Cue the Imperial Army Music

The new aquarium has arrived! 30 gallons, 3 feet long. It's a thing of beauty. Filling it one Rice bucket at a time was actually no small chore. As a neat sidenote, you can actually see how much water was dumped in at a time judging by the lines of bubbles along the sides of the glass.

Now I realize most hobbyists own tanks that are 55 gallons and up, but this is a major undertaking for me since I still don't know what I'm doing. However, in one of the few money-saving measures of this undertaking, I am filling the aquarium with tap water and letting it sit for a few days while the chlorine evaporates (theoretically, this should only take a day, but I'm about to leave town for sunny Long Beach).

I also started up my Empire 280 (gallons of circulation per hour) that should be overkill, but hopefully I can stock my tank with more fish. My only concern is that it will agitate the surface too mcuh and release some much-needed CO2.

Speaking of being clueless...

In the past (as little as two weeks ago), in order two feed my two catfish, I would try to drop just the right amount of fish flakes in the tank to have a few fall between the cracks and land on the gravel for the active little bottom-feeders. Now I've read time and time again that the main way that beginners screw up their tanks is by overfeeding (leading to unhealthy polution), but I could see no other way to get food to them. Plus, I thought maybe I was a pretty talented feeder.


After seeing a little whiteness on a couple fin tips of one of the newer black-skirt tetras, I became concerned he might have a minor fungal infection. I went to old-reliable, Alamo Aquatic Pets, and asked for help. In addition to giving me a tiny bottle of MelaFix to clear up a possible infection, I also learned a great way to feed bottom-feeders - check that - the only way to feed them: sinking wafers. Sure enough, when I siphoned my tank that weekend, there was an unbelieveable amount of crap hiding in the gravel. The hope is that when I feed flakes now, I don't feed so much that they fall to the gravel. That should keep the gravel a bit cleaner, and my fish a bit healthier.

The only trick with that is getting Pepper to stop frightening the fish when I'm feeding. A high percentage of food is able to sink to the bottom when all the fish are hiding behind plastic plants in fear of the mighty cat...

15 little ones

As I begin this "blog", I am the proud owner of one adorable kitten (Pepper) and a 5-gallon freshwater aquarium (1 Albino Buenos Aires Tetra, 3 Black-Skirt Tetras, 2 Corydoras Julii Catfish, and 8 Neon Tetras) with aspirations of starting a 30-gallon, planted freshwater aquarium.

My reasons for writing this journal include tracking problems and solutions I iterate through during the care of these animals, but also to record their comings and goings in order to reflect fondly upon them in the (not-so) distant future.

While I always wanted to get an aquarium, I must admit, the main impetus behind this 5-gallon beauty was a nagging feeling of guilt that Pepper was bored all day while I was at work. So I figured instead of getting a tape full of recorded birds and fish so she could be a couch-potato, why not kill two birds with one stone and get us both an aquarium?

I definitely thought out the decision to get an aquarium, but I don't think I adequately researched my first one. If I had to do it again, I probably would have gotten a bigger tank in order to give myself some flexibility about what I could add, as well as make it harder to screw up the water quality. I certainly wouldn't have mixed the overly aggressive solo Buenos Aires with his tamer tankmates. At the end of the day, though, it's made me work harder, pay more attention, and learn more, hopefully leaving me better prepared to tackle this new 30-gallon tank in my mind.