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May 24, 2005

Yay! More shrimp!

So I made a brief trip out to AF earlier and was surprised to see that Tom had actually gotten a few vampire shrimp in. So naturally I had to pick one up. Still relatively small too so should fit in with the existing flower shrimp just fine. =)

Posted by ronin at 5:50 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2005

I'm a nut...

Took a drive down to Aquarium Center today which uh, isn't something I'll be doing often since it's down by Cherry Hill. So pretty much 2 hours each way. =p Anyway, they have a nice shop with the largest selection of rainbows I've seen and a pretty good selection of other freshwater fish as well. Of course I couldn't drive all the way down there just to come home empty-handed but there wasn't much I wanted so I wound up with:

Yeah you read that right, a flounder. Of course it wasn't till I got home and looked it up on the net that I found out that it prefers brackish water. =( Ah well, we'll see how it goes. Quite an interesting find though. It's about three-quarters of an inch right now and supposedly can get up to 4 inches long. Flat as all hell and can even stick to walls.

The tequila sunrise guppies have these bright yellow tails with bright red edges. Quite pretty although one of the two that I received seems to have a bum eye. And their tails aren't as wavy as fancy guppies.

Posted by ronin at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2005

Changing of the guard...

Well, I finally broke down and did it: took 2 gold barbs (the largest female and 1 male), all 4 espei rasboras, the lone gold pristella tetra, and 2 black female guppies down to AF. Came back with:

And also 4 cory habrosus for the 5.5 gal tank.

The red honeys were quite fun to watch. They actually swim around and feel things out (including other fish) with their two feelers. Love these little gouramis. =)

Posted by ronin at 8:12 PM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2005

Starting anew (Part II)

Also spent this last Sunday evening redoing the 5.5 gal tank. Basically ripped everything out except the substrate, cleaned out the Stingray filter, moved some of the corkscrew vals and one gigantic crypt (I think that's what it is...) over to the 12 gal tank, and tossed a bunch of the existing plants that had just gotten out of hand.

All this so that I could finally put in the driftwood that I had originally purchased for this tank since the very beginning. It's a pretty nice piece IMO that stands on 3 legs so that fish can swim/hide under it from three sides. And in this position it also sticks fairly high up in the tank so it's a pretty good main decor for the tank. Replanted some of the existing plants around it afterwards but much, much less than before. Hopefully the extra room will give the planted ones space to grow into in time. Hopefully they'll grow quick. With a good chunk of of the existing plants gone and after a good cleaning, the water flow put out by the Stingray is much greater than it was before so I'm hoping that's not gonna tire out the gouramis to death.

Oddly enough, it seems like the stringy algae problem I was having before was dying down prior to my grand restoration. Hopefully it won't recur with this new setup but only time will tell.

Posted by ronin at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)

Starting anew (Part I)

Before Erin left for Taiwan last week she took the time out to clear out all the dead and dying plants from the 12 gal tank. This left us with a rather bare tank. Guess we've been sorta neglecting our fish-keeping duties for the last month. Anyway, I started the replanting process by picking up two tall and thin onion plants from AF to plug into the area right in front of the filter output. May be too thin and flexible to provide a stable platform for the bamboo shrimp though. Also moved over some of the extra java ferns, anubias and crypts that I had temporarily kept in the 3 gal tank. So now it's not looking too bad. Will wait abit to see how the new plants grow out.

Cleaned up the clear plastic shell covering the light so the tank is nice and bright again. Well, as bright as it could be for a 13 watt light. And took the time last night to clean up the filter too which re-upped the water flow dramatically. So now it's a decent looking tank again. Put up some pics when I get the chance.

Oh and the 4 sick female guppies all seem to be ok now. Also thinking of clearing out some of the fish by donating them back to AF. Even though we've already lost a bunch of fish to attrition, with the 4 large gold barbs around I think we need to slim down some more. Thinking about giving up 2 of the gold barbs (if Tom'll actually take them, may be too large), the 2 cherry barbs, the gold pristella tetra and the 4 espei rasboras. Hopefully that'll clear up a lot more room for the remnants... that is if I can catch them. Always an adventure, netting fish.

Posted by ronin at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)