A fish was swimming around the top of the tank – actually, it was just floating there mostly. It was a bit worrying. It did that for a while, then it moved down to the rock and sat in a convenient groove for ages. Eventually, after much agonising, we netted it out and put it in a bucket with some water we siphoned out. Its eyes were popping out a bit, and after it died we noticed the scales were sticking out a bit. It died about 30 min after we put it in the bucket. I guess the stress of transportation didn’t help too much. The other platies appear ok, but now we have to figure out whether to dose up the tank just to be on the safe side. So – seven platies. I feel like a fish failure already, after only a fortnight.

The SAE are schooling much more now that there are more fish in there. The angels zoom to the top whenever the lid is removed – they’re always (acting) hungry. The gourami are ultra flexible: they could nose their tails if they wanted to.

Our ammonia has increased slightly, and nitrite has increased a bit. We also seem to have had a bacteria explosion – the water is very cloudy. The solution to the ammonia/nitrite + bacteria is, apparently, just keep on with the water changes.

I have no idea how, but once again we found a fish dead on the floor. Again, it was quite dessicated, so there was no resuscitation happening. The lid hadn’t been off, as far as I can recall, for any length of time. There are a couple of possibilities: it came out on an arm, when someone reached in to plant or rearrange something; or it jumped out of the corner, where there is a triangle opening in the glass lid, I guess for oxygenation. We have therefore turned the lid around, so the triangle is no longer an open door to the air. Makes it a bit harder to take the lid off – I guess it is worthwhile if it prevents any more kamikaze fish. And we’ll just have to be more careful when we put our hands in.

Platies apparently grow to about 4 inches, so that could be interesting! [Much later edit: actually, I don’t think this is true at all, and I don’t remember where I read it] The gourami won’t grow much more. As well, the platies are livebearers, so there is the possibility of fry! Given we don’t have another tank to move them to (I guess we could get one of James’ little, old ones, if we got serious), I don’t know how many would survive. I wonder who would eat fry, of my fish? Maybe the gourami; perhaps the Foxes… which I think are actually Algae Eaters (henceforth known as SAE – Siamese Algae Eaters).