I have only been able to spot two black widow tetras in the last two days
I must admit I haven’t looked at all closely for them specifically in quite a long time. I wonder is one constantly hiding, did I miscount ages ago (although I think that would be quite hard), or has it died and very quickly been eaten – it’s certainly not attached to the intake, and hasn’t been. How confusing.
The neons are growing on me, slowly.
It has been so long since I wrote in here…
So long, in fact, that I have kept putting it off because there is too much to write and I am lazy.
Every single one of my angels is dead. It happened quite suddenly and, as far as I can recall, there were no symptoms. They were still in the qt. I called Coburg afterwards and asked if they’d had any problems with them; they got snooty and said no. However, someone on TTT said they’d also had angel issues from there, took in a sample of their water plus ths receipt and got a refund. I only found this out ages later… lesson learnt.
The last batch of babies are in the qt and having much fun, it seems. They are always hungry, or at least act it, and almost seem to know how to go about getting fed: whenever I am in the kitchen, they cluster in the closest corner of the tank (where I do usually feed them). I did buy an ornament: a large Grecian urn-type thing. It’s a bit tacky but I like it, and some of the fish seem to like swimming around in it. Whenever I prune the main tank, I have taken to putting the cuttings in the qt; seems like a good idea for dealing with the nitrates, and gives the fish some shade. The reason I’ve been induced to write today, actually, is… more babies. Miss Molly hatched them last night. I wasn’t expecting her to for a few more weeks, actually, and I see that today is 2 months to the day since the last batch were born; how interesting. But what a pain… what am I going to do with 80-100 babies? I might advertise on the Boronia forum again. I am a bit distraught, I must admit.
We came home to discover a SAE on the floor, quite a way from the tank, three weeks ago; that too was a bit distressing. It had obviously jumped out of the tank, through quite a small hole, and wiggled over there. Probably I should not fill the tank quite so much, so there is a greater gap between the top of the water and the lid.
One more gourami has dropsy – has looked ill for maybe a fortnight now. He’s the one who was looking constipated ages ago… I had thought he was getting better, although never entirely losing the constipated look. Now, though, it’s quite clear he is sick.
We went fish shopping about three weeks ago. We got nine harlequin rasboras – who are just gorgeous, happily schooling and zooming around – and ten neon tetras. They are just about to go in the main tank; I wanted the tetras to be qt fish, but James insisted they be moved. Actually, we’ve left one neon in the qt; he doesn’t look very happy, perhaps a bit bloated.
The main tank now contains:
three cloaches
three black widow tetras
four gourami (one ill)
four adult mollies
? baby mollies
three SAE
two male platies
nine rasboras
nine neons.
It’s looking quite beautiful, too.
Well, that wasn’t quite as hard to write up as I had thought. I may now get back to writing more regularly.
I am still intent on getting a betta at sometime – if it wasn’t for the gourami, I would be tempted to get one right now to eat some of those pesky babies. Maybe I will get one – qt for a few days, then into the main one – and qt the gourami (all of them), because apparently they might have relationship issues. I wonder if I can convince James…
Talking to strangers
It’s a cliche to say that you shouldn’t talk to strangers.
People do talk to strangers all the time, of course – you can’t help it if you want service and so on. Of course, there are also times when you don’t have to talk to strangers but you do. I went to give blood a few months ago and, having drunk copious amount of water so that I would bleed quickly and beat my brother, I needed to find a toilet. I didn’t want to take my bag with me, though, so I turned to the woman next to me. I didn’t know her; I’d only heard her speak once or twice, to her friend. However, I said something like – ‘excuse me, could you mind my bag, make sure no one runs off with it?’ And she smiled, and said yes, so I left and then came back a few minutes later and it was all ok. I thought about it later, though, and I wondered – who was to say she wouldn’t run off with my bag? I had no idea whether she was a kleptomaniac or not. Did my having sat next to her for maybe 10 minutes somehow alter her status as a stranger? And was my bag any safer with her supposedly keeping a watch? Was she exuding some sort of alert to would-be bag-nickers that she would beat them over the head if they attempted to steal the bag of a person she didn’t know?
It was very strange.
Randomly Yours, Alex 