Alex is away and I miss her, so I played some more with my new camera. The fish are really hard to take good pictures off – I’m used to very static things www.thirdglance.com . But here are a couple more

Hurrah. He was there at the back this morning… although I had done some pruning a few minutes before and not found him. Seems there are some good hidey holes. He doesn’t look entirely happy, though… breathing a bit fast and colour not looking fantastic at the tail end.

James thought I had been exaggerating about the colour of the rainbows. Ha.

I think the goby may be dead. Or he could be a good hider; it’s always possible.

Some of the rainbows have developed astonishing colours; the males especially have developed some lovely reds on their fins. There is one weedy runt; it will be interesting to see how he goes.

One of the plants, a semi-aquatic one, is not doing well at all… rotting etc. So too are some bits of hydrophilia. The sword-thing, though, seems to be colonising the entire tank. Almost, anyway.

I moved all 9 rainbows, in two lots, and the snail tonight. It makes the tank look quite a bit busier, not surprisingly. Hopefully they will get some more colour now that they’re in an even nicer tank and there’s some light on them too. Actually some of them have such a pronounced black stripe that I have mistaken them for SAEs.

And I haven’t seen the bumblebee at all tonight…

I fed them peas tonight. They loved it. A Colombian eating half an entire pea by itself was quite a feat.

Thought I had lost the bumblebee: couldn’t see him last night when we got home, and also not this morning with the light off.

Then, when the light came on… he was happily sitting at the front of the tank. Can’t see him again now, but I’m not quite as fussed.

Think I might start ferrying some rainbows across to the main tank. How exciting.

This is such a boring post I couldn’t think of a good name for it.

Moved the second (and last) SAE last night, over to the main tank; hopefully they will make some inroads into the algae situation.

The harlequins have grown a lot, James pointed out this morning… not that I think they will ever rival the Colombians.

Ajax is a fast snail. I just wanted to mention that.

As well, I found the last goby last night, and he was fine; also this morning; however, this afternoon once again I can’t find him. I won’t go tipping the ornament thing up again, just in case he’s hiding for fun or from stress, but it worries me a bit!

There are only three neons left. I found one on the filter yesterday morning. And last night I fished out a dead goby. And at the moment I can’t see the second; it is possible James found him this morning and has already fished him out. I’m sad. Not sure whether to leave the others in there for a while, or take all but the neons out.

I fear that the incompetent molly male may be getting some competency back (nudge nudge, wink wink), and soon we will have yet more babies.

I have the power to blog – And a new digital camera.

James noticed a dead rainbow this morning. Ajax was very unimpressed when I took it away from him; he wanted to suck her dry, or something equally gross. Sigh… I hope this won’t become a trend… no obvious symptoms.

I was looking in the main tank and noticed that the disgusting algae on the plants and gravel was managing to get everywhere and not necessarily be anchored down. So I had this brilliant idea of pulling it up with the net, which I proceeded to carry out. It came away easily, and was quite disgusting; lots of poo everywhere. It also came off the plants easily. The tank consequently looks a whole lot brighter, because instead of dark green the bottom is white-ish.

We also decided to do a water change; I think we probably did 40%, because we hadn’t done one in a while. I did some pruning and aquascaping while the water was down… and James decided to put the other filter on. He figures it’s a waste not using it… and I think he just wanted to fiddle. So he rigged it up, and it blasted water out. He’s now made the holes in the spray bar a bit bigger so that it’s not quite so violent, but I’m still a little unsure of whether the fish are going to appreciate having two sets of water pouring onto them. It does mean the tank is being filtered 10 times an hour… not sure if this is excessive or not.

I moved an Algae Eater over, to start him doing his job. I couldn’t catch the other one and decided to leave it a while, so he doesn’t stress out too much.

Yes, another two dead neons this morning. Very disappointing. All the fish in there are going to have to stay in there another week or so I think, because of this. It occurs to me that having so many fish doing quarantine together was not a remarkably good idea – I thought so at the time, too, I was just a bit greedy… ah well. Here’s hoping.