Swish meets Tankhood

Its the long weekend and I didn't have time to clean Swish's tank at work so he had to come home with me.

Capturing him in a click tight jar, I carried him home in my green bag. walking carefully, not running or jumping up the stairs. But in the lift I brought him out to have a look... ooh he was not a happy camper! But he's in the tank now, I've put him in the breeders cage, as he's never been in a tank with other fish. At first he was a bit listless... then Patch came over to check him out.

It was quite funny! With hesitant strokes he swam towards the tank. Then 2 fin strokes away he paused.

Decided that a subtle spying strategy was better of a direct confrontation and promptly swam to the left behind some hydrophilia (which is not very concealing).

Swish flared up and the angel figured that his hiding spot wasn't that good and moved deeper in the hydro, only to bump into Saddleback who was also on her spying expedition.

Algae Problem

Hrm... the flying foxes have found a better food source and have ignored the algae, now i have brown stuff growing everywhere. :9

but not to worry! more catfish!!! :)

My angels...

Patch posing for the Camera

and this is SaddleBack zooming past the camera

TankCam is at stage one

who hoo!!! its working!

Today we got a groovy webcam with light sensors and auto light beam. $35 bucks, its now sitting on the goldfish tank watching the troptank. Still have to figure out how to host the camera on this site but stephs is onto that :)

if you dont want to wait, msn steph and we can hook you up to live TankCam

Patch and Saddle Back

2 new tank mates! 2 silver angelfish. one is called patch. Patch is mottled on one side with a black patch over his eye, on the other side hes totally white. Saddleback is totally silver with a black 'saddle' between his dorsal and tail fin.

Both have settled well in the tank and aren't bothered by Marion who is currently the top fish in Tankhood.

Cost (2 medium angels)
$18.00

Another one to float

Sigh. another stroke of bad luck. With the elevated temperature, the male swordfish was okay at first but seemed to loose it over the week and finally today was found dead at the bottom of the tank.

The females, and the congos are thriving. I swear the congos have grown since ive had them 3 weeks ago! :) i hope i get them as big as the ones in the store (about 10cm long)

Rest in Peace...

My first casulties. The red phantoms have died of white spot.

May you rest in big big blue :(

Underwater Webcams!

How cool is this!!! Live streaming of your very own fish on the web! Let the fish enterain you at work!

And this genius goes one step further and makes a underwater web cam!

I think its a great idea! A web cam pointed at the fish so you can watch them for relaxation as well as monitoring their condition.

The computer fair is on next weekend... ShoppingList: 2 web cams (just in case one stuffs up)

Bugga! White Spot

The tank is matured but, no one is that lucky to survive that without problems.

The red phantoms have white spot and one of the swordtails too. Reading up everywhere especially The Krib White Spot or Ich to many is a parazite that grows on the body and fins of fish. In severe cases it can grow on the gills and thereby kill the fish by suffocation.

The red phantom had one first but i thought it was natural and left it alone, then the next day all of the phantoms had it!!! ooh they had girl germs!

So to cure it before they all go spotty and Eva goes dotty! thank god its pay week! i can go shopping for the medication.

Everything i read recommends "Quick cure" or "RidIch" which is a malachite Green/Formaldehyde mixture... but its rather toxic and kills the bio filter and plants plus stains everything. Which is a bit of a worry.

or i could do it naturally thanks to Shelli Wittig, who wrote an artcile on the Cichlid-forum about combatting ich. It seems if you boost the temperature up for a few days the parasite cant breed and therefore kill the cycle. looks like my tank will go to the tropics! literally!
I could do one of the following

1. Medicate the whole tank
   ADV: only one purchase the medication DISADV: Will affect biofilter and plants
2. Raise the temperature of the tank
   ADV: natural method of combatting the diease DISADV: fish are put under stress, but no chemicals. Might affect biofilter and plants
3. Hospital Tank - Treat the fish in the hospital tank and raise the temperature in the normal tank
   ADV: Fish will not be stressed DISADV: cost gotta buy a tank, thermostat, filter, medication, airstone and tubing.

I think I'll do a mixture of the 2nd and 3rd option. Ill buy an extra air stone and run that off the current filter block that i use for the gold fish and raise the temperature. But then steph might panic with that so maybe this weekend i get to go and buy another little tank :)

Hooray! Zero!

yes we have hit zero. the tank has matured! 0mg/L Ammonia and 0mg/L nitrite!
you know what that means... yes kids! fish shopping this weekend! :)

Growing plants

The big amazon sword i bought has popped out new leaves!!!

how exciting! :) im glad! its money well spent!

Mild State of Emergency

My tank last week suffered NTS (New Tank Syndrome) I am pretty experienced with handling goldfish in small tanks but a total bleeping novice to bigger tanks and tropical fish. Alas the tank went cloudy and the fish were gasping on the surface.

Solution? Water changes. Lots of them. So much that Steph is sick of them.

First lot: ooh water and hoses!!!
2nd: this is still cool
3: hrm..
4: god not again!
5: Eva? I thought you said a bigger tank would be easier to manage!

The fish are happy, the tank cleared up in a week and we are now on the downward slope of a nitrite spike. only a week or two more for maturity.

Naughty Tuck! dont eat the furniture!

Last night, while watching the fish, Tuck (one of the siamese algae eaters) swam around the driftwood and stopped over a bed of Riccia. With one eye on me he selected a strand of Riccia and ate it infront of me!!! then sat there as it digested my expensive aqaruium carpet!
Riccia was 6 bucks a pop! and it does costs a fortune! but what is money to a fish? certianly to of any importance to Tuck as he was munching on it like it was green spagetti!!!!

New fish!!!

New additions! We went to Slippery Little Suckers, our favourite REAL fish shop and Roger introduced us to 'BoofHead' and some of his mates in their display tank. There were some beautiful congo tetras which fully grown were 9cm. But "BoofHead" a big pale yellow, black speckled discus (the size of a small dinner plate) stole the show. To convince them to come out Roger threw in a little food which had everything scampering around except for "BoofHead". Roger flicked him away and then explained to us that BoofHead had taken his dietary requirements to live food only! And it would ignore all other foods until he got what he wanted!!! Just like a cat!

We spent a lovely time there and chose some new babies home to join the mad house currently there. We got 3 red tetras and 1 male congo tetra and 2 female congo tetras.

Because they are such buggers to photograph (and i need a new camera) here are some professional shots of these types of fishes. (linked from www.zoo.ch and www.aquahouse.co.kr respecitvely.


So far so good! the congos go spacko when theres food, darting around even moving quicker than the swordtails! swiping the food from underneath their noses!!! very entertaining!