Our poor fish.
We have a forty gallon tall tank. It's full of brackish water fish, mollies and sword tails and guppies (oh my).
I have complained, a great deal, lately, about the neon sword tails that were overtaking the tank. Well, today I had had enough. The water was horrid, cloudy, smelly, brackish, even though the fish liked it that way. I assure you, I did not. The hunter, whichever fish that was, seemed to have ceased his hunts. The swords were not thinning out at all.
So I cleaned out the tank this afternoon. Completely. I did a 97% water change...I had to get the water down as low as I possibly could, in order to catch all the neon sword tails that I could. We are roughly 60-70 fish lighter in the tank now. If you know freshwater aquarium fish, you know just how overloaded that tank has been. We still have some mollies, mostly female. As far as I can tell, we still have one of our red velvet sword tails...which is fine...if we're lucky we have both red velvets and both gold dust mollies, but one of them is missing, as I only catch glimpses of three reddish fish, not counting the two babies, swimming around.
We still have our guppies...although we are missing more than I care to admit. I do believe some of the little babies running around are guppies though. The body shape is different from the mollies, once they get large enough to really be able to see it.
I know we still have several of the neon sword tail babies in the tank. I was not about to try fishing out every single little fry to figure out who is who and what is what. I caught several of the larger baby neon swords and they went with their parents...that was enough for me right now.
E is upset. Her beloved Wendy (short for Wendell) , the crown tail betta, the Jaws of our tank, was nowhere to be found. Not a fin. Not a scale. Not even a crusty bit of cartilage. I am not entirely sure I want to get another betta...but E is sure looking forward to a betta w a double tail...her Granddad bought her Auntie one a long time ago, and E has not forgotten that. She thinks they are ever so cool.
We are short one massively large botia, on purpose. I kept the smaller, seemingly more docile botia. Just in case we need some snail control in there.
Until the light hit the plecto, George, once the tank was all clean and refilled, I had no idea that guy had stripes...although his size is still daunting to me, considering how tiny and puny he was when we got him. He's about 7-8 inches long now. He was maybe an inch, inch and a half when we got him.
E should start griping any time now. I took the taller castle out of the tank...and put the shorter decor back in for awhile. The Buddha head, the Sphynx-like thing, and the Greco ruins...yeah, I know. We are good for combining history and civilizations in our tank...
The castle of course was crawling w snails...I want to bleach and vinegar the heck out of that thing before we put it back into the tank...but there were so many other things going on in the kitchen today I had no desire to fight w bleach and snail eggs. The snail eggs won't die while they are out of water. The second water hits them again, we'll have a new crop of snails. I'll get to it.
Snails inside the tank...those have been kept to a minimum...a few snails are ok. They help take care of things in the tank. If we get overrun again, no more snail eaters (like the botia)...I will find a place online that sells the stuff to kill the snails...and that will be that...til I get new plants that have more snails on them...of course...
I was thinking, right after I was done cleaning the tank, that we have mostly female mollies...and we really should get a couple new, and colorful, males...but that means more babies. We have babies right now--with more on the way. I was also thinking of getting more guppies...E loves her guppies. It makes her feel that much closer to her Auntie. Plus guppies come in leopard prints...how cool is that? Again, we have babies now...so we'll see how I feel in a couple weeks. No promises.
The only fish I know I would like to get a few more of are the albino corey cats. I love those guys. We lost one recently. These guys work better paired off in groups. At least that is my experience with them. One little guy looks smaller than the rest, more lethargic. As if he's missing the one who passed away. Maybe three more coreys would be a good thing here. Again, we'll see how I feel in a couple weeks.
The tank looks clean, healthy and the plants and fish inside it look happy...if not a bit confused at times. Without that castle in there, they do have a great deal more room in which to swim.
Thanks for listening. More soon.
