Posted by Sarah on November 14, 2008
Tomorrow is America Recycles Day.
Do you recycle any of your aquariums stuff?
We bought most of our tanks and equipment, and some of our fish used.
Everything has worked great, although we did have a couple of heater problems.
Since we do use RO water for some of our tanks, we use the waste water to water our indoor plants, and our vegetable garden.
When we’re changing the water in the tanks we also use some of the water for our plants or trees, although it can be a pain to carry 5 gallon buckets up and down the stairs.
We’ve also been given some trimmings of other fish keepers plants, so they didn’t have to throw them away.
What are your fish and aquarium recycling methods?
Posted by Sarah on November 9, 2008
We left the house yesterday at 9 am, and came home today at 5:30pm.
So far one adult german ram, both nothobranchius killifish, and our yellow tang are dead, and The Lone Wolf, our unpaired adult male discus isn’t looking so hot because the heater in the 55 gallon broke and the water is 70 degrees.
I knew I shouldn’t have left, but I figured Jeff would be upset if I decided to stay home instead of going to his nieces birthday parth at the last minute.
All of the fish except for the killifish were in differen tanks.
I don’t know what happened to the ram, all of the other fish are fine, but we did move them from the 55 to a 20 high a few weeks ago. Jeff is going to change the water on the tank just in case.
He is wondering if they were fighting since it was an adult male that died.
I think the water got too cold for the nothobranchius, and the filter on the salt water tank had stopped working.
I think the real problem with Tang was the unquarantined half black angelfish though.
I just shouldn’t have gotten it once I knew we weren’t going to quarantine it.
It’s a pretty big loss considering that we were only gone for a day and a half.
Of course I can’t promise that I would have noticed the heater wasn’t working or that the filter had stopped even if I was here, but I could have at least made sure that the house was warm enough.
Of course that’s life, and when you have more pets, it’s a lot more likely that something will go wrong than it would be if you only had a few.
But that’s life.
Hopefully it won’t happen the next time we leave.
Posted by Jeff on November 7, 2008
Well today I was cleaning up in the fish room when I knocked over a rack that hit the adult Discus tank.
The pair of Discus freaked out but I didn’t pay too much attention to them since I had to set the rack back up.
Well I finished cleaning took a shower and drank some coffee and went back down to feed everyone.
I went to the Discus tank and did not see the male so I panicked, moved a tank and found him behind the rack.
Now mind you if he had jumped out when I think he did, when the rack hit, that would put his time out of water at about 30 minutes.
I went to grab him and he moved so he was still alive.
I put him back in with his mate and he sank then swam sideways and upside down for a while.
The whole time the female Discus was by his side.
Well after about an hour he was swimming right but breathing pretty funny.
However tonight he looks fine and was more then happy to eat some blood worms!!!!
Now it is very humid in my fish room about 95% humidity but there was no way I thought he would be alive.
I think that it is pretty miraculous that a Discus can jump out of the water and live after being out of the tank for 30 minutes. Of course he has his mate to take care of him once he was in a tank but I still think it is pretty miraculous.
Posted by Sarah on October 21, 2008
We got a new fish for our saltwater tank last week – a half black angelfish.
We’ve been looking at Flame Angelfish, and Coral Beauty Angelfish, but we couldn’t find them around here – then we went to a pet store and they had a half black angelfish that was hiding in a rock.
It was so cute – all you could see were the big orange eyes peeking out.
So we ordered one from the Tropical Fish Shoppe after we asked about all three and it was the only one on her list.
We got him (or her) Thursday, and since Half Blacks are notoriously shy, I’ve been surprised at how much we’ve seen him out in front of the rocks.
None of our other fish have given him any trouble, and we even saw him swimming around with the two clownfish and the yellow tang.
It’s fun to see all of the fish in the tank near each other, and not fighting.
We’re still looking for a sponge based food for the new fish, which I call Half Black or Angel, depending on my mood.
Very original, I know, but it works until I think of another name.
Hopefully, I’ll have pictures soon.
If you have any experience with Half Black Angelfish, or with fish that need a sponge based diet, I’d love to hear about it.
Oddly enough I think we have a few sponges on our live rock, but I’m sure that they won’t last long.
