Trying for Fry.

Last night, since I knew I'd be awake anyway (Sunday night insomnia), I decided to move Mr. White into the tank with The Ladies. We're gonna try for some fish babies. It's something I've been talking about doing for nearly a year now, but had to work up the nerve.

In addition, I wanted to be certain that all the fish are healthy. As far as I can tell, they are.

Earlier this month, I thought I was ready, but then Mr. White went and broke his tank thermometer and had an injury, so I wanted him to heal. Then, last week I thought I was ready, so I pulled out the fish transporter tank and realized Mr. White is much larger than it was. Eep! He's done some growing and I'm suspicious that he's a bit larger than Mr. Blue (his dad). So I had to order a larger transport cell.

The cell came last week, but I was going away this weekend, so I waited until I got back yesterday. I did their water changes as usual and then turned all the lights off in the house around 11:30, so the fish would go to sleep. Then I came downstairs with a flashlight, only to discover that the cats had overturned the bucket that I'd drained some water into earlier. Egads!

My husband came downstairs and helped me clean up that mess and then I tried again. Turned off all the lights and waited a few minutes. Turned them on, netted him in one clean swoop and put him in the transport tank and, with the net over the cell, I walked across the room and lowered the cell into the big tank to start acclimating him. Apparently that jolted him awake and he flipped upwards into the net, immediately went lax and floated on his side.

He was in the water in his little cell, but I couldn't get the net away from him. I was pushing on his nose to make him back up and then I got the shakes. I finally got him out of the net and he went to the bottom of his little cell and swam there. He seemed fine, but I had to settle down.
It's been over two years since I've moved him and I had forgotten that he does that... plays dead when he gets into a net. It's the weirdest thing and none of my other fish do that.

While I was acclimating him to the water, I moved his favorite rock into the tank. Then I turned off all the lights, waited a minute or two and then let him free. When I checked with a flashlight, he had settled behind his rock.

When I checked on them early this morning, they were all swimming around together. Later in the morning, they were establishing hierarchy. He's such a big fish, he dwarfs all the females in there. Yet when I fed them this morning, he was at the very bottom near the gravel, all the others were above him nearer to the food source. He and the smallest albino female seem to be pairing off & circling each other more than the other females. Not sure yet if that's a mating thing or just a getting to know you thing. The other albino females kind of trail along with him, like a school of fish. It's funny to see. The golden female also joins in on that school toward the rear. I think she is one of the babies from one of the previous "litters" before Mr. White. The other two gray females just kind of ignore him, which makes sense because they are of the original five fish, so they would be much older than he is.

This afternoon, Mr. White began to frantically move rocks and the medium albino female was watching with interest from above. Every few minutes, he would break away from his rock moving, go up and chase her around. It appears that she may be his mate of choice for now.

Research.

A Google search reveals that what's inside of aquarium thermometers is a combination of alcohol and red dye, not mercury. So even if the "mercury" had busted, Mr. White would have been OK. But broken glass in a tank is never good... so he got a few extra gallons of fresh, clean water for his trouble.

I moved the ping pong ball out of his tank that night because he was pushing it so hard, he gave himself bruises on his upper lip area. I also ended up moving the blue skiky plant out because he was moving it by grabbing the top of it and attempting to impale himself on it. Neither of those behaviors are acceptable.

I used some aquarium sealant and rocks to weigh down the bottom of a less pokey plant and dropped that in his tank. He's been happy with that as a toy and moves it all over the place. He also enjoys flashing up against a ping pong ball floating in the top of his tank.

Given those activities, I think it's hilarious that if I feed him when his tank light is on, he is scared of the food and cowers under his rock until the light goes off. Then he'll come out and eat his food and carry on with his activities. As an FYI, his tank is located near the kitchen, so it receives external light throughout the day.

Glass Thermometers with Cichlids?

This morning, I noticed Mr. White (my male fish) had a weird red thing in the bottom of his tank and a bunch of strange things floating around. He seemed happy and was playing with the weird red thing, but ... I hadn't put a weird red thing in there. So I grabbed the long tank tweezers and pulled it out. That was when I realized, with some shock and definite horror, that it was the innards of the tank thermometer. I looked at the side of the tank where it should be and the glass casing was there, but broken off at the bottom. Immediately I thought, "OH NO! MERCURY! HE'S GONNA DIE!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!" Because everyone knows that rampant mercury is like a silver stream of death!! But after an emergency phone call to Fish Whisperer, who reassured me that the fish is gonna be OK, mercury is more toxic to humans (if it gets in the blood stream), than it is to fish and no one is going to die. He said to leave Mr. White in the tank and do a 50% water change. So, I did that with a water vacuum and searched for glass bits and changed his tank's filter. I examined the pieces of the broken thermometer and realized that the mercury is still intact (phew!!), but the red stuff that's at the bottom of the thermometer had gone somewhere... dissolved in the tank, maybe? What is that red stuff anyway?



Mr. White has gashes on his sides because he, being the masochistic fish that he is, was happily slamming himself up against the broken thermometer. But he seems to be OK -- active, and was actually pretty pissed that I took his toys away from him. Can't have a pissed fish, so I put an artificial blue spiky plant in there that his dad used to love to beat up and I poked holes in a ping pong ball, soaked it in really hot water for a few minutes to sterilize it, and then sank it in his tank. He's been having the time of his life this afternoon moving "fish safe" toys.

The blue, spike plant (Notice Mr. White in the lower right corner, moving the plant by "flashing" his body and flinging all the rocks around?)




While those gashes heal, I'll be doing daily water changes.

Cracking.

I've been lackadaisical about taking down the two extra hospital tanks. Not because I'm lazy, but because I've been using them as water cycling tanks.

My husband has said he'll build me a tank stand to put one up above Mr. White's tank, that way the counter space will be cleared up.

Today I was doing my weekly tank changes and I drained the cycle tank by the coffeemaker, then went to work draining the water from hospital tank #2. The tank was a loaner from the fish store and had a tiny chunk that had broken off in the corner.

While I was draining it, I heard little clicking noises, but figured it was coming from the black rim at the top from me resting my hand on it acting as a hose guide. I finished siphoning water, and hooked the hose from the sink to refill it. It got completely full and I heard a snapping noise. I looked over and apparently the temperature fluctuation was too much for it, as a crack had appeared from the corner chunk to the top of the rim. And water was beading out the crack!!

Uh oh!

I quickly stuck one hose in and started siphoning water into the sink, I heard another crack and stuck a second hose in to siphon it faster. I got all the water draining and breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn't shattered and splattered water all over the floor! I'm also grateful that I was home when it happened AND that the tank was strong enough while I needed it to get Coco well again.

Just not quite the way I had envisioned getting my counter space back!

And...

Tog is eating again as of today.

I sure wish I understood what the reason is... I guess fish, even though they're not breeding or holding eggs go through periods where they don't eat?

At the advice of Fish Whisperer, I don't feed my fish on the weekends, so they had just come off of a two day fast and Tog decided to fast for a third day. Weird.

Today, Tuesday, they were more interested in the spirulina. Voracious would be accurate. They were rather apathetic about the New Life Spectrum food. *shrug* I have no idea what the deal is.

Quiet Pets in the Corner

Things continue to go well as of the writing of this post.

Moe has continued to do well this past month and is now out consistently in the tank. Moe is more of a gold/gray color and is a bit smaller in length than the other two gray fish. So she is easily identifiable at least to me.

Coco, the formerly skinny fish, is now the same size as the other gray female (The Other Gray fish, now named TOG) in the big tank and as such is nearly indistinguishable, at least to my husband. I can still tell her apart, but only because I spent the last six months staring worriedly at her. And she at me, I'm sure. The difference is that Coco's coloring is just a bit darker gray in color than Tog's and she still has some small indentations just above her eyes from her crash diet. Impossible to notice unless, like me, you've been staring at her for hours on end.

Tog, who for months, has been the dominant fish in the big tank has now relinquished her dominant status to Coco, which I find very interesting considering that Coco was near death just a short couple months ago.

One of the white females is presently in egg laying mode. She's cleared out a spot of substrate behind one of the large gray ornaments for this purpose. She, however, isn't dominant in the tank and so has to sneak back there to move more rocks, and then moving herself when Coco comes sailing through like the Queen of Tides.

Tog isn't eating right now, and I'm thinking it's just because of the bullying going on in there due to the egg laying female. She has a couple of loose scales, but other than that and a little bit of hiding, her behavior seems normal. She stays in the corner of the tank away from everyone when the feeding starts, making her way to the middle of the tank when all the others are distracted with filling their bellies. She attempted some spirulina this morning, but spit it. Had no interest in the New Life food. We'll continue to observe for any other odd behavior.

It's been cold here lately. Cold for California, that is. It reached in the high 30's the other night. The big tank is a corner shaped tank and as such is in the corner of my living room. There are two windows in that corner, both have double-paned glass and wood shutters to act as insulation. However, I've noticed that the heater has been on a lot in that tank. The heater is on the back of the tank which has the most window exposure. I researched online regarding insulating the tank, thinking that might be part of the reason the heater's on so much. There are various ideas out there, all involving a minimum of $20, but I'm rather poor right now.

I've long said that newspaper is one of the best insulators, which is why homeless people use it. It's cheap and effective. Wouldn't you know, I have Sunday's paper sitting on the living room table and two large plastic zipper bags. Large enough to hold a few newspapers. Soooo, I zippered up some newspapers, used packing tape to secure it to the back of the tank. If I determine more newspapers are needed in the bag, I can just unzipper them and add them in.

It's been an hour and I've only seen the heater come on once. This is a major improvement. We'll see how it continues.

I continue to do 25% to 30% weekly water changes in all the fish tanks, checking the levels before the tank change with a 6-in-1 test strip, as well as a day after the water change.

Later Rather than Sooner.

Since I had a 4 day weekend for Thanksgiving, it gave me a good opportunity to observe the two females in their hospital tanks.

Both fish were eating and acting normally. And their poop was normal. All very important things. In addition, they were curious about the goings on outside of their tank and would swim over to peer around the corner to see what we're doing. With the tanks being on the edge of the kitchen and it being Thanksgiving, needless to say, there was quite a lot going on!

Given their normal behavior, On Friday, 11/28, I called Fish Whisperer to ask him if he could think of any reason they couldn't be moved back into the big tank. He briefly surveyed me regarding their health -- eating, behavior, poop -- all normal. His verdict -- it should be OK. He validated my normal fish moving strategy, which is to acclimate them to their new tank (temperature & water parameters) and then let them loose in their new tank before we go to bed (i.e., it needs to be dark in the house). Fortunately, that's something I'd learned when I was breeding them. If these fish are put in the tank during the daytime, the newcomer always gets beat up.

In preparation for their move-in, I did a 25% water change in the big tank -- I normally do tank changes in the big tank on Sundays, but I want to give them some time to settle in before I clean again. If they're doing well in there, I'll do my next tank change on Wednesday night and then another one on Sunday, then I'll be back on schedule.

So, I acclimated them for about an hour and a half. Overlong, I know, but I wanted to make sure they would be OK. Then turned the lights out, did some stuff upstairs for about a half an hour and then came down and let them free in the big tank.

The next morning, Saturday, 11/29, Coco was out in the fray with the other four fish. Moe, however, was hiding in the back of the tank wedged between the tank wall and the heater. Which is quite opposite of what I thought would happen given how skinny Coco is and how mischievous Moe proved herself to be while hospitalized. Different personalities, I guess. Moe came out briefly when I fed the other fish, but neither Coco nor Moe ate anything.

I don't feed them on the weekends other than Saturday morning. But they all came out to see if I would feed them on Sunday. I noted that Moe had a couple of beat up scales on her left side, which is the side that is not against the tank wall.

I fed them on Monday morning and they all ate -- Moe, Coco and the other four fish. That made me happy to see that. Monday evening, they all ate again and I noted that Moe was a little more beat up on her left side. (sigh) It irritates me that I worked for five months to get them healthy again and in a matter of a couple of days they can beat each other up so bad. Even though her scales are beat up, her fins appear to be whole and not ragged, which is good. It could be that she's beating herself up by hitting herself on the aquarium ornaments when she's trying to get away from the others.

When I show up to feed them, Moe's behavior appears to be normal. She darts quickly to grab some food before any of the other fish notice that she's out. I think she's hiding because she's being bullied. Which I'm hoping will abate by the end of the week.

I'm pleased with how well Coco is doing.

Interesting note: They both still prefer the New Life Spectrum food over the spirulina, which my Fish Whisperer said is like the difference of steak vs. salad.