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November 29, 2005
New koi...
Came back from AF with a new female koi swordtail. Apparently they got in a new batch last week that was marginally better than their last batch and this female was one of the better looking ones. Still have to find a good male to go with them though.
Also noticed that they have successfully created lyretail koi swords over in Asia and some were on sale at Aquabid. I guess it was only a matter of time but I just don't like the whole lyretail effect.
Posted by ronin at 3:49 PM | Comments (0)
Transplanted guppies...
Dropped by AF this past Sunday and my mom wanted a change of fish for her tank so wound up picking up a betta pair and a 20 pound bag of Eco-Complete to redo her 6 gal tank with. Looks pretty nice now with the new black substrate and we kept the 2 flamingo gouramis as well. Not sure if that's a good idea or not cause the male betta is basically chasing after all the other fish most of the time when they come into view. Hopefully he'll calm down after awhile but we'll see. May need to remove the 2 flamingos if things get worse.
Anyway, we brought her old guppies home with us to add to our 6 gal tank. 2 females and 2 males. Females are substantially larger than the ones we have already in the tank. Wonder why... But these 4 guppies seem to be on their last legs (at least the females seem a bit more worse for wear) so we'll see how things go.
Posted by ronin at 3:42 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
Bad pics of new fish (and one old)...
Decided to try to take some pics of a few new additions to the 12 gal tank. Quite hard to take pics of most of these guys as they never stay still for too long. And I didn't bother cleaning the spot algae from the front panel first. Anyway, first a pic of an older fish, the last remaining koi swordtail in my tank. I've been meaning to get some companions for her but none of the LFS' have had any in stock recently. =( But she seems to like being by herself just fine. Occassionally chasing the 2 black swords around. But I really like her pattern.
New fish after the break...
This is one of the two juvie black swords that I got recently. This one has yellow fins and seems to be the dominant one (do females have a pecking order too?) as it's always chasing around the white-finned one. So I'm not entirely certain as to the sex of the two yet though they appear to be female currently. This one also has more shimmer in her body coloring.
This next one is the white-finned black sword. When I was examining her tank at AF, she was the one who caught my eye cause she was just playing by herself in the filter stream, minding her own business and not bothering anyone.
This is a not so great pic of a juvie male Borelli dwarf cichlid. He likes staying near the driftwood so his color sorta blends in with the dark wood. You can see a little bit of the real pretty metallic blue highlights that you can occassionally see on his face and jaw. Awaiting a mate if I can find one.
This next one is one of two male German blue rams in the tank. Originally I had thought I had chosen a male and a female but upon arriving at home one of them changed patterns and turned out to be male as well. He tricked me! =p Oh well. They pretty much stay on opposite sides of the tank and will spar a little if they see each other but nothing serious. I may have to take one back eventually if I find 2 females.
This next pic was the best I could do to get a pic of my shortfinned molly (poecilia mexicana) pair. This one is of the male, I also have a female of about the same size. They're supposedly wild-caught. They may look rather bland but they have nice yellow fins and under the right lighting conditions they have a very pretty row of metallic silver spots running the length of their bodies. They're quite active and will swim all over the tank, leaving no nook unsearched, no cranny unexplored. Very tough to take a pic of them because of this constant movement.
This last pic is one of the three new peppered cories that I just picked up for this tank. We originally had 6 bronze cories that were some of the original denizens of this tank but we lost 3 along the way. Never got around to replacing them until now but didn't want bronze ones anymore. These looked rather active at the store so I got them. Nice patterning. Still like the panda cories better but I have bad luck with those so far.
Posted by ronin at 3:44 PM | Comments (0)
November 4, 2005
More pygmies...
Also picked up 6 more pygmy cories from The Pet Shanty to add to my 6 gal tank to keep the sole panda cory company. =) Since the Shark Aquarium and Pet Shanty are both off of Rt 22 I usually hit them both at the same time.
Posted by ronin at 9:38 PM | Comments (0)
So I have a penchant...
for little fish. And pygmy cories are no exception. Love the lil' buggers. =) Picked up 4 of them from the Shark Aquarium along with a new zebra oto to accompany the existing 2 pygmies and 2 regular otos that I already have in the 5.5 gal tank. Hope they do well.
Posted by ronin at 9:34 PM | Comments (0)
November 1, 2005
That's the end...
of that. The pristella tetra with the spine disorder passed away overnight. Straightened out again after death though. Wonder what exactly was the problem...
On the other hand, the swordtails seem to have settled down and am keeping aggression to a minimum. Although one of the blacks was picking on the now-deceased tetra for the past 2 days. Rather odd. Are fish able to tell when others are sick? If so, why pick on them? Some sort of survival of the fittest thing?
Posted by ronin at 9:55 AM | Comments (0)