Noah's Aqu

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Heading out of town for Thanksgiving. I bought a 3-day feeder pyramid for the fish.

At home noticed that the serpaes seemed to be pretty aggressive. One in particular was chasing all the other fish around the tank. I put the divider into the breeder room, caught the aggressive fish and dropped him into his own space in the now divided breeder. The plan was to separate a trouble fish from the rest of the community.

Gave the two "breeder" fish some food (they won't be able to reach the 3-day feeder). The serpae ate or knocked all the food to the bottom. Meanwhile the neon doesn't seem to eat...

Off to NEW JERSEY!!!
[Fingers crossed]

Monday, November 22, 2010

Bad news. The serpaes nipped up the new neons. Two of the three had shreaded tail and dorsal fins. The third had his dorsal fin nearly nipped away and ALL of its tail fin was GONE. Oy. Cory took a nip in the dorsal too but is basically fine.

When I got home I put the beat up guy in a small tupperware with the idea that I would change out the water everyday until he got better.

I was thinking about the theory that one of the fish store guys had given me that claims that the fish are less nippy in odd numbers. With this in mind I headed to PetCo with the idea of possibly buying another serpae to odd things up so to speak. I found a very knowledgeable guy there who didn't think it made a difference. His experience was that the serpaes are pretty aggressive in general. Oh well. He thinks that adding more neons would not improve the situation. I asked what I could do and he suggested adding some API Stress Coat+. He said it is helpful with healing and growing back fins. I'm not sure I totally bought into what he was saying but I wanted to do something so I took a bottle. I also picked up a "breeder" room to house the injured fish in. Seemed more practical than trying to keep it alive in a non-filtered environment.

At home I put the chewed up fish in the breeder a gave him a little food.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

NEW FISH! Sunday, November 21, 2010

Planted my new plants (silk leaves, plastic stalk). Created a mini forest in the back right corner by grouping all the tall plants together. Placed the smaller plant in the front left hand side.

Went to fish store. Water passed all tests! Time to pick some fish. Store dude said based on tank size I should only add four at a time and stop at 18 fish total. Disappointing as I was hoping to add an entire shoal of 7 neons at once.

Was considering phantom black tetras after seeing some nice ones at Petco and reading some nice reviews but didn't see any at store. Considered gold dust mollys before getting to the store but saw some less than favorable reviews. The store didn't seem to have many of the fish species I was interested in and not many fish in the species they had. After talking to the dude about plecos he showed me some cory cats that I liked. In the end I selected a cory and three neons.

At home I first fed the existing 6 serpaes. Then I acclimated the bags of fish to our water. I added a cup of water to each bag after letting them sit for 20 minutes. I also turned off the tank light to get everyone as calm as possible. After more time I tried to remove the cory from the bag with my net. He wasn't interested and I didn't have enough room to manuver him into the net. I was worried about hurting him by fighting so I poured the bag of water through the net into my fish bucket. The net caught the cory and I quickly moved him to the tank. I gave the neons another cup our two. When they were ready I was able to move all three to the water at once. I was happy to see the neons quickly tagging along behind the serpaes. The cory quickly found a quit spot deep in the "forest".

Everyone seemed to be fine coexisting together at first but a while later I saw some serpaes chasing neons and maybe the cory as well. I may need another serpae after all.

I'm really happy with where the tank has progressed.

pH: 7.6
Temp: 76
Fed: 5:00