| Aug. 8th, 2006 @ 11:40 pm The Fish Report 8/8/06 |
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Current Location: Up to my elbows
State of Mind:  apathetic
Tuneage: Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads
It's hard to count schooling fich. That's part of why fish school. Dad taught me to hunt quail. he said, "Pick out one bird and shoot at it. If you just shoot into the flock, you won't hit anything." Schooling fish work like that. In any case, I managed to get an accurate count of the Harlequins today. 8. Down 2. Those Algea eaters have got to go. So, I took apart the rock fall, and probed the nooks and crannies, and lifted out the temple, and lo! there they were, clinging to the inside of the spire. So I have put them in a little two gallon plastic aquarium with the spare filter from Swirly's tank. It draws in air and oxegenates the outflow, so, if it doesn't get too cold tonight, they ought to survive long enough to take to back to PetCo. Either that or Swirly will feast.
Turns out that only one of the Harlequins died in the tank, prob'ly the one that was a little shocked at the outset. The other loss was a suicide. Found it in back of the tank dried out like a Vietnamese snack cracker. I plastic wrapped the biggest gap in the cover, so that shouldn't happen again.
Trimmed back the Java moss a little. Cleaned a ton of it out of the filter intake. Need to change the filter media this coming weekend. I took the trimmings and incorporated them into the rockfall.
Tied down one of the Anubias Nanas, and one of the Petits. Tied down the little Java Fern on the rock by the beach and combed the black gravel out of the beach too.
Crypt rot is pretty prevalent in all the wendetis. Some of them are down to the roots, and most look to be headed that way. Not to worry, I'm told they grow back. The vals are pretty sad. They've rotted down to the roots in places too. Not happy about that. We'll see if they spring back. One of the Aponogetons is just gone. Maybe the rootstock is there.
Also, saw a couple of snails in there today. Going to have to add some snail eating loaches. Also, the front glass is getting some scum on it. Biotope be damned; I'm getting a pleco in there.
On the plus side, the water sprite and Wisteria seem to be doing really well, and the rotala is coming along OK. Green instead of red, but what do you want for low to medium lighting, even if it is rooted halfway up the side of the tank.
Need to scrub the front glass in any case.
Set up the CO2 reactor. Angie had used every measuring cup and spoon in the house today, so I used a full coffee mug of sugar and eyeballed about 3/4 tsp of yeast. Also, I shook the f*ck out of the sugar water before I added the yeast, so it'll have better oxygen content than the one on the Amazon tank.
Speaking of the Amazon tank, it's got a hell of a snail problem, and a heck of an Algea problem. I have got to scrub the sides this week (Pleakly seems tobe doing an OK job on the front. He's just a little guy, though.) I may start the loaches out there and move them over to the big tank after they clean it up a bit. What I did do about the Algae was to switch the bulbs, so that the 13 watt is over open water and the 23 watt is a bit obscured by driftwood.
Swirly's tank is getting a bit fetid. I think I am going to take it down this weekend and give the gravel a full scrubbing. I may get a 5 gallon tank to put the most pregnant guppy of the day in. Swrily took a perfect parabola out of the exact center of Jeannie's tail. Horndog bounced back from a similar injury, so I am hoping she will too. Swirly just gets hungry a lot. As long as he's kept fed, no biggie.
Moved the two rocks I was using to keep the fake duckweed out of the filter so that it would splash the water around a bit and get more oxygen in there, since I took the other filter out for the CAEs. |
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