Improvements.

Things are back to normal in the big tank. Everyone's eating. Everyone's swimming around. They like their new aquarium decoration, it's tall enough that a couple of them can be behind it or near it on one side or the other. There's enough holes that they are comfortable swimming through it. It's actually pretty cool to watch them go through it.

As for the females in the hospital tanks... Coco is now consistently eating. She seems to be gaining just a little weight. Maybe. At least she doesn't look quite as shockingly gaunt to me anymore. She was spending most of her time moving the rocks in her tank looking for food. The problem was, the substrate in that tank was given to me by the fish store. The rocks are pretty heavy and somewhat sharp. In fact, I'd been wondering whether those rocks would cause a problem when she did finally start eating again. Sure enough, her poor lips were wearing away. Thankfully, I knew what the problem was and I didn't freak out thinking it was some new fungus or disease. So a few days ago, when I did a tank change, I cleared a spot under the feeder ring by moving the rocks to one side of her tank. Problem solved. She now only has to move a few rocks here and there to find extra snacks. When the food falls, it goes to the bottom of the tank landing on glass. Bonus -- her lips are now all better. Poor little fish. Sheez. But I feel comfortable and somewhat confident that when I get up in the morning or come home from work that she's still going to be alive and will be looking for me to give her food. In fact, as I write this she's in the middle of the tank calmly swimming in one place, staring at me. That makes me smile.

Moe just started eating again tonight. She was showing interest yesterday, but was spitting her food. I didn't even try to feed her this morning and tonight I fed her three or four pellets at a time. She ate 30-35 pellets. That's the most she's eaten in two months. When I finally stopped giving her food tonight, it was because I ran out of time, she was still looking for more food (as opposed to disinterest or spitting the food).

Last night I spent about 10 minutes watching Mr. White's antics, as he swam up and down in a large diagonal circle in his tank. He was slamming his ping pong ball against the top of the tank, then going down to the opposite corner and swimming around the magnet cleaner. Two of his favorite things to do. He would stop periodically and look at me, waiting for me to run my finger up the front of the tank so he could follow it. Then he attempted to mate with his magnet and I found myself laughing aloud.

It's been since June that things went south... I've done a lot of work to make things better. If worry alone could make a difference, I've certainly done more than my share of that.

I'm hoping that things have finally turned around. I would certainly say that it's about time.

The white fish whose fins were ringed with red tonight looks completely normal. Admittedly, her behavior never varied from "normal". She was consistently active and busy and ate healthily, but it's nice to see her looking normal. I fully believe that it was an injury she somehow gave herself while trying to get away from the gray female who was laying her eggs. Once that event occurred, things settled down in the tank and everyone seemed much more at ease.

In an attempt to give them more places to hide, I bought a taller aquarium decoration for one of the corners. It looks like a rock wall with holes that they can see and swim through ... good for getaways and seeing what's coming at them. There are no sharp corners, so they should be alright. with it. I also swapped out the fake tree root and replaced it with one that has a smaller footprint. Should make it a little easier for cleaning purposes. Their poop and debris seems to collect in that corner. We'll see how it goes.

When I did their water change tonight, I noted a bunch of what appeared to be eggs around the upper 1" rim of their tank. The weirdest thing. Then I realized, that's exactly what it was. Eggs. The gray female had laid her eggs, tumbled them for a day or two, then released them. Instead of being sucked into the filter or eaten by the other fish, they went up and ringed the tank. How gross.

I also added a second filter in their tank. With all the egg laying and rock moving that's been going on in there, the water has just had non-stop debris floating around. The water levels have been in the acceptable range, but I can't imagine they'd want to breathe all that crap. Literally, crap. Heh. Now I hope the water's not too clean.

Coco, the one in the tank who's heater went wonky, has been eating consistently the New Life Spectrum food. I added a feeder ring to her tank to control where the food falls through. She now waits at the bottom of the tank under the purple feeder ring. With every bite she eats, the lighter the load on my heart.

Moe, on the other hand, continues to concern me. She seems to be acting okay, but she's not eating. Today I noticed some white poop coming out of her, but it's not really stringy. I raised the temperature in her tank by a degree or two yesterday, hopefully that will help her with eradicating the parasite and hopefully that's what the white poop was about.