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!!

James rang with the news. Before, it was more like 5.0. Hooray! This is a very exciting thing indeed. He also said that even though he had fed them in the morning, when he stuck his arm in to replant something all the fish were swarming around and looking for food – so he fed them again, and they devoured it quick-smart. Apparently there is meant to be a change in behaviour when the nitrites go down, so it seems like our fishies are a little bit happier!

There is virtually none of my succulent-looking plant left: rotten little buggers have eaten almost all of it. Grrr.

No visible signs why. Slow nitrite poisoning; what a way to go.

Another food source for our fishies is frozen bloodworms. They come like little ice cubes. You pop one out, put it in the water, and it defrosts so the bloodworms (actually mosquito larvae) disintegrate and go everywhere – the speed depending on how hungry the fish are and fast they push the cube around. Once takes a minute or so to finish off the cube completely.

There is a platy with what looks like dropsy – its stomach is bloated, and the scales on its side are sticking out. It is still eating and acting pretty normally. The other platies seem to be particularly attentive of it – at first we thought it might have been pregnant, but we’re pretty sure now that it isn’t; it’s been like that for a few days, and I think livebearers give birth pretty quickly. So unfortunately this one will also go the way of the others.

I’m going to Adelaide tonight, until Tuesday, and James is going away for part of the weekend too, so it will be interesting to see what happens to them.

Our nitrites are still sky-high

The stupid fish eat the plants! For some reason, I think it’s particularly the angels – their beak-like mouths can do a lot of damage to the stems of the plants, stripping the tasty green bits off and eating them. The others do it, too – the cloaches, even. Sometimes those two daft fish seem to eat so much they get bloated and have trouble swimming. This is especially so since we get tablets of freeze-dried food. We thought they would be good for the bottom feeders, since there is little algae left for the algae eaters. As it turns out, everybody likes the tablets. They all have a nibble – or a gourami or angel will bite some off and spit it out, and other fish will eat those little bits.

Anyway – the new plant that looks like a succulent seems to be an especial favourite. There is definitely less of it that there was.

Ammonia is zero; nitrite still off the scale, but the colour may be a little less purple than previously.

Actually, they were fighting I think – apparently they can sometimes get pretty aggressive and territorial. I think that’s what they were at. There seems to be one angel in particular who is quite aggressive and attacks other fish, or tries to. I’ve seen him come up underneath a gourami and try to nip his under-fin. And he tries to nip the other angels, too, and chases them around parts of the tank. I think he has an inferiority complex, because he has shorter whisker-bits than the others.