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10/16/2004 I just got back from That Fish Place again, and returning the dead neon dwarf, only to find that another of my Boesmani's has now died. I'm bummed ... what in the world is going on? That Fish Place tested my water sample, and everything came back fine. As a matter of fact, I noticed that the water didn't even appear yellow. Well, back to the drawing board. Fortunately, I've replaced the dead neon dwarf rainbow, and picked up 2 others. I specifically got 2 females and 1 male tonite, so my neon dwarf rainbow community is 3 females and 2 males, which I've read somewhere is a good mix to keep everyone happy. My wife also decided she wants a little piece of the action and picked out 2 mickey mouse plattys tonite. While not fish that I would pick out, I'm glad that she's interested in the aquarium. After searching ebay and other on-line stores, searching for replacement bulbs for my light, I realize that there really isn't going to be a cheap way to get the dual 10,000k/actinic bulbs out of these PC lights. But, on the other hand, being the ebay junky that I am, I also realized that if I can't get 6700k bulbs cheap off ebay, then neither can anyone else and someone will likely be interested in those 10,000k/actinic bulbs for their tank. So, I bought 2 Sunpaq 6700k power compact replacement bulbs tonite. And now that they are installed ... my tank certainly looks very yellowish. Hmmm .... blue-green or yellow? Not sure if I went from bad to worse. I plan to do my weekly water change tomorrow during football, so maybe I it'll look different once I clean up that water. But even with the reef bulbs in there, I can see noticable growth on almost all of my plants. The cobambas look very healthy and you can see growth at their tops. The new java ferns are finally turning more dark green like my first java fern (the whole reason I bought the others). 10/14/2004 When I turned the lights on in the morning ... 2 of my rainbows had died. Floating at the top was one of the female Boesmani rainbows and one of the new dwarf neon rainbows (male). I'm very perplexed by this since I've had the Boesmani's that Steve gave me for well over a year. The 2 remaining male Boesmani's look fine ... so I'm very unsure of what happened. Especially since it appeared that the female was mating with my larger male Boesmani (it looked like a lot of quivering ... the male and female went to a front-bottom-left corner of my tank by themselves and twitched eye-to-eye for a bit. One of them would swim away and then they'd go back down and do it again). I believe they were mating since I had read that the twitching thing is part of their mating sequence. Now, I'm only hoping that she may have dropped the eggs somewhere although I don't see any and unfortnately, I have a bunch of scavengers who likely ate them if she did. Now, the dwarf neon has been in my tank for under a week, so I'm not sure what his issue was. I did test my water using the 5-in-1 test from Mardel and I didn't have any values out of whack from my last water change test last week. So, I don't think the water conditions had any thing to do with it. 10/11/2004 Steve and I make a trek to mecca (I mean That Fish Place in Lancaster). I had called TFP earlier in the day to confirm that they did indeed receive their fish shipment in ... which they had. I was hoping that they had received a refill on their gold nugget pleco stock and possibly received in some loaches. Well, they didn't receive any loaches that I was interested in, but they did get in some gold nugget plecos. So, since I had become interested in them since I almost bought one at my other LFS, Petz Unlimited ... until I found out it cost $29.99 ... yikes ... somehow $12.99 at TFP sounded much more reasonable after that. I also picked up a rubbernose pleco since they were cheap, $1.99, and was suggested to me as a good tank cleaner. I was also strongly considering picking up some killifish until the salesperson didn't recommend it to me since she though my guaramis would rough them up ... due to the killifish being a very peaceful top-dwelling fish. So, instead they had some interesting looking dwarf neon rainbow fish. I picked up 3 ... turned out to be 2 males and 1 female. I also picked up a few more plants to round out my tank, so I could get rid of the last few plastic plants. I got 2 - red ludwigias, 1 medium size amazon sword, 2 purple cobambas, and a red rotala. I was hoping to get some corkscrew vals, but they were out of them. 10/9/2004 Took a trip with my son, Matthew, to That Fish Place today ... I'm excited to be picking up a new light today. I got a Current-USA Satellite 2x65 watt. I'm planning that the extra 130 watts of light will be ideal for growing plants. Unfortunately, this fixture is designed as a saltwater light and came with a dual 10k / 460nm actinic bulb ... which gives my tank a blue-ish look. I also picked up some glass canopies to replace the light-hoods that came with the tank. With the glass canopies, I now have a glass top which I can put the new 2x65watt 48" light on top, plus I can still put the 24" 15watt lights on the front half. So, now, I'm kicking out 160 watts ... the brightness is fantastic compared to how dark it looked before. I also picked up 2 oto catfish today to help with my algae overload (ie: green stuff growing on the glass). Plantwise, I picked up 3 java ferns (but I received 5 sprig/root bases when I unpacked everything), 1-red ludwigia, 1-baby tears bunch, and 3-Italian vals. The vals are going to help my grassy patch that I already had 3 jungle vals in. I'm hoping to get the java ferns to root to my driftwood ... I'm using plant anchors to hold them on right now. Things are definitely shaping up plantwise now. 10/7/2004 Tonite, Steve and I made the rounds at our local fish stores. We first went to Zoo Pets, which is a smaller store, but has some intersting fish. I ended up buying some green cobamba there ... it had just come in and looked nice. Next, we had to stop by Super Petz since its on the way to Malec's anwyways ... Steve got a Power-glo light there. Their tanks were kinda out of stock today. Last, we headed to Camp Hill to check out Malec's. I had told Steve that I thought their fish tanks looked pretty nice for a LFS ... meaning they actually had decent gravel and decor in them. Unfortunately, their fish guy had been on vacation, so they didn't get in any new fish, but I decided to buy a zigzag eel I had seen there a few days ago. They had a whole tankful of them previously, so I had to do some research to see what's up with zigzag eels. Seemed nice enough for a community tank ... but unfortunately, they can reach lenghts of 36 inches. yikes! I guess if it ever gets that big, I'll take it back. 36 inches is WAY too big for my tank, but I figure it'll take him a while to get that big. But, he's pretty cool looking tho and I'm a sucker for interesting fish. 9/2/2004 Well, all the fish are doing well. My mom came to up to babysit the kids for the day, so Steve and I are planning to check out That Fish Place in Lancaster, PA (about 42 minutes away). We were in awe of how large the fish section in the store was! The freshwater fish weren't necessarily that mind boggling, but they definitely had more saltwater fish than I've ever seen (in any other store, or nature program for that matter). But the kicker is the grocery store size aisles of filters, food, lighting, substrate, testing equipment, tanks, etc, etc. So, I ended up buying 3 shark catfish for $3.99 a piece, 2 medium size pieces of driftwood, 1-java fern, and 3 jungle vals. I'm hoping to move toward a more natural-looking, planted tank. 8/29/2004 Today, Steve and I moved over his old 55 gallon tank & stand to my house. Thankfully, Steve had been running my new AquaClear 300 filter in his tank to get the necessary bacteria present. We're hoping to be able to add fish straight-away from my 10-gallon to the 55. Once, we had the tank and stand moved in ... Steve began washing out the pool-sand I'm going to use a substrate and I began filling bucket-fulls to fill the tank. I have (softened) well water, so no need to remove any chlorine. Plus the fish I have are well accustomed to my water by now. So, making the big move from the 10 to 55 are: 1-redtail shark (have had him at least 2 years now), 3 Yo-yo loaches (I've also had them for over years), 3 Boesmani rainbows (I've had for over a year), and 1 hideously large orange carp (better known as a goldfish). With sand in place, and stupid castle decorations inserted along with plenty of plastic plants, we wait for the sand to settle ... then ... its time ... my fish have long waited for the day when they had more than a 10 gallon tank since between the 8 of them I had well over 20 inches of fish for 10 gallons ... so I guess that's pretty good. |