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.