We got some new fish today to replace the ones that died earlier in the year. To add a bit of colour to the tank we bought two Platies and one Angel Fish.
The photos are a tad blurry due to fish not grasping the posing for pictures concept. Here’s an overall shot of the aquarium.
As I sit on the couch and import the photos from my digital camera the fish are now posing perfectly for photos. Damn.
Our male Gourami died today, he wasn’t very old. He kept chasing around the Mollies so they in turn started to peck at him.
Needless to say we gave him the usual send off.
We have more fish! Two Dwarf Gouramis, two Yoyo Loaches and one Sucking Loach, unfortunately the other sucking loach died.
There occasionally seems to be some friction between the male Gourami and the male Molly, the Molly nips at the Gourami. It tends to occur when he’s also chasing round the female Mollies. He’s a randy little guy as our second lot of Molly fry testifies.
Well we’ve had the baby fish for a while now and in spite of not making any special arrangements for their safety we still have four of them. They now look like proper fish not just tadpoles with tails. I think they have reached a size that the other fish don’t look on them as food.
Neither the Guppies or the Mollys have had any more babies so I’m hoping that we have only females because if four were to survive every month the tank would fill up very quickly.
Just got home and counted up the Molly fries and I think there are three left. Of course more of them could be hiding in the plants. The littlest one seems to have found a good place to hide inbetween two rocks, he just darts in and out of there. I think I should put my money on that one surviving.
Before the next batch I think I’m going to space out those rocks a bit.
We’re continuing to stock up our aquarium so this weekend we bought four Guppies and three Mollies. Two days later I had a bit of a shock when I give them their breakfast - the Mollies had had babies! I counted them up as best as I could (they move around a lot), we had eleven. Eleven one centimetre long aquatic knats flitting about the tank.
I researched our new fish online, which I’ll admit is something I should have done to start with. Both the Guppies and the Mollies are what’re called Livebearers. Mollies can have twenty fry per month and we have at least two female Mollies. I’m still trying to decide what the third one is. I’m hoping it’s another female and we just had the unfortunate luck to buy an up the spout Molly, the tank cannot support that many fish.
A lot of the fry will be eaten by the other fish in the tank but if even one survives per month we’re in trouble. Doesn’t stop me from wanting them to keep out of the way of the big fish though, it’s a different story when I’m actually watching them.
As it’s now been a week since we got the four Neon Tetra fish it was time to add some more. I got home from work today to find the O.H. had been out and bought four more. So now we have eight. The next step is to move to some slightly bigger fish, Angel fish maybe… depends on whether they will coexist with the Neons.
And I’m still pondering that fish webcam.
I was sat watching the fab four this evening when I noticed a ’something’ sort of floating down one of the plants. I watched this thing for a while trying to figure out what bit of plant it might be. That is until it changed direction and moved back up the plant! We decided (by this time the O.H. had wandered over to see what I was muttering about) that it was a snail. In fact we have two snails in the tank. It would seem the Neon Tetra’s have some new neighbours earlier than we had planned.
The four Neon Tetra fish have taken to behaving in an odd way. I think it could be some kind of pecking order shenanigans. Two of the fish are slightly bigger and one (or possibly both, I can’t tell) has taken to ‘nosebutting’ the other guys, (or girls, I can’t tell). The other fish then do some strange backward swimming maneouvre.
On a side note I’m thinking of setting up a webcam for the fish utilising the HTPC Mac Mini.
After setting up our aquarium yesterday today we bought four Neon Tetra’s - the guy at the shop told us they were fairly hardy critters in spite of only being one inch long. The plan is to test out the tank with these four and gradually add more fish.
We’ve named them John, Paul, George and Ringo. However I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to tell who’s who. I was a little sceptical at first when the O.H. suggested getting some fish. After all you can’t pet them or generally interact with them in any way, but much to my surprise I find them fascinating. I can quite happily sit and watch them for a half hour after work, it’s quite relaxing.