We went to the aquarium and got something we ought to have got right at the start: an external canister filter. We went with a Fluval 303 (I think) – we could have got a smaller one, but that would have just been big enough for our tank. As it is, this one cycles the entire tank’s worth of water something like 5 or 6 times an hour.

In 24 hours, we noticed an incredible change: the algal bloom (which we assumed was an algal bloom, but may only have been dirty water!) disappeared, and within three days we could see from one end to the other and everywhere else. The filter has a carbon layer which gets all the particulate matter out of the water, along with the sponges, and a section with a biological-filter-thing: it’s got lots of tiny holes in it, so there’s a great deal of surface area, so a lot of bacteria grows. Which would be good, given that our nitrites are incredibly high. Which would probably account for the death of another platy.

I can’t believe we didn’t get a filter originally, that the shop didn’t tell us to get one. It makes no sense! It provides an enormous area for bacteria to grow, and that in turn must obviously hasten the ammonia cycling process.

We’ve just been reading about fishless cycling. I’m not sure whether you add plants, but you do add ammonia to the water every day, encouraging bacteria to grow, and once ammonia is down to zero you add just enough more ammonia to keep it going and therefore nitrite-eating bacteria grows, and then you can add fish. And you shouldn’t lose any to the ammonia or nitrite, which would be nice.

We got too many fish, too fast. I’m pretty sad about it.

They’re all swimming around all happy-like, in an anthropomorphic kind of way. The only thing up the top of the tank are some plant bits. I must find out their names – it’s annoying, not knowing. The lilypad-like one keeps coming adrift.

We’re going back to Coburg tomorrow. We’re going to buy an external filter, which we really should have got at the start, and another cloach – apparently being in groups of 3+ makes them happy. We’ll also get a gravel vacuum because these fish poo a lot.

The tetras have calmed down – they’re not fighting among themselves any more. Someone suggested that they were attempting to set up a hierarchy, and I guess that makes sense. The torn fins and tails appear to be healing – they’re certainly no worse, and aren’t nearly so obvious (which I figure must = healing).

Fish eyes are really cool; they are set on the sides of their heads, but they can move relative to the head. I guess that’s how they manage to look around, since I’ve not seen the pupil or any bit in the eye move. Makes sense, I suppose.

Upon getting home from work I discovered another platy dead – just floating at the top of the tank. We think it was as a result of our nitrites sky-rocketing – the colours are hard to differentiate, but they’re at least two, maybe higher. Ammonia seems to be stable in the 0.5-1.0 range, and has maybe gone down a little. Many more water changes…

And a cloach just died. We spent a good 10 minutes looking for this third, fearing the worst, and then he suddenly turned up. A little bit later James noticed that he was doing a headstand and breathing very rapidly. We caught him in the net and left him in the water to see what would happen… he died about an hour later.

I am very, very sad. We clearly got way too many fish way too early. James had been under the impression that the ammonia cycle started when there were no fish in there, which is obviously not true. So much for our amazing ammonia/nitrite results! We were also probably a little too enthusiastic about feeding and so on.

I’m actually a bit annoyed at the fish shop. Maybe it’s me trying to negate responsibility, but especially with fish like the cloaches – which apparently prefer mature tanks, at least 6 months old – the staff there should have asked about the tank set-up and advised against us getting them. So I’m a bit peeved, as well as very sad.

The plants seem to be doing well, including the two new sorts we introduced – one with round, succulent-looking leaves, and one with leaves like lily-pads.

A fish was swimming around the top of the tank – actually, it was just floating there mostly. It was a bit worrying. It did that for a while, then it moved down to the rock and sat in a convenient groove for ages. Eventually, after much agonising, we netted it out and put it in a bucket with some water we siphoned out. Its eyes were popping out a bit, and after it died we noticed the scales were sticking out a bit. It died about 30 min after we put it in the bucket. I guess the stress of transportation didn’t help too much. The other platies appear ok, but now we have to figure out whether to dose up the tank just to be on the safe side. So – seven platies. I feel like a fish failure already, after only a fortnight.

The SAE are schooling much more now that there are more fish in there. The angels zoom to the top whenever the lid is removed – they’re always (acting) hungry. The gourami are ultra flexible: they could nose their tails if they wanted to.

Our ammonia has increased slightly, and nitrite has increased a bit. We also seem to have had a bacteria explosion – the water is very cloudy. The solution to the ammonia/nitrite + bacteria is, apparently, just keep on with the water changes.

I have no idea how, but once again we found a fish dead on the floor. Again, it was quite dessicated, so there was no resuscitation happening. The lid hadn’t been off, as far as I can recall, for any length of time. There are a couple of possibilities: it came out on an arm, when someone reached in to plant or rearrange something; or it jumped out of the corner, where there is a triangle opening in the glass lid, I guess for oxygenation. We have therefore turned the lid around, so the triangle is no longer an open door to the air. Makes it a bit harder to take the lid off – I guess it is worthwhile if it prevents any more kamikaze fish. And we’ll just have to be more careful when we put our hands in.

Platies apparently grow to about 4 inches, so that could be interesting! [Much later edit: actually, I don’t think this is true at all, and I don’t remember where I read it] The gourami won’t grow much more. As well, the platies are livebearers, so there is the possibility of fry! Given we don’t have another tank to move them to (I guess we could get one of James’ little, old ones, if we got serious), I don’t know how many would survive. I wonder who would eat fry, of my fish? Maybe the gourami; perhaps the Foxes… which I think are actually Algae Eaters (henceforth known as SAE – Siamese Algae Eaters).

Well, despite there seeming to be problems with the tetras – they seem to be fighting with each other a bit, and some have splits in their tails and dorsal fins – we went back to Coburg today. We got some more plants; the tank is looking quite well forested. We also got 9 sunset platies, and 5 Emerald Dwarf Gourami, who are actually mostly blue. So we now actually have some colour in the tank, which is exciting and makes a difference to the appearance. With the new fish the tank as a whole looks busier. We also bought frozen bloodworm, which is a bit gross, but they seem to love it. We have a bit of a problem at the moment with the angels being pigs (they look quite portly at the moment, which probably isn’t a very good thing), and the tetras therefore often missing out. We also bought some freeze-dried tablets which you can stick on the side of the tank, and it’s been suggested that we distract the angels with a small amount of food up one end of the tank and put more at the other end. The tank looks so convincing now! Everyone who has seen it has loved it.

With the ammonia and nitrite levels, they’re both still around zero, although the ammonia has maybe risen ever so slightly. I guess it makes sense for it to be low at the moment – we haven’t had lots of fish, we haven’t fed them all that much, and there are lots of plants. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep it all down.

We found it dead on the carpet – it must have jumped out while one of the glass panels was off (it stayed off for a fair while). I had seen it lying there a few hours previously, but thought that it was just a leaf; it wasn’t moving then, so I couldn’t have saved it anyway. So that’s a bit sad; should make me pretty careful in the future.

Somehow our ammonia and nitrites are both zero – I’m not sure how this can be; maybe we’re doing the tests wrong, because I don’t see how it can be perfect so early. pH is at 6.6.

The cloaches just rip into some of our plants – pulling the stems to bits. And the angels like the feathery plant a bit too much!

They include: 3 clown loaches, partly to deal with the snails (they have already eaten a lot of what we assumed were snail babies, on the leaves); 6 Siamese Flying Foxes (to eat the algae, and they have been sucking it up like little vacuum cleaners), and 4 mostly-silver angels (because they look cool). The cloaches and angels will apparently get fairly large, so that should be entertaining.

The angels, with their beaky mouths, appear to like tearing into the plant with the feathery, pine-like needles. The cloaches and Foxes look pretty funny, with their mouths underneath, as they mow the algae. The tetras appear to be sulking, but hopefully they will get used to having to share the tank.

We bought a stack of kits, as well – ammonia and nitrite both seem to be about 0, which seems odd for such a new tank. We’ll have another go at testing tomorrow.

Haven’t noticed any other Odd Bits on fish.

It wasn’t there when they went in the tank yesterday… two days in and already we have a medical issue on our hands. It’s on the dorsal fin…

The other fish seem happier.