It was still sad to find dropsy platy dead when we got home today. Even worse to find him with all his guts eaten out, and his body stuck to the filter intake. Nasty cannibalistic fishies.

The other day – maybe it was Monday – we checked the levels, to see if there was a chemical reason for angel unhappiness. Everything was the same, normal – except for pH. It had gone down to 6.4. May be a result of rotting food – not that I think much is left to rot – and I’m not sure how much of a difference this drop will make. Anyway, we added some sodium bicarb; checked again in 24 hours, and it had gone up a little. Must check it again soon, and do a water change.

Its stripes had almost completely faded. The one survivor is now in the isolation tank – at least partly to make it easier to net and remove him when he dies. He’s looking up at the top, mouth at the top of the water, and not looking at all happy. One of his gill-fins looks pretty ragged, so I wonder whether there has been bullying which I haven’t noticed? I am very sad.

Late that night

Last angel dead when we arrived home after meeting/dinner. Very sad.

Two of my lovely black and white angels have died

We noticed on Friday morning that one of them was sort of hiding, lying in the plants – not quite horizontal, but not vertical either. Then, later in the day, we saw the other three standing on their tails, about half way up the tank in one of the cornersm just floating there, looking up at the top of the tank. The fish basically stayed there, occasionally moving around a little, with one of the others sometimes pulling the lie-in-the-plants trick. We were worried, but we had to go to Ballarat for the night.

When we got home on Saturday, they were still all alive, but clearly not very happy. They barely moved from the more protected side of the tank, even though there has been no sign of bullying – I think I saw one of the other angels chase a b&w one, but only for a moment and not since. There was little change on Sunday.

This morning, one of the angels was dead. When I got home from work, there was another one dead. Tonight, neither of the remaining ones ate any food – one sort of floated close, but the other just hasn’t moved. I’m going to call Coburg tomorrow, and see whether they have been having any issues with them.

On a very different note, baby cloach’s stripe goes all the way around his middle. On the other two, one has a plain belly and the other has a black spot that’s in line with his middle stripe. It will be interesting to see whether the stripe grows, or whether he will end up like the other two.

We went to Coburg today to get more freeze-dried tablets, since they’ve eaten almost all of them, and some frozen food too – we got blood worms and brine shrimp. We also got 4 black&white angels. Oops. They are beautiful, though! They are stripey, not splotchy, and they have long flowing fins and tails. They also have double whiskers – that is, each side has two whiskers (or maybe they’re just split at the bottom; not sure). Their bodies would only be about 3cm long, but they’re bound to get bigger – the original angels are 5-6cm long now.

We still have that dropsy platy. We also have a couple of quite fat tetras. The new cloach is growing madly, as are the others, and I think everyone else is happy.

The tank is now looking well and truly full (except maybe for some sunset platies, if we ever find them).

An interesting development on the filter-front. James had decided that the sponges on one side of the Fluval (the other side has holders for carbon and bio stuff) were pretty much useless, mostly because food and other particulates were getting into the bio bit, which we figured probably wasn’t such a great thing. So we turfed the sponges and replaced them with filter wool – just stuffed it in, but didn’t pack it down. Also put a layer of it in each of the holders, over the bio stuff and the carbon. And when we checked this morning (hoping that the filter was not totally stuffed): hooray! The top of the wool was almost black and had caught almost all of the gunk! The great thing with the wool is you can just pull out the grotty bits and replace it. There was nothing in the bio bit – no food; James says other times, there would be food and stuff floating around in the filter canister when he opened it up – not this time! Later edit: this may also have been because of over-feeding…

Someone posted on the Tropical Tank forum today that you shouldn’t keep many dwarf gourami together, and particularly not males. |This caused me no little consternation, until I remembered that there have been no deaths or even cases of GBH yet among our dwarf gourami, so it can’t be too much of an issue for them. There is a hidey spot under a piece of wood which often has a gourami under it – I wonder if it’s always the same one? No way to tell, short of clipping a fin or painting it (or using a Stick-It note, as someone suggested).

Still have the dropsy platy, which is a bit odd. It is also making me the quintessential paranoid guardian, because I’m worried one of the tetras has it too, but maybe it’s just fat.

I also read something on the forum which comforted me greatly – that all algae eaters, and particularly SAE, are great jumpers! So that explains those fish jumping, anyway, and I guess it explains the others too. Nice to know it wasn’t actually anything we did wrong as such – and how amazing that they could jump through that little triangular opening!

All of my plants are growing like crazy (the ones in the tank, anyway…). Even little bits that I half-thought to toss out have new bits growing, as I decided to replant rather than toss. So it’s all looking very healthy, which is exciting. Nitrite and ammonia both zero, nitrates around 5.

Not that I’ve seen, anyway. One of the dominant mollies, a male, has a dark blue or black line around the outside of his tail fin, and all of the others have some hints of blue in their scales, under the lights, or yellow, or maybe even pink. I guess this shows they are happier here than in the fish shop; what a surprise.

Nitrates around 5ppm – wonder if they’ll go higher? So we bought more fish. We wanted more sunset platies, but they didn’t have any – well, if they did, they were in a tank with several types of platy, and it would have been pretty hard to get only platies so we didn’t bother; we’ll keep looking though. We got eight silver mollies, which are pretty much fully grown, apparently. They are beautiful! And they’re currently schooling, too, and as I look now they’re attacking a plant – I hope they’re just sucking off algae. Which reminds me:

a) we have brown algae on half our plants, which is particularly unsightly. I’m not sure whether to be concerned or not. The SAE eat it occasionally, but not as much as I had hoped – maybe they don’t like that sort of algae. I wouldn’t.

b) The buggers have totally eaten and destroyed my succulent-looking plant. It no longer exists at all in my tank. And the bottom half of several other plants only have the veins of leaves left.

We also bought another cloach. I think the two we had were sulking a bit – they have been hiding out in their cave a fair amount of the time. They have discovered a convenient ledge on the bottom of the rock forming the top of their cave – when they are on it, they cannot be seen. We’ve panicked twice, now, and discovered it there.

James is annoyed because apparently we got dudded on our filter – other aquarium places have the Eheim filter for less than the Fluval (what we got), and the Eheim is meant to be a whole lot better – something about the way they actually do the filtering, apparently.

The mollies are still beuatiful.

Floating pellets are something of a failure, especially in the auto feeder. We tried it last night, and when we got home there were heaps of pellets floating around the tp of the tank, and a distinct lack of interest from the fish. I managed to get probably 2/3 out, and then fed them some flakes, which they devoured (of course, they could have eaten some pellets, and just be greedy little fish). This morning, however, there don’t seem to be any pellets left – there are none floating, anyway, so maybe they make perfect midnight snacks (or the filter got them).

Our angels have grown so much, compared to those at Coburg today! It was a bit exciting to realise, I must admit.

The mollies definitely seem to be eating algae. It’s nice to have silver fish, since the angels have definitely decided to go more yellow.

It’s ridiculously exciting.

We got a delivery from Aquamail today. They seem to be pretty good price-wise, so for things like food and water conditioner, it will probably prove easier to have it delivered rather than go out to Coburg (and be tempted by all the pretty fish, and the seahorses). We got an isolation tank – for sick fish, basically; a feeder, for when we’re on holidays (we’re trying it at the moment – we had to sit and watch it this morning for about 10 min because it releases food every 12 hours and James started it around 8pm last night. It was very exciting); a kilo of water conditioner (!!); and some food. James decided we should try pellets for the bottom feeders – turns out they’re actually floating pellets – and re-ordered flake food. Well… he thought he got the same size flake food as we had at first… turns out this one is 90g, wheras the first was 28g! It’s fully a bucket. They’ll go through it all, though, of course

The angels don’t seem to be fighting or feeling aggressive at the moment – one does look like he has had some fins nipped, though, which we better keep an eye on. There is one angel noticeably smaller than the others, which is interesting; of course, they’ve all grown a fair bit

We still have the dropsy platy – how odd. Maybe it’s not dropsy; it does
look like it, though. Maybe it’s recovering – I’m sure its stomach looks smaller than before I went away, and it is still eating and being active. I can’t wait to get more platies, so that we have a proper school again.

Everything I’ve read on the subject says cloaches prefer to be in schools of three or more. Our two, however, seem to be doing all right: they’re not spending all their time hiding or sulking, and they certainly eat voraciously (to the extent of not being able to swim, it sometimes seems!). James blames this on the fact that they are still growing; they are nowhere near the 10-12cm which is apparently how big they can get.

I had turned the glass lid around so that the triangle was next to the edge, over the water (after the first jumpers, we turned it so the triangle was over the glass in the middle, and not a potential escape-hole); now we have to turn it back around. I’m so disappointed – another one gone – we’re down to four SAE.

In a few weeks’ time, when the nitrites are totally down and the nitrates are also down, we’ll have to go and get some more fish. I think we’ll build up our school of platies, get a couple more SAE and another cloach. I am considering a male betta – a Siamese Fighting Fish – apparently just one can be okay in a community tank, pending individual personality traits of course. Maybe one other schooling fish as well, like cherry barbs or harlequin rasboras or something. Not sure if I want more colour – the platies and gourami are pretty good for that. Ten or eleven platies would be fun!!