Needs a Little Salt...

It was the first time in a while that I really sat down with my cat and watched the 5-gal tank for a while (shame on me!). I noticed two troublesome things:
1) One of the black skirt tetras had a recurrance of the white growth on the tips of its fins
2) One of the neon tetras had to constantly swin downwards to keep from floating to the top

I am much more concerned about the tetra, because I had never seen that kind of behavior. I looked up some information about swim bladder disease (assuming that's what it was), and the prognosis is not good. I performed a much needed water change, and went ahead with the Fungus Clear, trying to treat a possible bacterial cause of the swim bladder problem, while also treating the skirt tetra's white tufts. I also added a tablespoon aquarium salt I purchased. Yes, I tend to overkill.

Back for Good!

Not only am I back from skiing with no vacation to take for the forseeable future, but my camera came back from the shop, so pictures will once again abound. Here's one to orient ourselves with the status of the tank:

As you can see, there's lots of luscious, green growth, but what's not so obvious is that some of it (too much) is algae. I was amazed again that when I came back from only 4 days away, the black neons had lost so much color yet again. I fed them Sunday night, and by Monday morning, they looked fine. It's amazing how sensitive that coloration is to their diet. I went ahead and refilled the CO2 canister today because the bubbling had dropped off considerably. Between that and some more consistent, daily Flourish additions, we will be right back on track.

With the weather finally getting cold, I got a little heater for the bucket to keep the water from getting too frigid. I hadn't worried about it much before now since I have not tried to keep fish in there, but the plants were starting to suffer from the cold.

Happy 2006!

Well, I'm back from my 2 week vacation, and the tanks appear to have survived. Both food tablets were completely gone, and the black neons were missing almost all their color, so I'm glad I got home when I did.

The 30-gal underwent some interesting transistions while I was gone. Without the daily Flourish treatments, the alage has made a rousing comeback, so I cut out the worst offenders, but I let a great deal of it alone, hoping the return of Fluorish will be enough to drive it away. Many of the foxtail stems have turned brown, and one looks nearly completely dead, so I am considering replanting them higher up. Speaking of which, that right-hand deep corner of the tank has opened up quite a bit, so that the neons have some space to hang out there under other foilage.

The star-grass has finally taken root in the dirt I layed down in a driftwood crevice, and it is growing quite well. Speaking of star-grass, the stuff planted in the substrate is doing well also, but it is growing a lot higher than I'd like, so I'm thinking it needs some more light. In that vein, I cleared out the now suffocatingly dense java moss and put it in the bucket. I'm really going to have to learn how to throw more stuff away than I do now...