To no effect, until just now. He’s safe, just hiding all day I guess. The Dropsy Gourami is really not looking well, though.

I started writing this up to RandomAlex today [later note: what a long process this has been…], which is cool – I hope it might actually be vaguely useful to someone. I’ll keep going paper-based until I catch up with myself.

The cloaches have been very active recently. I wonder how the tanks – particularly the babies – will go while we’re away? It will only be a week… I’m not going to put the feeder on either tank: I know the main tank will be fine, and I think it would overfeed the babies. I might put it on the main tank when we come home in between weeks away.

We really have to catch Bitch Fish (is it obvious that she is annoying me?). Given the record, she’ll drop again while we’re in Ballarat, which will be annoying. I may well be close to despair – what will we do with these babies?! I made another attempt at catching her tonight, to absolutely no effect.

I had been wondering where the other was, and found it today. I noticed two male babies in the qt, and so wanted to catch them and put them in the main tank – last thing I need is a pregnant young molly. I did the removal, and then noticed there was a dead rasbora floating on the top of the qt. I can only guess that it got caught when the net was last in the main tank (and came out when the net went in to catch the babies) – although I thought I checked the net pretty well. One other remote possibility it that it went over when I put some cuttings from the main tank to the qt and then didn’t like the change in water.

All the babies are now in the qt – that’s a lot of babies – except for the two males. There is still a possibility that Dave’s friend will want them – and God willing, Miss Molly as well. Just have to catch her first…

I don’t know what can have happened to it – haven’t seen it against the filter, but I guess it could have been eaten quickly. Sigh.

A couple of days ago I noticed one of the cloaches seemed to be, for want of a better description, be blowing bubbles. It’s very odd; there seens to be white stuff coming out of its mouth every now and then. Not sure whether or not to be worried!! And two of the SAEs were having a serious fight earlier, although they seem fine now.