That's quite unfortunate

My dad usually turns off my 55 gallon fish tank light for me every night before he goes to bed. Then I turn it on when I get home from school around 2:30. I turned it on today, and I noticed my gourami was swimming differently. He was more go-with-the-flow than usual, and he stayed closer to the surface. He looked fine on the one side that was facing me, so I put some flake food in and looked a bit closer. He turned around to eat, and I noticed what was wrong.

His left eye is missing. I called my dad to see if anything was wrong last night, and he said the fish was fine. I thought about it, and I noticed that we haven't had minnows for the bichir for a few days. So I think he's the culprit. I'll be watching the gourami pretty closely to make sure he doesn't get a disease or anything; and I'll have to keep the bichir full, so that means checking more than one store for feeders when I run out.

So after my dad got home, we went to PetCo and asked for 9 feeders. The girl fished out a few, looked at the net and said "I think this is more than nine, but that's okay right?" So we paid for 9, and I noticed once we were home that we got 15. I also got some more Kordon Fish Protector and a breeder net. I isolated the gourami in the net and dumped a bunch of junk on him since the barbs had been picking at his eye hole. I put 3 feeders in, which were all eaten within 7 minutes, and split the rest between two jars.

On a happier note, my Bolivians are coloring up some more. Recently, they've been very territorial to each other and the betta. The female claimed the left side of the tank, and the male got the right. Neither of them like the betta being in their territory, but she figured out that the big piece of wood wasn't taken by either of the rams, so she just hangs out around that.

The male ram, Miguel, is getting darker on his stripes and the edges of his pelvic fins. The first few rays on his dorsal fin and top and bottom rays of his caudal fin are starting to extend past the other rays; the blue on his anal fin still isn't showing up very well yet.

Laylah, on the other hand, has some really bright blue spots on her anal fin. The top ray of her tail is extending slightly, but the bottom ray and her dorsal rays are all staying the same. She also doesn't have black on the edges of her pelvic fins, and her body doesn't have the faint stripes like Miguel's does.

They're both also starting to recognize that me=food. So they come up to the front of the tank and swim up to the surface when I come by. I think it's cutee.

Water Care and Medications

I like to stick with just a few brands when it comes to water care products. I mostly use Tetra, Aqueon, and API, but Wardley and Kordon are pretty good brands as well.

In my 55 gallon non-planted tank, I use de-chlorinator and a nitrate reducer. The nitrate reducer lets me be lazy, so I don't have to do water changes very often at all. I use a Fluval 403 canister filter, floss in the top, peat in the middle, and more floss in the bottom. I don't use carbon because I don't see any point in it if you don't have cloudiness or water color issues. 

In my 20 gallon planted tank, I only use de-chlorinator, along with fertilizer for the plants. I switch between tablet ferts and liquid ferts every water change. With the plants, the nitrates stay at zero, so it's perfect for my Bolivians.  I'm unsure as to what will happen if they get sick, I'm scared to use any meds because of Trooper and all the plants. This tank has two Fluval U1 filters, which are basically a power sponge filter. I don't add any peat to this tank because I don't want it to be too acidic for Trooper. I added some Kordon Fish Protector when I initially filled up the tank, but I haven't added any since.

The ick medication that I have is Ick-Away by Wardley. It's a liquid that contains copper, so it shouldn't be used with shrimp or scaleless fish. It turns the water blue and stains stuff pretty bad.

I also use Fungus Clear by Jungle for other sicknesses, mostly for fin rot. It has a list of other diseases that it treats on the box. It comes in tablets that each treat ten gallons. It also turns the water blue and stains everything.

The Kordon Fish Protector helps the fish to re-grow missing scales and acts as a super stress coat. I forms a seven-layer slime coat around the fish to help protect against diseases and parasites too. It's pink, but once it mixes into the water, it just disappears. I love this stuff, but I'm out and I probably won't be getting anymore any time soon. With school, I can't watch dogs and nowhere around here is hiring, so I don't have any way to get money. It sucks pretty bad.

Feeding Schedule

So you might be wondering what, and how often, to feed your fish. Most of mine get a variety of different types of food, along with their staple food. I have different types of food for each one and different feeding times for them too.

In the 55 gallon, my tiger barbs and gourami get a staple of flake food. They usually get this four time a week. The other days I may feed frozen brine shrimp, frozen bloodworms, frozen beefheart, and I sometimes skip a day. The cory catfish have a staple of algae discs, and they like to take chunks of the tiger barbs' meaty foods when I feed those. The tiger barbs like to eat the algae discs too. They all pretty much share. The Senegal bichir has a staple of live rosy red minnows, one every day if we've got some. He also steals chunks of beefheart and brine shrimp from the barbs, and will sometimes eat an entire algae disc whole. I'm still not sure why the carnivores love the algae discs so much. The gourami gets some cucumber slices every once in a while. My parents don't buy veggies that often, but my fish always get a share when we do have them.

In the 20 gallon, the cichlids are fed a staple of Wardley cichlid flake food. The female betta also eats these flakes. I offer them freeze-dried bloodworms once a week, but the cichlids don't usually go for them. The snail gets three algae discs every week, and the cichlids like to pick off of those too.

Gary and JayJay both get a small pinch of freeze-dried bloodworms every other day. Occasionally, I'll replace Gary's bloodworms with a few pellets. Gary was pretty easy to wean off the bloodworms onto the betta pellets, but all my other bettas have had trouble with them, so I gave up on it. I know that if it's all I offered them, they'd probably eat it, but I don't mind, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Siamese fighters

Betta fish. Betta splendens. One of the easiest fish to care for. It's a myth that they like small spaces. They don't originate from puddles. They come from rice paddies, which may be shallow, but they're huge. Vast even. And they're tropical fish, so they need heaters. They don't really need a filter, but it's nice to give them a gentle sponge filter. Since their place of origin is murky, stagnant, and oxygen-poor, they've developed a labyrinth organ that lets them breathe atmospheric air. Since they stay near the water's surface, they like to rest on plants and stuff near the top of the aquarium. The plants and decorations in a betta's habitat should ideally be silk or something soft; plastic will tear their delicate fins, which can lead to fin rot and other health problems.

I love bettas. They all have different personalities. Even though Gary has had fin rot for the majority of the time that I've owned him, he doesn't seem to care. He doesn't seem to mind being in a smaller space than he had when I first got him. As long as he sees me every day, he stays pretty happy. Rowdy mostly kept to himself. He didn't seem to like me very much at all, and he wouldn't eat until I was away from his tank. Setsuki was amazing. She always loved getting attention, no matter who it was from. Liberty, though she's cute, definitely likes food more than she likes me. I'm fine with that though. I didn't have Sherbet for long enough to get to know him very well. JayJay never stops swimming when I'm near him. When I'm out of his sight, he sulks in the corner behind his little sponge filter; he seems to really like me.

On the very last day of July, I got another betta. He was an orange halfmoon and he had blue and brown bi-colored eyes. He was the prettiest betta I had ever seen, so the $15 price was understandable. I named him Sherbet, like the ice cream thing, because of his brilliant color. He died four days after I got him, which was really upsetting. But it happens, and you get over it.

So I took him back to the store and looked at the other bettas that they had. I saw two metallic-looking super deltas that were gorgeous. So I held them up next to each other and the copper one flared while the goldish one didn't. So I took the copper one, and got $9 back. I asked a few friends what to name him, and I picked the best suggestion. JayJay is actually short(ish) for Jesse Junior. JayJay sounds better too. He's got the normal brown eyes, but he shines and shimmers in the light, and he has different colors from different angles. I'm very happy to say that he's still alive.

A true carnivore

So three days before I moved the Bolivians into their own tank, my dad and I went to the Aviarium to see if they had anything new. We saw a tank of Senegal bichirs, better known as Dinosaur eel, all about three and a half inches long. They looked pretty cool, but I already knew that they get about a foot long, and they eat live food. They can also stretch their mouth, kind of like a snake, to help ingest their meal. The Aviarium store owner bred and raised these bichirs himself.

Of course, my dad bought one for $15, saying it was revenge from when I got a freshwater puffer for his 55 gallon. It was a long time ago, probably 6 or 7 years. The little puffer was about an inch long, and my dad's tank had an 18" pleco, a 12" pleco, a 22" African ropefish, ten 3" tiger barbs, six 3" cory catfish, and six 7" silver dollars. My little puffer fish killed the 12" pleco and ropefish within a week. My dad was horrified. So he wants the bichir to eat all my fish eventually. Before he picked one out, I made him promise to buy me some bigger fish of my choice if my barbs get eaten. I don't know what I'll get, but it has to have personality. The tiger barbs are probably my favorite freshwater fish because of their personality.

So this bichir came home and I acclimated him. He tried grabbing my otos, but he couldn't seem to get his mouth around them. They learned after a few days not to hang out on the heater anymore. Now the one that's left stays on the filter spray bar just below the surface. The bichir loves to hang out in the clay pot cave in my tank.

Senegal bichirs (and I think all bichirs in general) are related to the lungfish. As they get older, their gills begin to disappear, and they grow these little nostril-type things. They go up to the surface to breathe air, kind of like a betta or gourami. Since they can breathe atmospheric air, they can live out of water for 2 or 3 days (crazyyyy). They may try to escape from the tank, mine hasn't yet, and they can crawl around using their pectoral fins as legs; mine grabs onto the substrate with his fins sometimes to stay still as he's stalking a feeder.

The bichir eats live foods. So we have to go out and buy minnows every week. Since he would gorge himself every time I put the minnows in the tank (he'd eat like two or three in one day, and he'd be REALLY chubby afterwards), I started to put them in a different container. Since I have no money for a small tank, I've been putting them in an old gallon-sized pickle jar. When I would put them all straight into the tank, some of them would die, from harassment of the barbs and the temperature being too high for them. In the jar, they're by themselves and they stay at room temp. My bichir also will eat the smaller-sized algae wafers whole, I'm not entirely sure if others do this too.

He also likes to eat frozen foods sometimes. When I run out of feeders, or if I just feel like treating my barbs (which is pretty often), he likes to wait until they've eaten half of the chunk, then he eats the rest of it. At first he flips out a little when he bites into, but I'd imagine it's still cold in the middle.

He's about 5 inches long now, and it's only been a few weeks since we got him. So Senegal bichirs grow pretty fast, especially with a variety of meaty foods. They've got an interesting personality, and I'd say that as long as you have fish that'll get to over 3" long, you should get one of these. Since they get to be 12" they need at least 55 gallons, though I personally think a stumpy tank (the same build as a 40 breeder, but bigger) would actually be better for them, since they're air-breathing bottom-dwellers.

My aquascaping experiment

Of course I had to try it. So I moved the 20 long up on the shelf that the 20 tall was on. I found a piece of wood out in one of the pastures at the horse farm, and scrubbed it with tap water and a toothbrush, then threw it in the oven at 250F for 30 minutes. I filled the tank with water, put all the gravel in, put the wood in, and weighed it down with a few rocks. Most of the rocks I have also came from the farm. I like getting stuff there because I know it doesn't have any pesticides or harmful chemicals on it and the horses don't seem to mind me picking up things they trip on either.

So they tank is sort of set up, and I added three PennPlax Small World filters to help with the cloudiness of the New Tank Syndrome. After two days, I took my water wisteria out of the 55, and planted it around the filters. Two more days later, I went to the Aquarium Store and got a Rubin Sword (Echinodorus v. 'Rubin'), Red Temple (Alternanthera reineckii), and some duckweed. I hadn't done any research on the any of these, but I knew that duckweed would cover the surface of my tank in no time. After another couple days, I went to PetsMart and got two Fluval U1 power sponge filters and then to PetCo to get three Amazon swords, two Argentine Swords, and a female veiltail betta. The betta's name is Liberty because she's got a white body with light blue fins and a few red spots, mostly on her head and tail.

So the tank now had six different types of plants and a female betta. Algae was building up pretty quickly, along with some white fungus-type junk on the wood. I decided I would get a snail, but I didn't want one who would eat all my plants, and I didn't want tons of other snails after only buying one. So I went back to the Aquarium Store once again and bought an Assassin Snail. His name is Trooper. He really seems to like algae wafers, but he doesn't eat anything else, so I'd mostly just recommend him as a snail-eater rather than detritus-eater. When I was researching about them, I found that they can actually have some salt in their tank, since they can also be in brackish water, but they aren't supposed to be in acidic water because their shell will begin to disintegrate.

After about a week, I moved the Bolivians to the planted tank. I found out that it was much easier to catch the fish as soon as I turned on the lights. They have a sleep-mode that takes about 10 minutes for them to wake up from, so it went pretty smoothly. While they were getting used to the new environment, the male kept the female up in the corner above the filter for about three days until he was sure it was safe. I got them some Wardley cichlid flake food from Wal-Mart, and it took them a while to get used to eating from the surface. Liberty still gets a lot of the food, and she's pretty chubby for a betta. The Bolivians have filled out nicely on this flake food, and I'd recommend it to anyone trying to fatten up their cichlids. Since they've grown a bit larger and their sexual dimorphism is more noticeable, I've decided to name them Miguel and Laylah.

After about a week, the algae was getting out of hand. I picked out two of my otos from the 55 (all the ones at PetCo still had ick) and moved them into the tank. They were doing alright for about about a week and a half. One died, then the other followed a couple days later. The other ones in the 55 started dying too. I only have one left now, and I expect him to die anytime now. Poor thing is all alone in that crowded tank.

The plants in the 20 long aren't doing very well anymore. The red temple is falling apart and the leaves are almost see-through on it. It's supposed to have CO2 fertilization, along with high iron substrate and moderate lighting (at least 2w/g). My tank doesn't get CO2 besides what the fish produce, which isn't much since there's only three fish and a snail. The lighting is a 17-watt bulb, so the tank gets under 1w/g. All of the swords should get more light than they do, but they seem to be doing great. The duckweed, on the other hand, is completely gone. I guess the current from the filters was too strong, though it didn't seem like it. It all started turning brown, and then it just disappeared. I guess it got sucked into the filters, but oh well. Like the guppies, I'm never getting it again.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Only $65?!

So the advertisement I was looking at said the 55 gallon tank came with a stand, gravel, a couple heaters, and a bunch of accessories that they didn't have a clue about. So we drove out to see it, and I opened the cabinet of the stand, and saw a Fluval 403 canister filter and a Marineland Emperor 400 power filter. That was a pretty freaking good deal. So we piled everything into our Suburban, and drove home. Once I got it all out of of the back, I took a good look at what I had. 

The gravel was that bright blue and green junk, and half of it was poop. Literally. Some of it even looked like rodent poo? I don't know, but everything was also covered in a bunch of lime and the bio-wheels on the Emperor were covered in hair. The Fluval was missing a few pieces, and one of the decorations was broken. But none of that really mattered to me; I got my tank. It took me about a week of scrubbing with Soft Scrub bleach and a copper brush to get most of the lime off; not all of it would come off though, even with a razor. I looked in the drawer and found two 200-watt heaters, a broken impeller for the Fluval, and salt wheels. Last I checked, salt wheels were for rodents. There was even a guinea pig on the packaging. Oh well. My mom took me to the Aviarium, a fish and bird store about 5 minutes from the Aquarium Store, and I got some new bio-wheels for the Emperor.

I set up the tank in the end of June and had to prime the Emperor manually. I set up that filter, since it's good for up to 80 gallons, because I couldn't find a place to get parts for the Fluval except online. Once the dust from the gravel settled down, I put Setsuki in the tank, to start the cycle of course. I still had the old filter cartridge from the ten gallon, so I put that in the new (oldddd) filter and let it sit for a week to try and seed the new cartridges with bacteria. 

After about a week, I took four tiger barbs from the 20 long, and put them in the new tank. Since they were in such a small school now, they started harassing Setsuki, and I found her dead under a rock after three days. I was pretty sad, she had such a great personality. You might think I'm weird, because "it's just a fish" but you obviously don't understand that a fish is a pet, and pets are family. So with her gone, I added the rest of the barbs to the tank. 

They were pretty excited to be a big group again. They love racing each other across the length of the tank, then begging for food after a few laps. It's the reason I got tiger barbs in the first place – they're very hardy, so they're great for beginners and they've got a great group personality. They don't do well in small groups (I'd say at least 6) and they terrorize slow fish and long-finned fish. 

Anyway, I bought six otocinclus catfish (thought I'd try my luck with a bigger tank, and more knowledge about the species) and four green tiger barbs from PetCo. Of course some of the otos had ick, so I decided to use the recently empty 20 long as a quarantine. I threw all the new fish into the tank (which had algae covering everything), gave them a ten-day feeder block and left them for a week. I had one oto die during quarantine, which was expected. I moved the fish into the 55 once the ick was gone. 

The green tiger barbs had been really pale while in quarantine, and after they moved into the 55, they colored up very nicely. All the tiger barbs (12 now) love eating frozen beefheart, frozen brine shrimp, and freeze-dried and frozen bloodworms. They also love algae wafers, which I think is really odd since they're carnivores. 

I decided it was time to ditch another tank, so I moved my cory catfish to the 55 from the 20 tall, and posted an ad for the tank on Craig's List. The pleco had died since the cory cats were faster than him at getting to the food; Rowdy died on the same day, but I never figured out why. I sold the tank with the gravel, the wood decoration, the hood/light, and the filter. I always just keep my heaters. So I got $50 out of it, and the same day I had to sell it, it still had my swordtails in it. So I took them out, brought them over to the Aquarium Store, and sold them for $1 each. 

I was looking through the fish that they had in stock, and I saw some Bolivian rams. I had always wanted some German Blues, but I decided I would get a pair of Bolivians. They were $9 each, so I tried to pick the healthiest ones; they were all really skinny. So I took them home and acclimated them to the 55 while the 20 tall was emptying. Later that day, I met the buyer and handed off my third fish tank near the middle of July. 

I did a bunch of research on the Bolivians once I got home, and found out that they're really sensitive to nitrates. This may be a problem for me since I'm not too keen on weekly water changes, it's more a monthly hassle to me. So I moved the empty 20 long up to where the 20 tall had been, and I decided it was my time to try a planted aquarium. 

And so I gained another 20

While searching through a bunch of junk, I found a 20 gallon long tank in the basement in early May. It had a bunch of scratches in the glass and the silicone in the corners looked like it was scraped out, so I filled it up to see if it would hold water. I let it sit for two days while my dad took me out to buy another filter. Once I had everything ready to set up, I still hadn't gotten a stand, so I took a few milk crates and a plastic shelf and made my own. It was pretty sketchy, but it worked the same way any other one would. With this new tank, I bought a female crowntail betta, the same colors as Gary (I have yet to mention that "Gary" is short for Gyarados, like the Pokémon), and named her Setsuki. She helped start the cycle for the new tank, and two weeks later, I bought two female and one male mickey mouse Swordtails from PetCo.

I had heard somewhere that many fish people have an LFS, or local fish store, and don't go to regular pet stores for fish and live plants, but rather for just supplies. So I Google searched for aquarium and fish stores around my area, and the closest one I could find was The Aquarium Store, about 30 minutes from my house. My parents took me there to check it out, and I bought my first live plant, water wisteria (Hygrophila difformis), which seems to do really well in soft water with low light. It doesn't really die or anything when algae attaches to its leaves either.

Anyway, I got three male guppies from PetsMart to add to the 20 long around the end of May. Setsuki didn't take too well to the guppies, so I moved her into the 20 gallon tall. By now, I already knew this tank was really overstocked, with a kissing gourami, a female betta, eight tiger barbs, a bristlenose pleco, and three emerald green cory catfish. The gourami seemed to like her, and even protected her from the tiger barbs' harassment. One of the guppies died after three days, so I took him back and replaced him. This new one died a few days later, and the other two about a week after. The sales clerk finally told me that the pH in my water was too low for the guppies, even though everything I read about them said they could handle anything. It was only down around 6.7, so all I know is that I'm never getting guppies again.

The gourami started to get really aggressive toward the tiger barbs, so I switched the barbs with the swordtails, which they all seemed to be a bit happier with. The swordtails and gourami got ick from the stress of moving, but I treated the fish as soon as I saw it, and it disappeared forever; thankfully I didn't lose any fish. Around the beginning of June, just after school ended, I decided I was going to go for my goal. I posted an ad on Craig's List for pet-sitting, and got a couple dogs. I also moved both male bettas to a gallon-sized jar, sold their tanks and added the money to my savings. For the first few nights in the jar, Rowdy had some swim bladder problems, but I gave him some time, and he got better soon after. I started changing 100% of their water every week, sometimes twice a week if I felt it necessary. Once I had about $150, I found a tank on Craig's List that came with everything I needed, and more, for way less than was expecting to pay.

Going on 20

So in early April, I replied to the person's ad about the 20 with everything for $35, and of course I got it. The guy told me that he had a 120 gallon saltwater and a 55 gallon fresh and his wife was bugging him to get rid of his extra tanks; I thought it was pretty funny. He was a total nerd. Fish people in general are nerds, all of them. Anyway, I got it home, scraped off all the built-up lime (I hate that stuff so muchh) and got everything set up. I let the filter and heater run for two weeks and threw my tetras in. I had just been to a friend's house and noticed that she had a kissing gourami in a 10 gallon tank, and she said that the fish hated her. So I took it and gave her my tetras in return.

He seemed really skittish, even in the 20. I had started doing research on fish, so as to not murder them anymore, and I knew that he really shouldn't be in anything less then 55 gallons. So, that was my goal – to give this fish the space he needs to thrive. Soon after he moved into my 20, I put my other little fish in as well, leaving Gary by himself in the 10. I got another male crowntail, this time he was all red and from PetCo, and named him Rowdy. Rowdy took up residence in the 5 gallon, and seemed really happy with the space. Gary, at this point, became really stressed and developed a mild case of fin rot. I didn't think much of it, so I did a water change and left him with that. Over the next few days, he got progressively worse and I woke up one morning with his tail half gone.

I went to the store and got him some medicine for fin rot (Fungus Clear by Jungle), and it took a few days before it started working. In the 20 gallon, I got four tiger barbs from Wal-Mart, four albino tiger barbs from PetCo, and three emerald green cory catfish from PetCo as well. So now with three fish tanks up and running, I wanted more. I needed more. So I went digging through the basement again, and found a 20 gallon long.

And on to the 10

Of course, with the horrible luck I was having in the 5 gallon, I was super excited to find this 10 gallon tank. We used to have a bunch of lizards and snakes, so I kind of figured we might have a few tanks downstairs. I took the tank up and filled it to see if it would hold water. We went out and bought a small Aqua Culture heater from Wal-Mart, an Aqueon Versa-Top glass lid, and an Aqueon QuietFlow10 power filter. I got everything set up and let it all run for a week before moving the fish over.

After a few days, I had only two neon tetras and two glowlight tetras. I went to Wal-Mart after another week and bought a male crowntail betta, Gary. He loved all the room of the five gallon, so I kept him in there for about three weeks. Then I moved him into the 10 to see how he would react to the tetras. They all were fine together, so over the course of a few weeks, I added an albino bristlenose plecostomus. What I knew at the time was that the tank was overstocked, so I started looking online (oh, how I love Craig's List) for a bigger tank. After sitting for someone's dog, I had about $50 saved up and found a 20 gallon tall with and Aqueon QuietFlow30 filter, 100-watt heater, full hood, and fluorescent light, all for only $35, so of course I jumped on it.