Two New Members

I swung by Alamo Aquatics on my way back from work. On the one hand, I forgot to get replacement filters for both of my aquariums. On the other, the store carried Otocinclus affinis (known at the store as "O" cats)! According to Tim's Tropicals, the literature suggests keeping them in three's, but they had previous success with one by itself. I brought home two. They were indeed, very small. Jackie has named them "Otto" and "Radar" (palindromes are cool!).

They took up on the glass walls of my aquarium initially, but the albino corys would run into them as they swam back and forth along the wall. One tried hanging out on the fake driftwood in the middle (nice camoflauge!) and the other tried adhering to the CO2 tube for a bit. They are not very active, but the corys provide all the action I need for now. One of them actually did end up on a plant leaf with thread algae on it, but I didn't observe him actually eating any. When he did move, as if to snack, the neon, ahem, discouraged the smaller fish from hanging out in his swimming space. So it will be seen if they are effective against the algae I am concerned with. If not, there's always algae wafers or fresh cucumber, I suppose.

On the plant front, two more hornwort stalks reached the surface, so I'll either have a forest of them soon, or kill them all by chopping them to bits. If they grow as aggresively as it seems, I'm going to have to reconsider the variety I intended to have.

The 5-gallon tank had a lot of junk on the bottom after I probably overfed last night (and no filter because the carbon would remove the medicine). The problem is that the fish seemed so hungry, and the buenos aires kept grabbing wafers off the ground and choking them down whole. I didn't want the corys to be left wanting in their hour of need. Concerned about nitrates, I performed ~20% water change, diluting the medicine in the process. By gradually cranking up the heater over the past 24 hours, I've almost got the tank to that critical 83 degrees.

I'm not sure if the rest of the fish appreciate the dynamic nature of their surroundings right now, but I can't bring myself to just sit by and do nothing while one of my favorite fish dies. As for the sick cory, he's still hanging out motionless when he can, but the other one is as chipper as ever. As a side note (because he is still behaving normally), the one black-skirt still has a white patch on both his pectoral and tail fins. Hopefully, though, this medicine will kill two birds with one stone.