He died a couple of hours after my last post. I moved him into the little isolation tank to get him away from Bitch Fish, and I rather suspect that the move probably contributed to his death. Poor little thing… he didn’t have a very happy little life…

Yes, have been away for a week… the fish survived… but. I was on the ‘phone just now, and I noticed that the very-non-alpha male, which has been in the QT for quite a while now since he was getting bullied by the alpha male in the main tank, is looking very sad. He’s got black happening on his sail fin – I don’t know whether this is a problem or not – as well as swimming very listlessly. Worse yet, Bitch Fish is having the occasional go at him… he looks like he is missing a few scales in places. He is swimming sometimes vertically, sometimes with only one fin although there is nothing noticeably wrong with the other, and often just going with the flow. I don’t know what to do with him, because I am sure that the alpha male would have just as much of a go at him as She does.

On a brighter note, the main tank is looking fairly good. We still have some algae issues, climbing all over my plants, which is annoying me a lot. I need to go and buy some more plants, I think… the chain sword thing is going well, although it hasn’t grown as much while we were away as we had anticipated.

Ajax is, of course, very well.

That’s right, no more quarantine tank. Instead, it has turned into a molly hatchery.

Bitch Fish, Queen Hera, lulled me into a false sense of security: she didn’t have any fry in ages, and she doesn’t look all that fat, so maybe she isn’t preganant… then I wake up this morning, and what do I discover? About 10 fry, and a very skinny mother. Grrr.

J doesn’t see what the problem is.

The main tank is threatening to get algae happening again; it’s on the sword plant a bit, and some other bits… I did some rather brutal-looking aquascaping the other day, in that I chopped out all the bits that had no leaves on them. As a consequence we look like we’ve lost a fair few of the plants, but actually they were bits that just looked rubbishy anyway.

I only have four rainbows left; this is a bit sad. All of the harlequins and Colombian tetras are still going, though, as is Ajax of course. So… I’m thinking I need more plants… ones that might actually survive, this time. And I’m thinking about new fish, too. Serpaes, perhaps. Or silver dollars.

I feel like I haven’t written about the tank in ages. I think the less light is doing good things for our alage issues, but not sure about the plants; they don’t seem overly happy, but I’m not sure whether this is a light issue or it’s the after-effects of the algae infestation. I’ll leave it a couple of days – over the weekend – and see how it looks then. I’m going to have to do some serious aquascaping I think.

Someone accused me of not writing much about Ajax recently (J then claimed I write about him more than I do about anyone else… possibly, but he is incredibly interesting). Last night, for the general delectation of a 2.5 year old, who didn’t fully appreciate it, he decided to a pull a Floating Stunt. I was suitably impressed, anyway. He was balancing on a lily pad-like leaf right at the top of the tank, and then all of a sudden… he wasn’t on the leaf any more. He was just floating around, easy as you please. Love that neutral buoyancy. Love that snail.

The tank still feels a little bare. All the fish are about the same size – I think this is the main problem. I feel we need some quite different looking fish, preferably on the larger size I think. Maybe gourami, maybe silver dollars… J wants angels, of course, but a) I am still a little traumatised and b) I haven’t really seen nice ones recently.

The advantage of having highly descriptive titles in posts is that you don’t have to write as much in the body of the text.

I think I’ll leave the lights off for at least today, and then see what happens tomorrow when they go back on again.

We turned the light off yesterday – well, I did, in a fit of pique and an effort to reduce our chronic algae issues (iss-ues). I’m sick of the disgusting matting effect over the gravel and the plants, and I’ve heard that this can help. So we’ll see. As yet we haven’t covered it up to hide it from the daylight; thought we’d try this first. James thinks it might be getting more light now than it used to, and that might explain why it’s there.

Dead rainbow. Just discovered floating at the top of the tank. Had been no signs in any of them yesterday, and I hadn’t seen it earlier in the morning either. All the others seems to be carrying on quite happily… sigh.

Ajax is asleep on a piece of wood; looks like that, anyway. And J pointed out to me this spot on his side where you can see what looks like a valve working; possibly breathing?

Just a bit later
I think there are only five rainbows. We moved the light soon after I wrote the above so that we could have a closer look at Ajax sitting on the back wall, and there was a rainbow body, on the glass above the water. It didn’t look like it had been there for very long… I guess we might have smelled it, had it been there a while. So that’s a bit depressing.

Ajax must be close to neutral buoyancy, we have decided. Yesterday I spent a number of minutes watching as he happily crawled out along a fairly thin stalk, eating algae the whole time. He turned around when he got to the end of the stalk – don’t ask me how – and went back a ways, then managed to get onto a nearby stalk and do the same thing. It was fascinating to watch. He was prtty much wrapping himself around the stalk, which must have the bonus of letting you eat everything while helping you stay stable. Also noticed that you can see what must be the colon, or whatever poo-carrying tube snails have, inside the shell.

Well, I found the runty rainbow this afternoon – dead, and looking a bit odd- against the filter intake. He had no colour, mouth gaping open, and looking a bit mouldy! I had actually assumed that he had died and been et by his compatriots, but it looks like they weren’t interested in eating him.

I think the goby must be dead too. Hasn’t been sighted in a while.

The tank survived the days without me; James tells me he fed them a bit and spent a few hours on Sunday just looking at them and listening to music (niiice). The chain plant thing has, instead of going around the rock, decided that going around the filter might be a fun thing to do… I might have to make it think again.