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.