The only reason she’s still here is because we couldn’t catch her. I don’t think KB wanted quite that many – it was about 15 – but I think she expects a few not to survive the transition. We didn’t look at the babes all that closely, but I expect most of them are female. If not, we said we’d take the males back. Our females looks like she’s knocked up again, so I’m not sure what to do about her. I guess we could have mollies keeping the qt going rather than tetras, or maybe we hurry up and buy more angels like we’re dreaming of.

I checked the nitrites in the qt, but no sign of them yet; keeping the ammonia around 6ppm. I checked the Kh and Gh: Kh is aorund 4, and Gh around 7, so my wonder if those two things were affecting the pH has been proved wrong. If we continue to have problems with pH, I guess we could look into getting a pH buffer thing; or maybe we should be a bit more deliberate with water changes and leave water out for 24 hours to de-ionise… but then I think you have to add in some salts that will have precipitated out, or whatever (too long since I did chemistry).

Later that same day

One of the gourami definitely has a problem. I think he’s the same one I’ve been watching for a while: he’s been lying on his side in the plants a fair bit, which looked a bit odd. This afternoon, he’s swimming – or just lying – on his side, at the top of the tank. He moves aorund a bit – particularly when I try to net him, to go into the isolation tank; he’s currently on his side under the heater. His anus is swollen, so I wonder if he’s constipated; I put in some peas, but he wasn’t interested (the SAEs were thought). He also has a protrusion on either side, behind his gills. Consequently, I’m a bit worried. Everyone else seems happy enough.