that would create a load on my fuses when the power came back on.  I then went to work for what I figured would be an 8-9 hour day.

Got home at 6:41 p.m.  How do I know this?  Because as soon as I walked into my apartment, I went into my bedroom to look at my alarm clock.  It said, “6:41”.  Since it wasn’t blinking “12:00”, I knew that my power never went out at all.  Darn.

I turned the aquarium power back on and made sure that the filter started properly, and then went around resetting the other things.

I hate when that happens.  They tell me the power is going out, and it doesn’t, and I bothered my fish, which didn’t need to happen.

When I came home last night, there was a notice posted on the front door that there would be a planned power outage of the building on 9/13 starting at 9am until 3pm.  I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with something like this before.

I’ve had to deal with one blackout that I can remember, and I deal with planned power outages at work once in a while, but we have a procedure we follow for those.  This is the first one that I can remember that is 1) planned, and 2) at my place of dwelling.

The only thing I’m really worried about is the outage’s affect on my aquarium.  I will unplug the filter prior to 9am.  This should be done because some of the water in the filter will fall back into the tank.  The problem with this is that when the filter gets power again, and the impeller starts spinning, if there is no water in the reservoir, the motor may burn out.  I will also need to take the filter’s media and put that in the tank so that the bacteria in there won’t dry out and die.  I will need to do a small water change once I get home as well.

I’m sure that an eight or nine hour outage won’t harm the fish too badly, but I’m going to try to make the ordeal as comfortable for them as possible.

Last night I did a 25% water change in the tank.  Everyone in it looked good and seemed energized by the activity.  I fed them about 30 minutes after the change, and everyone ate.  I also tried to look over the fish as much as possible, but they all move so fast that I can’t really get a good look to see if everything is okay.

Right now, things look good, but I’ve been deceived before.

Everything in the tank has been going well.  That is until I got home Thursday afternoon and found a female guppy lying on her side.  There was no outward signs for her death, and everyone else in the tank looks fine, so I’m not really sure what the cause of death was, but that seems consistent with my whole fish keeping experience.

Kind of a miserable day in the city today.  Rained all day.  Since I had to get a haircut, I decided to take a short walk to the fish store and see what they had in stock.

They had a nice selection of fancy guppies, and since that seems to be my fish of choice right now, I decided to get a bunch.  I wanted five or six females, but decided to get eight because I knew some would die in the first few days.  So seven females and one male have been added to the tank.

Did a bigger than average water change tonight.  It was about 35% and, more importantly, I did a deep cleaning on 50% of the gravel.  Boy was it ugly.  Brown gunk would flow up the tube, and the smart little fishes would think it was food and bump into the plastic tube.  I’m thinking of renaming all my fish “Einstein”.

There is clearly something wrong in the Karinya tank.  Two guppies have died in three days, both with very similar symptoms.  Both seemed fine one day and the next were swimming erratically, floating around until they hit something (bottom, surface, plant), then darting away for a short moment, then floating around again.

I took water samples and performed an emergency partial water change.  A single dose of MelaFix was also added to the tank.  Now it’s off to try and see if those symptoms match up with some sort of disease.

Everyone else in the tank seems fine, but that does not necessarily mean things are OK.  On a more positive note, one of the female guppies looks like she’s pregnant.  Her belly is fatter than normal and she seems to have the dark gravid spot behind it.  Will have to watch that over the next few days to see if it stays.

Changed about 25% of the water this week.  The fish get so excited when the plastic tube starts sucking up gunk because they see that gunk as possible food.  Each one of guppies runs into the clear tube while trying to get to the gunk.  I wonder what goes through their little minds when they can’t get to it because of the invisible force field in the way.

I did a chemistry test on the water before the change.  Things look good.  pH is holding steady at 6.  Both ammonia and nitrite are at 0ppm and nitrate is at 10ppm.

All fish in the tank look healthy.

Did a 25% water change today.  Everyone in the tank looks fine and seems healthy.  I wanted to take a water quality reading of the water before the change, but I just plain forgot to do it.

Most of the fish are doing just fine today.  The three babies that were born in the tank all seem to be males, but I am not 100% sure of that since they are still pretty small and sexing them is not that easy at this point.  Everyone is eating normally and seem to be happy.

I did a nice 25% water change last night.  I really stuck the hose deep in to the gravel over about 25% of the tank and it sucked up a whole lot of gunk.

The tank seems to have re-cycled finally with all the numbers settling down now.  I will continue to take measurements over the next couple of days just to be sure.

Stopped by New World Aquarium today and picked up six female Fancy Guppies for Karinya and a beautiful red crown tail betta for the office.

The betta (unnamed at this time) went into his new tank without issue and ate immediately.

The six guppies went in and looked a bit shocked at first (as expected). I fed them and a few ate with the others just sort of looking around and checking things out. The guppies that were originally in the tank ate heartily, especially since they now had new competition. The perpetually horny male continues to chase the original female, but he is starting to check out the new talent.