The Aquarium

I have a 30 gallon with community fresh water fish.There are some bottom-feeders like Corys and an algae-eater who keeps the glass clean.  There are a couple of Tiger Barbs and maybe a dozen Minor Serpa Tetras.  There are also pair of Marigold Platys. 

Platys bear live young.  The young never survive in a community tank.  They get eaten by the other fish nearly as fast as they are released.  I have come to hate that.

But I also have live plants and the "anachris" floats on the surface in a rather dense mat.  Baby fish hide in there. 


I disturbed the surface a month ago, and saw "something" dart out that was immediately eaten.  I realized it was a baby platy that I chased from its sanctuary among the floating plants.  I felt horrible about causing it to flee and be eaten by my action.

So, 2 weeks ago, when I opened the top of the hood to feed the fish, I happened to notice 2 tiny little eyes among the shelter of the plants.  It was a baby Platy that had survived its first few days.  With my reading glasses on, I saw it in various places for several more days.  Little black eyes hiding in the plants.

I've bred various fish in my life.  Bettas, cherry barbs, gouramis, and fancy guppies.  They each need special conditions, but most of all, safety from other fish.  There are even V-shape tank add-ins for live-bearers so the babies fall through and Mom doesn't eat them.  I should buy a new one.

Because Mom looks gravid again.

I haven't seen that Baby Fish for 3 days.   And I feel guilty...

Aquarium

I've had aquariums since I was 20.  My first was built of scrap plastic I found at college.  I kept a few guppies in there.  Then, one day, I visited a department store with a fish area and was offended by all the dead fish in the tanks.  The department manager was drunk.  He asked if I wanted a job.

I should have said "no".  It messed up my college work.  But I was SO broke I accepted.  I cleaned the tanks of dead fish for a few days, started changing the water, read up on fish a bit, and made other improvements.

The company fired the manager and the Assistant Manager was promoted.  She saw what I was doing and asked me to do more.  I set up display tanks, breeding tanks, and even a self-maintaining guppy tank in a 2 gallon "brandy snifter" (I stole it from elsewhere in the store).

I set up Betta breeding tanks, kept the regular tanks perfectly clean.  And flunked out of college (I went back and aced all the classes later).  I had a job and focussed on that.  Bad decision but it made sense at the time.  I was starving and sharing an bad apartment with 5 other guys at the time.

Sadly, the department store closed.  The fish company offerred me a job as manager of their top store location, but I didn't want to move to New Jersey.  I left .

But I've always had an aquarium or two.  50 years of fish that come and go in their short lifespans.  I have sometimes become too casual about them.  I'm down to a couple corydorus, a red-tail shark, an algae-eater, 1 tiger barb and a dwarf gourami.

But I have a glorious amount of live anachris plants so the water is good.  Time to replenish the tank.

I want high fin red minor tetras, cherry barbs, and swordtails.

So I went to Petsmart 2 days ago.  They had fish on sale.  I wait for sales; I'm sensibly cheap.  If waiting a few weeks gets me something I want for less, why not wait.  The freshwater fish only live a few years at best anyway.

I got 5 highfin red minor tetras and 2 painted platys.  They were sold out on the swordtails.  And apparently no one sells cherry barbs anymore.  Which seems odd because even *I* have bred them (decades ago), but who knows the economics of breeding small fish for sale...





I just like to see something moving around in the aquarium.  And they give me something easy to be responsible for...

If you are worried that my hobby is depleting the natural population, my understanding is that these small community fish are bred and raised commercially en masse.  I would stop buying them otherwise.  Just saying...

Freshwater Aquarium

I have had one type of aquarium or another since college when I built a 2 gallon aquarium from plastic sheets I found in the trash in my college dorm (and bought plastic cement to hold it together - a serious expense at the time)

My first REAL job was in the fish department at a department store in 1971.  I had the aquarium I built and needed a few fish for it.  I visited the nearest department store, and was angry that the tanks were dirty and had dead fish in them.  I complained to the person at the cash register (in those days, each department had its own cash register).

The person was the Department Manager.  A real slob, reflecting how he maintained the fish tanks.  He offerred me a job.  I took it (minimum wage was better than no wage, and I hated asking my parents for "spending money" while they were paying college tuition and board).

In a week, I had all the dead  fish removed (and accounted for, for inventory-reporting), tanks cleaned, and asked what to do next.  The Department Manager guy didn't care, but the part-time Assistant Manager was impressed.


It was a chain operation.  Back then, discount stores were called "department" stores because each "department" was a separate business renting space in it.  I bet you never knew THAT!

So the Regional Manager came along once a month (he had dozens of "fish departments" to oversee).  The assistant manager told him what I had been doing (that the department manager had not) and the Manager was fired, the Assistant went to Manager and I got nothing...  Huh?

So I upped my game.  There was one tall display case in the storage room, and I cleaned it up, set it at the entrance to the department, and set up breeding tanks.  One month it would be cherry barbs, another, fancy guppies, another, Siamese Fighting Fish.

I even found a 2 gallon brandy-snifter in the glasswares department and snuck it away to create a self-contained live plant and guppy "tank" that required no feeding of the fish or water changes (other than adding some distilled water occasionally).

The next time the Regional Manager came by, he announced they were closing the department.  But he offerred me the Manager job at one of their better departments in Cherry Hill New Jersey.  20% above minimum wage.

A 20% wage increase would have been great.  But I was still in college and had hopes for a better future.  I declined the offer.  You never know what changes such choices make.  For all I know, my career could have gone into retail sales and store management with company stocks and wealth.  But I stayed in college.

I mention all this because I still keep fish.  Watching them swim around endlessly is soothing.  It gives me something to be responsible for (as if the cats and house and yard weren't enough).  But you know what I mean.  It adds structure to the day.  And Ayla loves watching them move around.

So When I found a algea-like slime couting the bottom of the aqurium last year, I took the whole thing apart (moved the fish to a 10 gallon aquarium temporarily).   I cleaned the plastic plants.  I scooped out all the gravel.  I scrubbed the tank with a pad and then filled it with water out on the deck and added bleach to kill anything in it. 

Then I rinsed the tank several times, stirring up the gravel as I went.  Then I set it all up again and moved the fish back in.

That lasted 3 months.  The slime returned.

I repeated the process.

In December the slime returned.  It shouldn't have, so I did so research.  I learned my problem was "blue-green" algae.  And that the name was false.  It is a "cyano-bacteria", and bacteria is not "algae".  Bleach doesn't kill it. 

I found help at Petco.  There was a woman with a dog (a customer, I assumed) talking to a woman with a Petco uniform.  The usual fish expert was not there.  So I asked uniformed woman if the expert was there.  He wasn't, but she offerred to help.

I was doubtful.  Be sure to understand it was because she wasn't the fish expert that I doubted she could help.  I know about helping customers (spent 5 years in stores doing whatever I could to help), but expertise was needed here.  She had no idea what cyanobacteria was. 

But she was willing to help.  Unfortunately, I know how THAT goes.  The helpful clerk pulls bottles off the shelf and reads them to see if they mention the problem.  I appreciate the willingness to help, but I had done that already and with more experience.

But guess what?  The "customer with the dog" was actually the Regional Manager and knew EXACTLY what I was talking about!  She handed her dog (on a leash) to the clerk, and said I needed "Chemi-Clean" and walked directly to the spot on the shelf where it was stocked.

The spot on the shelf was empty...   But she said they had just gotten the weekly shipment of supplies in.  She went to the back and returned with a container of The Right Stuff!

$20!  Well, compared to cleaning the aquarium again, that was a bargain.  It is harmless to fish and plants.  You keep the water circulating without charcoal filters at high power (extra air bubblers) for 48 hours and then replace 20% of the water.  The cyano-bacteria is supposedly dead.  And the container has 10 doses in it (endless shelf-life apparently).

A week later, the aquarium looks clean.  Without the plants in the aquarium, I see I have more fish than I realized!  Some I knew of, of course (red-tailed shark, 2 corydoris catfish, 1 algae eater), but 11 serpae tetra and 3 tiger barbs.  I thought I had only 6 tetras.  I guess they hide well.

And, in the picture above, you see a small 10 gallon tank at the bottom.  That's where the 6 new tiger barbs are staying for a week while I make sure they don't bring home a disease.  The screen and brick on the top of that tank is to make sure the cats don't get too pawy at them.

The cloudy stuff in the center are air bubbles from a long strip bubbler...

I haven't added the plastic plants back in yet, but they seem clean.  BTW, that brown block above is a piece of petrified wood. 

I'll add them back soon.  But I'm thinking I should add some live plants.  That can wait, but it is on my list...BTW, that brown block

Fish Loyalty

Fresh water tropical aquarium fish are generally small and only live a couple/few years.   I have a 30 gallon tank, so there are about 2 dozen small fish in it (mostly tiger barbs, cherry barbs, and serpa tetra).  So it is no great surprise to me to see a dead one every so often.  Yesterday, I noticed that the male dwarf gourami of my pair had died and was lying in a corner of the aquarium.  I knew I would have to get it out soon but I was a bit busy.

What surprised me was that the female was within a couple of inches of the dead male each time I passed by.  I glanced at the spot each time I passed for a couple of hours and she was always right there!  So I just watched her.

It's not like I always saw them swimming around together, and I certainly never noticed them trying to build a nest or mate.  I'm also not inclined to ascribe complex emotions to a fish.  But she was staying between him and the other fish in the tank.  I think she sensed something was wrong with him and may have even been guarding him.

Pretty impressive for a "just a fish".

Getting Stuff Done

I try to do something useful around the house or yard every day.  I don't mean routine house duties like daily/weekly cooking, cleaning, laundry.  More like some specific project, and it doesn't have to be major; like cleaning out a whole closet, washing all the windows, organizing the basement workbench, inventorying my garden seeds to order replacements, weeding a section of the flowerbeds, etc.

Being retired tempts one into an "I'll do it tomorrow" attitude, and I found myself slipping into that 2 years ago.  And I will admit then when I get a really major thing done, I may take the rest of the week off (like when I had a new roof put on one week and new siding the next week).

A good example is when I collected stem cuttings of my butterfly bush, my Catnip plant, and a Wave Petunia last month.  Most of them are growing and I will have some great replacement plants this Spring.

So I was pleased to get projects done yesterday and today.

Yesterday, I managed my new seed order.  I have a system for storing seeds.  Years ago, I obtained plastic vials to store seeds in.  I drilled holes in a piece of plywood to hold them, and wrote numbers on the vials with a marker.  A sheet of paper identifies all the vials by number, seed, and year.  I keep the tray of vials in a basement refrigerator (along with bulk foods and beer).  So, yesterday, I took out the tray, added the new seeds to empty vials, and updated my list.  I nearly lost my list one year, so now I print three copies.  One goes in the seed tray, one in a looseleaf garden journal, and one in the index card box that has my planting/transplanting schedule by weeks from last frost date.

Today, I heard a weather report that suggested we would be getting 3-6" of snow tomorrow.  Three Winters ago, we had 3 major snowstorms adding up to almost 4'.  That Spring, I bought a good snowblower (on sale cheaper then).  I assembled it, added gas/oil and tested it.  It ran well.  Then it sat.  Never got any snow worth even removing since.  But I left the little bit of gas in there...

So I was doubtful it would run today.  I had to re-read the manual, added new gas, checked the oil, etc.  It took a few tries, but it started.  I ran it 5 minutes to make sure it was working well, turned it off, let it cool down, and set it in the garage ready for use.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...  I'm ready (so I bet it doesn't snow, LOL!).  But it was a good satisfying project for the day.

Tomorrow, the project is all errands.  New fish for the aquarium, a few hardware supplies, pick up shortened pants from a tailor, bring unliked catfood to a donation center, etc.  Friday will be a recycling day.  I have 300 pounds of used kitty litter, boxes and newspapers, uncompostable trash, and bags of plastic.

I figure that getting one useful thing done each day adds up, and I intend to make this a productive year!

Pleco Has A New Home

The Plecostomus catfish has a new home now. 

After the first round of emails on the Craiglist offer, I was pretty discouraged.  The first person to respond said he would be over that night after work, then the 2nd night because he needed his big net and a plastic container for transport, then... nothing.  The 2nd person also failed to reply a 2nd time after expressing great interest.  The 3rd and 4th never replied when I asked if they were still interested.

 And then there were the 4 pathetically obvious spam emails.  The grammar was so stilted that it was obvious they weren't local.  Forgive me for saying "typical bad chinese spammer translations".  But seriously, they mentioned how much their children wanted a sweet cuddly pet, asked if it had its shots, etc, as if it was a mammal pet. 

So I posted a new offer on craigslist and received two emails.  The first wrote like pet owners do, describing the large 210 gallon heated aquarium, the few large fish, the outside ponds and that there were only goldfish in the aquarium because they hate to leave them outside for the winter, the 2 dogs and 6 cats.  She asked if she could steal enough water that the pleco was used to so that she could slowly add her aquarium water to a cooler to adjust it to any pH differences, etc.  Hallmarks of a knowledgeable aquariast...

The 2nd person sent a picture of what was obviously an "for sale" empty pet store aquarium (in Dallas, based on the displays around it).  I didn't even reply to THAT one, LOL!  And there were more of the spammer hoax offers.

So the 1st person came by Saturday afternoon.  I was comfortable with her the moment I saw her.  She was wearing boots, twill workpants and an old parka, and asked if she was going to scare the kitties before she came in the house.  She apologized to the pleco for scaring it before she went in with her large net, moved the net slowly, joked when I sucked a bit of water in my mouth starting the siphon, and talked to it as she put it in the cooler of my aquarium water.  All good signs.

I think my pleco will have a much better time in her larger aquarium...

Today, I filled a smaller aquarium with some of the existing water and moved all the plants to a bucket and the small fish to the smaller aquarium so that I can clean the large one thoroughly.  I'll add an extra 1" of aquarium gravel to set the plants in better, add new (aged) water, and set the smaller fish bak in after a couple days.

And then I'll go buy a young 1.5" pleco!