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Post by siobhan on Sept 1, 2015 11:38:14 GMT -5
I have three fish tanks. One holds a male betta and a million snails. One has a giant molly, who is alarming when she breaches for food, and her roommates, a female betta and a male platy. The male platy and some other platies were living in the third tank, but one by one all the others died except Neville and I moved him in with Molly and Belle so I could dismantle his tank and downsize.
Well, nature abhors a void and I can't stand having empty quarters with no critter in them, so ... I put the tank back up and bought some tetras and an algae eater. I thought I had removed all the snails and distributed them among the two remaining tanks, but I missed a few and they're tough little critters. They survived a week in that tank with only a few drops of water and nothing to eat. Anyway, all the new fish died within a couple of days. The algae eater died first and I got a new one before the tetras succumbed, so I was thinking maybe I ought to just move him into one of the other tanks and forget trying to restart this tank. But I hated to traumatize those poor snails again and frankly, the other two tanks have too many snails already due to the last dismantle. I went back to the store and bought four guppies. My brother had a tank full of guppies when I was growing up and they had some really pretty fantail fancy guppies at Petsmart. So far, so good. They're very, very energetic and zoom around chasing each other and seem healthy enough. They eat heartily. I've had them for three days now and they and the algae eater seem to be okay so far. I told them they'd better survive. If they make it until the weekend, I'm going to get some females (these are all male) and maybe they'll have babies. My brother's guppies were enthusiastic breeders. LOL Until the day when the goldfish bowl broke while Mom was cleaning it and she put the goldfish into the guppy tank. My brother said the goldfish would eat the guppies. Mom said he wouldn't. My brother was right. So I won't be putting any goldfish into the guppies' tank, or anything else, for that matter.
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Post by easttex on Sept 2, 2015 5:56:33 GMT -5
I don't know how you do it, Siobhan. Since I've added Jake and Elwood, I decided not to get any fish for now. It takes so long to get everyone, including hummingbirds and other wild ones, taken care of in the morning as it is.
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Post by siobhan on Sept 2, 2015 8:56:06 GMT -5
It's all about routine. The fish are in the bird room, and get fed when I let birds out in the morning and when I get home at night when I'm cleaning cages. I do tank cleaning on Sundays when we have bird bath day. I change paper as needed and give fresh water every day.
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Post by biteybird on Sept 3, 2015 3:17:57 GMT -5
I'm with Easttex, I don't know how you do it. I know nothing about fish (apart from the type I like to eat!). I suspect that any fish species I tried to look after would automatically be doomed….  |
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Post by siobhan on Sept 3, 2015 11:57:24 GMT -5
For the most part, fish are pretty low maintenance. The problem with the ones who died was probably shock from getting transported from the store as much as anything. The guppies are still fine and so is the algae eater. Each tank has a heater and a filter pump and the snails do a pretty good job of keeping things tidy in between cleanings. I have a dedicated bucket and a siphon for the weekly cleanings and I siphon the gravel and give them about a 25 to 50 percent water change weekly, treating the water first to remove the chlorine. I change the filter every other week or so, though I check them every week when I clean and go ahead and change it if it needs it. It's actually kind of therapeutic to take care of fish and watch them swimming around. I can feel my blood pressure drop when I sit down and stare at fish. The tiels kind of enjoy watching them, though they're the only ones who pay any attention to them. Clyde objects to anything that takes my attention away from him and has even tried to take the fish food away from me when I'm feeding them. I suppose he figures if he steals the food, they'll starve and die and I won't waste any more time looking at them. LOL The snails are cooperative about having babies, so when snails die off, and they do because they don't have a long life expectancy, there are always more so the population stays fairly steady. Yet, the thing I worried about, that my friend the fish keeper (with a whole ROOM full of tanks) told me would happen, didn't happen. They never get so numerous that they're overcrowding the tank. They reach a certain point and stop having babies until some die off. I give them algae pellets two or three times a week and they ooze along quite happily. The fish get tropical fish flakes and the two bettas have their own food, though they also eat flakes and algae pellets. I suspect Molly the Giant Molly eats snails, too. The death rate in her tank is rather higher than it is in the other two. My fish keeper friend suggested I should crush a few snail shells for the fish to eat snails as a treat and I flatly refuse. If they want to eat snails, they'll have to figure out how to get them out of the shell themselves. I am not going to do it for them. It must be horrible to be a snail and have your shell crushed. You see I even worry about the health and happiness of the snails. I'm that person who finds a moth or grasshopper or cricket in the house and carefully catches it and takes it outside. I even do that with wasps and I'm deathly afraid of wasps.
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Post by biteybird on Sept 4, 2015 1:36:26 GMT -5
I have to catch the spiders in our house (hubby is scared of them) and I carry them outside in a jar and release them. I don't even like accidentally stepping on ants.
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Post by siobhan on Sept 4, 2015 13:55:56 GMT -5
One of the guppies succumbed last night. I knew he would by his behavior, and what was extra sad was that the other three were sort of surrounding him protectively. They came to the front of the tank to eat supper, but then went back and hung out with him. They're all still fine and so is the algae eater. So I think I'll go get some females now since the remaining three have lived a week, and I guess it's time to give them names. Perhaps I'll name them after the Brady Bunch. I like to have themes. Unless it's too creepy to name them after the Bradys when I hope the boys and the soon-to-be-procured girls will make babies together?
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Post by biteybird on Sept 6, 2015 0:05:52 GMT -5
Do you have fish named Tom, Dick or Harry yet?
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Post by easttex on Sept 6, 2015 4:55:29 GMT -5
Since the Brady boys and girls were not blood relations, I think you can get away with it, Siobhan. Amusing, but not creepy, in my opinion.
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Post by siobhan on Sept 7, 2015 13:52:01 GMT -5
Well, I did some research and your girls should outnumber your boys, preferably at least two to one if not three to one. I had three surviving boys and the 10 gallon tank won't support enough fish to have the girls outnumber the boys by that much, so I just got more boys. At first, the new boys hung out together in a clump and the old boys hung out in another clump and they were eyeing each other like a scene from West Side Story, but by supper time last night they were all running around together and two clear leaders have emerged and become BFFs and are bossing the others around. The algae eater is still darting around keeping things clean and even cleans up after the snails. I call him Darting Fish because of the way he moves. The guppies are still unnamed so far.
I had moved Neville the platy out of that tank when I was going to dismantle it (you see how long THAT lasted) and put him in with my female betta Belle and my molly. They were getting along fine, but then Neville took sick and Molly was chasing him around and nipping at him, so I put him in the guppy tank, knowing he was dying and that the guppies wouldn't bother him, so he'd have peace. He lasted several hours and the guppies did let him alone, and he's gone now. But Molly has grown to an amazing size and she and Belle have an understanding, so I'm going to leave the two of them alone in their tank.
I had searched high and low for a new hood for Freckles the betta, because Freddie chewed through the wire on his light and he was living in twilight, with a bedside lamp next to his tank for light and that's all. I couldn't find a 5-gallon tank hood anyplace and my brother had offered to try to put a new cord on the old one, but on Sunday I asked the clerk in the fish department at Petsmart (the third clerk I've asked about this over the last week or so) and he said, OH, we can fix that. We CAN? He hauled me over to the fish accessories and showed me lights that are submersible and even make bubble curtains if you buy a tube and a pump. I had seen those lights on the shelf, but I thought they were JUST for bubbles, and Freckles is not fond of bubbles. So I bought one and took it home and stuck it in his tank and it not only works, it changes colors. Freckles was intrigued. I think it entertains him. He swims around it a lot and seems to enjoy watching it change. I left the little lamp on, too, so he has a corner of his tank that's regular light and then the LED show in the other two-thirds of his tank. Clyde helped me set it up. He sat on my shoulder and gave direction. LOL I said, what about here? SQUAWK. Okay, how about there? SQUAWK. Third position? "Peekaboo!" I took that to mean "yes, that's a good place."
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