New Company

Well, I looked at the 5 gallon this morning without spotting my oto, and I believe I located his carcass behind one of the rocks, but I was unable to retrieve it. So that sucks. I decided to check the water, feeling that perhaps without any water changes, despite the low bio-load, perhaps the water quality had plummeted. A bit to my surprise, I found the pH to be about 7.6, and nitrates to be at or below 10 ppm. Not bad! I'm left to wonder, though, what doomed my oto...

I took my weekly plant cuttings to Alamo, and while purveying the fish selection, I was drawn back to the "curviceps" (I believe they are also called dwarf flag cichlid). They didn't have any female blue rams, so Mona picked me out a male and female curviceps. They colored right up almost as soon as they were put in the tank. While they behave relatively peacefully, not giving the black skirt tetras any grief, I did spy one stalking and attacking a pond snail. I hope the shrimp can avoid their wrath!


Also, when they ate and spit up my fish flakes, I realized I didn't have any cichlid food. I took a frozen block of blood worms and dropped them in the floating basket I had bought a while ago. I'm hoping that will tide them over until I can get to a fish store on Tuesday...

The Carbon Dioxide Strikes Back

Not surprisingly, having my CO2 reactor working appears to have helped growth considerably. My mature water sprite has already nearly reached critical mass, and I'm seeing quite a bit of pearling -- you don't notice it's not there, but it's easy to make an impression when it appears.

The glosso also appears to be staging a comeback, and the tiger lotus is still spawning nice pads. The Cryptocoryne wendtii is really flourishing and sending up lots of babies.

Summer Cleaning

This morning, I hacked up quite a bit of leafy rotala indica that was a gorgeous rose color, but it all ended up in the trash. I had to be careul not to cut any golden kuhlis, and in fact I was able to count all six later.

While I had my hands in there, I noticed that there was no water coming out of the spray bar, and sure enough, when I unplugged the motor, I didn't notice any gas bubble up from the reactor. That's because it had all been bubbling back to the motor; it was not pumping any water at all!

I have no idea how long it had been like that, but once I took it out, opened it up and gave it a good cleaning, it had no trouble pumping water once it was put back in. I might note that the pump's sponges smelled like a nice clump of damp, fertile soil.

I was concerned that there was no CO2 in the tank, but it must have been diffusing at the motor sponge because I measured the pH at 7.0 or 7.2. So not running the motor didn't kill me too much. I makes me think that I'm bubbling even more CO2 than needed. I already moved the turn-off time to be earlier in the afternoon, but I will have to watch it closely, because I think I did that when the pump was not operating.

I took the excised temple and water sprite as well as the melon swords to Alamo Aquatics (I learned there, that the big broad leafed plant was called a (red) melon sword or perhaps ozelot sword). One of the melons had been growing in the substrate for a while and looked quite nice; the other two were babies I brought in from the emergent shoot.

Aside from the temple and rotala indica growing very stongly, the foxtail has been really taking off as of late as well. I snipped a couple of the longer stems that had developed a root system at their base, and I moved them over behind the melon sword, as I'd like to de-clutter the left side a bit. There are still a few pieces of glosso among the substrate, but it is not creeping back across the floor as quick as I'd expected.

I've still got all dozen rasboras alive and well, but I haven't figured out how much, if at all, they enjoy the new curent generated by the spray bar. Here's hoping they continue to thrive.

Time to Restock

Unfortunately, I've lost a fish or two every day since I brought the school home on Saturday, and I'm now down to six of the original dozen. I had only salvaged four bodies, but upon explaining my plight to Alamo Aquatics, they were kind enough to give me six more.

One of the employees mentioned that he had tried keeping rasboras in his tank previously, but only 3 out of 12 would survive in his tank. He also made some recommendations as to a new show fish. His vote was for a ram, but also said a betta could work.

Curiously, their school of rasboras had not had any casualties since Saturday, which made me reconsider my diagnosis that they were succombing to disease. Knowing that the store used 50% tap and 50% RO water, the only thing I could think of was that due to my fertilizers, I had significantly more total dissolved solids (TDS) in my water than theirs. I knew this was not a problem in and of itself (after all, I kept plenty of seemingly unaffected fish), but perhaps the rasboras were not able to quickly adjust to such a dramatic change.

Therefore, after introducing them, I did a water change to bring down the TDS, and perhaps remedy any other problems my water was having.

The pictures in this post are various efforts at getting underwater pictures with my waterproof disposable camera. I had a few pictures to burn, and I wanted the roll developed, so I clicked and hoped, although they didn't turn out too well.

And then there were Ten

I can't say I'm terribly surprised, but I discovered the rasbora I put in the 5 gallon tank did not make it through the night. I searched high and low for him first thing in the morning when I failed to see him swimming around. Finally, a pile of snails and a suspicious shrimp caught my eye, and sure enough, I was able to collect a fish skeleton with my net.

I added him to the bag in the freezer where I was keeping the other dead fish. I figure I still may lose some in the 5-day grace period, so I'll take care of returning all of them at once.

Thankfully, there were still 10 in the big tank, and no sign of disease that I can identify (knock on wood), so maybe we're in the clear. I guess I can only hope...

School is in Session

Well, I called Alamo Aquatics today, and they told me that the harlequin rasboras were in, so I bagged up my latest plant cuttings and headed over to collect my new school. I went over, and found them as "Rasbora Het", but they looked like harlequins, and I was assured it was just a labeling convention. So I purchased and dozen (for $25; no plant supplier discount), and checked that Mona would take my large amazon swords.

Upon arriving home with the bag, I discovered that one of the rasboras had a large patch of red scales on his right side. Aside from upsetting me that I didn't not receive a very healthy batch of fish, I decided to view it as an opportunity to bring my swords over. I dug up the front and the right one and shifted the left one a little to the right. It is evident they filled up each freezer bag quite well. I also sandwiched-baggied my sick rasbora and exchanged him without hassle. I confirmed that they had a five-day return policy, because I feared that the one I took back would not be the only casualty.

Sure enough, when I got home, I could only count 11 at a time, and I was getting frustrated at my inability to count. However, I started scanning the perimeter of the tank, and I saw number 12 lying in the temple being picked at by a ghost shrimp. Admittedly, that was even faster than I thought. I really didn't want the rest of my fish to get sick with whatever it was that these rasboras had, but I took another one with some raised scales and dropped him in the 5 gallon tank where there would be fewer collateral damage if it was very contagious.

On the bright side, the tank looks really nice with a little pruning and two less sword. There might even be enough room for the rasboras to school....