I have a confession

Posted by Sarah on May 1, 2010

Freeze dried krill grosses me out.

I think most of it is due to the eyes.

The just look so … alive.

Is there any part of fishkeeping that you dislike?

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Posted by Sarah on January 24, 2010

I went downstairs to feed the fish this morning, and I noticed that the power for the 75 gallon tank was off.

We checked the plugins, and the fuses, then I realized that the powercord plugin had been reset.

As soon as I turned it on I saw tiny little flames behind the switch, and I started to see smoke.

I turned if off immediately (ok, I yelled for Jeff too) and then he unplugged everything and switched it to another cord.

The plugin had turned yellow around that end and smelled like smoke.

We aren’t really sure what happened, but we are assuming that water had gotten into the outlets somehow.

That tank is so far away from our bathrooms that the python doesn’t reach all that well, so Jeff carries buckets of water down for it.

This time we’ll be placing the outlet on the wall, so I hope we don’t have that problem again.

Have you ever had anything like that happen?

This is the second time this year we’ve had something catch fire.

Jeff changed the batteries in a little flashlight he got as a gift when he bought something else, and the battery casing stared to smoke and melt.

It’s a good thing there’s lots of snow outside!

How to stop a fish from growing

Posted by Sarah on July 14, 2009

No, I’m not really going to tell you how to stop a fish from growing, but this is one of the more disturbing topics that I saw in my stats, so I figured I’d cover it.

The short answer is you can’t stop a fish from growing, although if a fish is in a poor environment, whether it’s too small, has water that isn’t changed often enough, or is crowded, it may become stunted, and not grow to it’s full size.

This isn’t something that a good fish keeper would want for their fish – you basically aren’t providing the proper care for the fish, so it isn’t growing properly.

The only reasons that I can think of to stop a fish from growing are to keep it looking “cute” and to keep it small enough that it will be able to remain in an aquarium that is too small for it for longer than it should be in that tank.

Since the original searcher was searching for ways to keep a puffer from growing, there is the possibility that they could be trying to keep them small enough so that they wouldn’t want to eat their tank mates.

None of these is a good reason to abuse your fish, and I think that doing anything that hurts your fish and doesn’t let them grow properly, on purpose, is fish abuse.

Of course, this is one of the reasons that you should research your fish, and have a proper habitat for them before you buy them.

I know it’s hard, and I don’t always do it – but I’ve done enough research so that I have a general idea of what requirements the fish will need, and I know which people at the fish store to talk to if I have questions.

A lot of people do buy a bigger fish than their tank can handle, and plan to upgrade to a bigger tank when their fish needs it.

Unfortunately life can get in the way, so people can’t always get the upgraded tank when they need it.

That’s why it’s a good idea to plan – and buy in advance.

What are your thoughts on stopping fish from growing on purpose.

Do you think it’s ok, or is it fish abuse?

Are their any fish that you wish you could keep from growing?

It would be nice if I could press a button and stop some of the larger puffers from growing so that I could keep them in my aquariums, but I know it wouldn’t be healthy for them, so I’d never do that.

Have you ever had a fish related accident?

Posted by Sarah on June 30, 2009

Have you ever had a fish related accident?

Sunday morning I walked into the living room and saw a huge puddle of water on the floor.

I looked at the tanks in front of me, and they were all in one piece, there weren’t any spots from the roof, there weren’t any spilled or broken glasses on the floor, so I had no idea where the water was coming from.

I said “Jeff, I don’t know what happened in here but there’s water all over the floor.”

To tell you the truth I was getting a little scared – water on the floor is a problem, water on the floor when you can’t figure out where it came from is a bigger problem.

Of course Jeff knew what happened right away.

He’d left the RO filter running on the discus tank, and it had overflowed and ran into the middle of the floor instead of puddling near the tank.

It’s a good thing we’d just tiled the floor!

It’s also a good thing that the we have a wet vacuum.

Ours has really been invaluable to us since we started keeping fish.

Whether we are cleaning up overflows (yes, its happened more than once) or using it to clean water out of used tanks we’ve used that thing a lot.

One of our friends told us that his wife wouldn’t allow him to get an RO filter unless he got a wet vac first.

I think that’s a great idea.

After all, more than likely something’s going to happen, and it’s a lot less stressful to have a wet vac on hand than to try to clean everything up with towels, or to have to run out and buy one.

Have you ever had a fish tank or fish room accident?

Leave me a comment and tell me about it – or just tell me how lucky you’ve been, since you haven’t had one .