Welcome to Fishies Weblog

Well, as promised here’s a brief discourse, vaguely dancing round things that people have searched for before being dissapointed not to find any information on the “fishies weblog”

The snails seem popular, and they are indeed “water snails” and we did indeed get them from “snailshop” (free plug for www.snailshop.co.uk becuase the service was very good imo, the only minor gripe being that one (or more) are still scoffing our nice plants from our “tidy tank”, we try not to let it get to the “dirty tank” stage you see. This is probably helped by doing the regular water changes, including the “wool filter” change, which we tend to do each time we change the water, this is the white “wool filter” layer and is the first the dirt hits.

“platties” were requested 7 times, which is good, given that we’ve got 7 platties, we started off with 6, three orange, and three yellow and black which are the “tuxedo platty” type, (so called because apparently it looks like they’re wearing a tuxedo!) there were a few orange babies, but only one lived on so now there are 7. I dunno if we’ve a mix of male and female orange platties (I haven’t looked that close!), or if a female was pregnent when she arrived. We haven’t had a “baby tuxedo”

I’m afraid that I can’t help at all with “pics of all salt water fishes” as all the fish in there are tropical freshwater, does make me ponder about coldwater saltwater and warmwater saltwater, i guess it must work something along those lines. Same holds true for “salt water tank filter”

The more morbid among you wanted to “see dead fishes” and to know “do fish float when they die”, the answer is that they don’t, typically, and unfortunately I’ve a fair sample size. This probably relates to “what is the lifespan of a guppy”; well not very long, I’d say a couple of years for your average captive-reared guppy. Luckily we get lots of “baby guppies”. “how the fishes have babies” is another issue, and I don’t know about the conception but certainly watching babies being born is very spectacular, the guppies and platties (or would they be guppys and plattys?) are both livebearing species which means they give birth to a living breathing swiming fish. We haven’t had any “fighting fish babies”, but lots do get eaten, if you asked “do female platty fish eat their babies” i’d certainly have to say a resounding yes to that one!

I haven’t mentioned it yet but we do have a “bristlenose catfish”, “Chinese algae Fish”, and a corydoras. We do occasionally feed this lot (the bottom dwellers really) “cucumber in fish tank”. I’ve not looked into the “corydoras lifespan” as much, but it’s at least a couple of years, as we’ve had ours that long

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Well I think i’ll have to divert my ranting from algae to snails now. The algae is proving much less of an issue, but the snails have started eating the plants!

To recap, we got some snails here: http://www.jammeh.com/fishblog/2005/09/26/woooo/

and some more here: http://www.jammeh.com/fishblog/2005/11/11/more-snails/

and they’re very good in the main, nice colours, shiney etc. I was actually quite impressed with teh packaging as well, so if you do want snails then snailshop.co.uk seems reasonable, they packaged them up in some damp cotton wool stuff, then put that into a polystyrene cup, that was put in some shredded paper which was then packed into a cardboard box and taped up nice and tight!

The problem is, that they’ve been munching on the plants, after Christmas they’d had a bit of a feast, so we thought fair enough, the plants in there were pretty haggard and bought some new ones to go in. However, they’re just as keen on these ones. I keep spotting big chunks of leaf etc floating about, it’s like they’ve got some secateurs stashed away and are lopping bits off. It’s only really frustrating because they were sold as “don’t like plants snails” We’ll have to try and isolate the culprit and take action, tho admittedly i’m not quite sure how to deal with a naughty snail who eats what it shouldn’t!

Aside from that all is well in the land of fish, a few more guppy babies have made it to the size where they’re unlikely to get gobbled up so will probably reach adulthood, not really an issue tho as we’re well within the reccomended stocking levels.

another 4 buckets out today! changed the white wool media, but none of the others today. Meant to put a new plant into some of the water that we took out so that it could get used to the water, and get cleaned, but totally forgot, bummer :/
Stangely we got this in ikea, not your typcial aquatic store, but I saw it just at the end so we got it in. It’s a nice one i think, rather like long grass, very thin leaves all very straight. It’s prolly got a silly name like uggle, but i must admit to not having noticed that.

Today has been a very mixed day in the fish world. Unfortunatley the guppy who we have been worried about and who has been struggling on for the past few days gave up. Perhaps it’s best for her, perhaps people generally bring that to mind to make it easier. I’ve no idea what it was that killed her in the end, and have no way of telling really so probably will never know. The little tank that we had set up has been tidied away and put back in storage now.

Later on in the evening we witnessed a whole load more however, and noticed that another of the female guppies was skulking around the bottom right of the tank. On closer inspection we noticed a few babies loitering nearby. Then all of a sudden she gave birth to a couple more! It was incredible watching this. It was slightly macabre watching as well I must admit, as these mini mini baby fish were born (they kinda pop out folded double which i hadn’t expected tbh) and as soon as they were in the tank the platties were wooshing after them looking for dinner. In the end they almost seemed to be waiting for the next ones to be born so they could eat them! Shocking, but also why we bought some slightly larger fish, obviously the population control is working well.

An eventful evening all in.

Set up a hosital tank for the ill female guppy today. This is mainly to that we can add salt to the water she’s in without subjecting all the fish to a saline solution! (in particular the cory doens’t like salt). A number of sources have suggested that a g of salt per litre will help.
The practicalities of it were pretty easy actually, we got the old small tank out, and then set up the filter and stuff in it and checked the light. (not that we actually had it on, nicer to keep her in the restful dark). Then we did a water change for the main tank, but rather than throw away the old water we put it into the small tank. It’s remarkable that to fill this tank only needs two and a bit buckets of water when the water change on new tank is 4 buckets! We also changed a filter in the main tank, and cut a bit off the old filter media to put in hospital tank as a filter there. All this was intended to minimise the change in environment that occured between the tanks.
After that put her in when the temps had stabilised and then added the first of 3 dessert spoons of salt.

I really hope this helps her, the saline water is said to be good at reducing the sweeling that she’s suffering, but if it’s a tumor there’ll be no recovery and we may need to put her down. She doesn’t seem to be suffering atm, just sitting on the bottom.

We also added the appropriate dose of the antibacterial solution to both tanks (inc the main as really don’t want anything to have been infecting others, and a couple do look slightly podgy but maybe that’s just paranoia)

To recap for main tank, 40l water change, green filter water change, and added treatment.

Put another treatment of the anti algae stuff in 5 mins ago, it seems to be keeping relatively clear at the mo so lets hope things continue in a similar vein.
Haven’t done water tests for aaages, must really get on with them.

Did a good water change earlier, about 25% (4 buckets, which is a much more useful measure from my POV!) Also took the opportunity to clean out the gravel a bit using the uber cunning gravel cleaner. Am very worried that one of the new algae eaters is missing presumed dead tho, have taken out the middle bogwood and trimmed off the bits that were most afflicted with algae, and then moved the plant that was behind it (in white pot) to see if he was behind there. Also moved the front right plants and did a good clean down there, but still nothing
Really can’t work out where he might be!

Put some more of the algae killing stuff in today. It seems to be doing something i think, there is still quite a lot of algae about but in themain i think it looks a bit unwell. Perhaps it’s all psychological, i’m not sure! Anyhow, for now we’ll continue with it and see what happens. Was briefly worried that it wasn’t 100% snail compatible, after they both curled up and stopped doing anything, but they soon started snailing again so all ok!

Well as it’s still hanging in there (and it’d be unreasonable to expect anything to have changed so quickly!) we’re going to get a few snails to chomp on it. Perhaps an algae eating fish as well, but i’m not sure we should today just in case it was something water quality related that led to wanda’s demise.
(edit) we’ve now got simon and steven, a couple of yellow “apple” snails who can chew on the algae to try and gobble it all up.

Today wanda died
She was our remaining swordtail, widow of flipper after he died quite some time ago. She seemed to have some sort of swelling, but as always with these small fish it’s very hard to tell actually what’s gone on.
Now of course i love them all equally, but i was rather attached to wanda so i was sad to see her go. Rach dealth with it all while i wasn’t at her flat so I didn’t actually have to see what had happened!

We did do a water change later on as it seems only fair for the rest of them, i think 3 buckets were changed (~30l). Water wasn’t as manky as it sometimes is, so i think we’ve been doing ok in that respect! Everybody else looks very well however, so fingers crossed it’s nothing that’s going to be infecting the tank! Wanda had been rather funny for quite some time, so will be hoping the others are fine.
Splosh is actually doing very well, the bit on her tail where a slice was nipped out has grown back very well, the colouring is rather strange as it used to be blue but the new growth isn’t. Perhaps the colour will come back with time, perhaps not, who knows!

Well, just got back from a while away, and the tank is a right mess! Algae was taking over the roost!

Hendy had kindly been popping in to check the fish, and to feed them a little bit so they were all fine and dandy, there even seem to be more! babies. I think i counted 5 of them but as always it’s tricky to tell :p It was a relief that the fish were all fine, and expected that the algae was attacking!

We scrubbed the glass a bit to sort out the hair algae that was growing there, and have also done a water change (3 buckets). As well as the usual chlorine remover we add we put some stuff in that’s supposed to help remove algae. We added 4 capfuls, so that’s 18ml by the measure on it. The dosage is 1ml per 9 litres, so we put in enough to treat just under 180l which is what we’ve got. (20ml would have been spot on, but the caps were 4.5 each so 18 was handy, and i’m always nervous about putting strange things into the tank ;))
We also took out the small white rock cos it wasn’t white anymore, it was green.
Oh, and we swapped the white wool filter media as well, it was filthy as usual.

Did a two bucket water change earlier, and also ripped out quite a lot of (hair) algae. The biggest plant that we have (white pot) had quite a lot of bits of algae on it’s leaves so i took that out of the tanks and pulled off the algae from the leaves and then decided that it still wasn’t clean, so i tore off the worst leaves! Looks much smaller now after it’s impromptu “pruning” session :p
Put the stuff in that’s supposed to reduce the need for water changes and lower levels of nitrates. Should really have done a test of the water quality with the various things really, but that’ll have to wait now.
Everybody looking fine at the mo, and good news is that there doesn’t seem to be any more fin nipping going on. I wonder if it was either a result of having more fish in the tank that were growing up, or perhaps of the stress caused while we rounded up the mini ones to take them to the shop. Anyhow, i was pleased to see that Splosh’s tail fin seems to be growing back slightly, will be interesting to see what happens to the colours compared to where it’s not been ripped off!
I *think* i might have seen a baby earlier, so it’s possible that somebody was hiding while we were hunting for them earlier! If it was one i’m not sure how well it’ll get on, ralf seemed to be in fast pursuit I’ll be rather pleased if we have got one that escaped the cull, i kinda miss them and it’d be nice to remember the ones that went.

We did a 3 bucket water change last night, each bucket is about 10 litres, so it’s about 30l or roughly 12% (30/180) of all water.
So that we could tidy some of the tank decoration we moved a couple of plants as well. It’s one of the best arrangements so far at the mo i think, stuff seems to look decent and still let us see what the fishies are up to
Put in the magic juice which is supposed to reduce nitrates as well, the amount of algae was much lower than before, but it still needed a bit of a scrub to clean the front glass.

Less good news is that Gem seems to have a something on his side, it looks a bit fungal. We’re not really sure how to treat it as can’t tell what it is atm, we’ll just ahve to keep an eye on it for now.

Well rach is going to Montpellier for a fortnight and I(james)’m going to be there for the first week as well. Luckily Hendy has volunteered to come look after our babies while we’re away. I’m writing down details for him of what’s what, so thought I might as well include it here.

Routine things -
Everyday the automatic timer on the light goes on at 7:30 and then off again at 2:30, it then comes back on at 5:00 and goes off again at 10:30 (I think it’s 10:30 for the latest one, but not fully sure tbh) The aim is that there’s about 12 hours of light, the reason for the gap in the middle of the day is that it’s nicer to be able to watch them in the evening and to check on things in the morning.
The temperature is measured by a thermometer stuck to the top left corner of the tank (on the inside) and there’s a green band that it should be in, tho normally it doesn’t really deviate much from 25 degC tho.
The pump works all the time and generally splishes through just a very few tiny bubbles, often in bursts. There’s a little blue dial in the top back right corner on top of a white tube, twisting half of this against the other half changes how much additional air is being squirted in.
There’s a mark on the frame at top front right which shows the max water level, it seems to take quite a while to drop but we haven’t had the lid open for any extended period yet.

Feeding -
There’s now two types of food, the flake stuff that we had before and also some granular stuff that’s designed for the bottom dwelling catfish. What we normally do is put some of the flakes in at the middle of front left side, and these then get whooshed about a little bit by the flow of the water, i think it’s good for them to chase their food a bit even when it’s dead and dried! The other stuff goes in at the front right, this is a bit of still water so it drops to the floor a bit more easily than if it goes in elsewhere as often the others seem to like to eat this while it’s on teh way down. It isn’t a problem if they’re eating each others food, and i think it happens quite a lot really cos lots of the flake stuff sinks anyhow.
Amounts are tricky, generally under rather than over is the key, they can survive easily for a few days without any food at all, if there’s too much that they don’t eat then it decomposes (or not even decompose, but does something funny) which means that the water isn’t so good for living in at all! The tubs normally seem to says as much as they can eat in 2-3 mins, so i put in a small pinch of each, and if they gobble it all up quickly try for a little bit more. Some always drifts away, esp the floor stuff, but they seem to find it later on in the main, and eat it then.
While we’re away… We’ll put a feeding stick in just before we leave, and that is good for about 3-5 days according to the box. (They suggest that for 8 - 12 fish, but given that we’ve got 18 but half of them are still babies i think that we’ll go with that!) So if you’re here midweek sometime and can put another one in that will do for a few more days until i’m returning next weekend.
Neither of us will be about from this coming Sat until late the following Sun when i’m returning, so we wondered if you’d be able to make a couple of trips, or ideally Mon,Wed, Fri, but if you’ve got things to do those times whenever is fine. If you could do a mini feed (just a small sprinkle, the flake one the foil gap is small so you can just shake a bit out, the other one needs just a finger&thumb worth) whenever you come i think they’d like that the feeding sticks aren’t so popular!
I think the sticks will keep them going mainly, and the top ups with keep some better food for them going on.

There lots of places for them to hide, so don’t worry if you can’t see everybody, in fact it’s quite hard to be able to find all ten of the little ones and count them! I think feeding time is about the only opportunity. The only place which has been a problem is under the pump/filter bit where one of them wiggled into a while ago, we’ve stacked the stones up now to stop it, but it might be worth a peer round the side of it to see underneath if you are wondering. If you need to move a plant or anything then that’s no worry, the decor is shuffled quite a lot while we’re trying to find people, so pulling a plant out of gravel isn’t a problem. They’re all in pots and are quite happy sitting on top.

It’s quite possible somebody may die while we’re away, wanda is being very funny lately so we’re worried about her. We’ve always wrapped them in toilet paper or tissues before and then used the toilet.

Water -
If the water level goes down really low (incredibly unlikely with this tank) then we use warm-ish water from the shower (number 2 on the shower temperature dial) in the orange bucket in the bathroom. Its important to use this bucket and not another pot because we have never used any detergents in this bucket and therefore we will not pollute the tank. Never fill up the tank above the max fill line (self-explanatory really ;)).

If unsure about anything then call (using the landline in the flat) or text either of us. During the day rach will be in meetings but i should be able to talk to you easily enough.

Who’s who -
Four bottom feeders - Dougal, Brian, Zebedee, Dylan
Large silver female guppy - Splosh
Orange female swordtail - Wanda
Small yellow-tailed male guppies - Midget and Gem
Small baby guppies x 8 - nameless at present!!!
Very small guppies - 1 male 1 female we think! - nameless…
Podgeh snail - Sammy
Millions of mini snails - nuisances