Boo!

After a tough and tight softball game, I swung by the local fish store (LFS), Alamo Aquatics, to check out the planted tank for arrangement ideas, as well as inspect possible additions including ghost shrimp and pentazona barbs. To my surprise, the planted tank was completely new. Apparently, they had recently sold the other tank, and this one was only two days old, so it wasn't as old and inspirational as the previous one. Oh well. I guess now my tank is better! (although it did make me consider if I had "enough" driftwood.

Sure enough, they did not have pentazona barbs yet. The lady doesn't think they'll have them anytime soon, so she was trying to sell me on black phantom tetras. I'm not really interested in more tetras, but cherry barbs sound enticing. There were, however, plenty of ghost shrimp, and the price ($1.99) was listed by the dozen, so that's how many I got, even though that's probably too much. I dumped what turned out to be 13 in the big tank, and after further thought, I scooped two of the bigger ones out and dropped them in the 5-gallon tank. I am not confident they won't turn into food for the Buenos Aires tetra, but I think it's worth a shot. He's bothered them a little, but they've stayed out of his mouth, and seem happy and able to hide out in the cave for a respite. They've got surpisingly long "whiskers" that I'm afraid may prove enticing for the bigger fish. Speaking of enticing, a whole bunch of them carried several green eggs (presumably they're eggs). They will likely meet the same fate as other eggs I've seen, so I'm not to worried about the shrimp going all snail on me and overrunnning the tank. Only time will tell...

P.S. Thanks to LiveAquaria.com for these great reference pictures.