Fish have grudges too

African cichlids have a lot of personality. An excess of it, in fact - the alpha fish of any one species may take a very particular dislike to another individual fish and harass that fish to death. And these aren't even predatory fish! (Ironically, the predatory African cichlids tend to be more easygoing fish, although of course if they spot any fish small enough to fit into their mouths, the little one is history!)

I've had to remove and rehome an acei due to a grudge, and it's looking like I'll have to do the same for one of my cherry red zebras. The dominant fish of the trio simply cannot stand one of the two others at all; I've already had to remove it to quarantine to recover once, and rearranging the rockscape and reintroducing the gamma fish didn't go well. The poor thing hung in the corner and tried to become invisible, which of course didn't work. Within a week its fins have been shredded, again. But as I had already disassembled the quarantine tank for now, I've isolated the poor thing inside a net box in the main tank, where the bully fish can't get to it, and I can give it food without the other fish taking it away. (They're all very frustrated by this.)

The prospect of having to rehome this fish is upsetting, because they were quite expensive to buy; one of the major downfalls of keeping African cichlids. Unfortunately at the time there weren't any juveniles available, so I had to buy adults, which are far more expensive. But the probability of somehow making these fish get along together is pretty much zero. If only I could get them to breed for me, and save some fry, I wouldn't mind it at all! But so far only the acei have been breeding.

Angelfish!

Oh dear, I've done it now - I stopped by the LCS (local chain store) and saw that they had a tank full of juvie angelfish for sale, and there was this one extremely cute black-and-white marbled fish in there... so I bought it! I can think of several reasons why I probably shouldn't have (I have a lot of fish already, I have neon tetras, angelfish get bigger than I was going to limit my fish in this tank to, adult-size-wise) but the cuteness swayed me. This is why it's a bad idea to apply the retail therapy urge to pet stores. I should go buy shoes instead, but they're always more expensive and I can never find any good ones. So it's a new fish! I'm already suffering a bit of designer regret, as the black on this fish will assuredly make it blend in to the background in my tank, but I'm hoping the white marbling will give it enough pop to really make a statement. I should have gone for one of the white ones instead, but they just didn't look as adorable as this one. I have him in quarantine for the next month in anticipation of whatever outbreak of hideous disease this fish is no doubt carrying (actually the tanks there looked pretty good; the store is on a "good" side of town). He seems to be taking everything in stride and doesn't look stressed at all, which is an excellent sign. I might let him off after three weeks if he doesn't start showing any symptoms of parasites or ich.

His body (minus finnage) is about the size of a quarter - way too small to eat any of my precious neons and otos. Hopefully by the time he's grown big enough, he'll be so used to eating pellet food with the rest of the fish that it won't ever occur to him that a neon tetra is a nice snack!

In cichlid news, I have one of the cherry red zebras also in quarantine to recover from excessive fin damage. I'm hoping to bulk her up as well - only the dominant one has put on enough weight after the transfer. I'm hoping to find some more saulosi, so this fish will stay out for a while in anticipation of going back in with a larger group.

I'm afraid I'm too tired/lazy to post pics tonight, and in any case the QT isn't a pretty tank.

Puddles

Last night I got bit by the meddling bug again after reading through a thread discussion on flow, and decided to switch my 75g XP3's position back to paired intake/output. Unfortunately the hoses now sport a Hydor ETH heater, and getting them to play nicely under the tank was difficult. So difficult, it turns out, that I woke up this morning to a moderately-sized puddle on my living room floor. Let's hear it for polyurethane-sealed floors! So after towel-mopping and a quick check of the canister (leak mysteriously not apparent), I went off to work, and came home to another moderately sized puddle on the floor. Now I had time to really investigate, and found that I must not have gotten the quick-release seated correctly, because water was leaking slowly out the power cord hole. Two hours and a major canister cleaning and hose adjusting later, I think I've solved that problem, but now one of the joins on my Hydor is slowly dripping. That should be a lot easier to fix, at least! I'm sure it got a little loose while I was twisting things about. The hose barbs are not very secure, unfortunately.

On the planted side, various stems have come loose after the last trimming and need to be replanted, and the crypts are doing their best to fill in as a carpet - I'm pleased about that, since they were looking terribly sparse for so long. But they seem to have grown their root systems to the point where they're happy now! I ought to give them a Flourish tab or two next time I'm armpit-deep in that tank. I think the crypt spiralis heartily approves of being moved from "under" the Amazon sword to its own spot on the back wall - I haven't seen any more leaves shed from that plant at all since the move. I need to do another drastic H. pinnatifida pruning - I hate having to cut down the large stem that Tex Gal shipped me, but I suspect it's necessary for the plant to recover from the neglect I subjected it to. I'm planning to move some things around a bit to give it its own "patch" to grow in! The ozelot sword is responding well to the harsh pruning I've been giving it - the leaves are coming in thick and fast, and it even appears to be starting a new flower spike. I harvested a baby plant off the end of the first one, although there are still three baby plants on it, those haven't grown any roots yet that I can see. They may need to be touching water before they grow roots, but I don't want to cut them from the parent plant before they've rooted - catch 22.

Shrimps!

A week or so ago I added three amano shrimp to this tank, but didn't see carapace nor antenna of them afterward, so I was thinking that they got eaten by the other tank denizens. Today I was pleasantly surprised to find two of them chilling on the filter outtake after a water change! I'm happy to know that at least those two made it, and it gives me hope that the third is hanging around somewhere I just can't see, too.

The other piece of news about this tank is that I'm thinking I'll make an effort to more consistently clean the filter sponges. Planted tanks are huge waste producers, and I don't have the "full system" - sand doesn't do much for you in waste-recycling capacity. I may have to pick up some laterite and seed the substrate with it as an informal experiment.

On the cichlid front, I managed to use the fish trap to catch the socolofi! The clever little nuisance was so wary of going in to get the tasty treat that I had to leave it in the tank overnight, and he even managed to escape the first time I went to grab it! But then I managed to get it out with him in it, so now he and the bullied acei are ready to be rehomed. Hopefully the community will be better for those two fishes' absence - the male saulosi has already colored up quite strongly! That particular fish was just too aggressive and territorial for my setup. Now I just need some more saulosi females, I need some more yellow to balance out all the orange from the red zebras.

Pleco grotto

This corner never comes out well in full tank shots, since it's shadowed by the ozelot. I picked up this nice piece of driftwood from my LFS, to give my starlight bristlenose someplace to sleep! This keeps him from trying to dig his own spot somewhere I don't want him to. A lot of other fish like to swim through the tunnel when they can! The craggy surface proved the perfect place to glue down some java fern - eventually the wood should be nearly completely cloaked by the leaves. They would probably grow a lot faster if I pruned the ozelot back more often!

DIY lid

So on my 20L fry grow-out tank, I mounted the HOB filter on the side, rather than on the back of the tank. The main reason for doing it this way is to encourage a tank-long flow pattern; the full length of the 20L water column wouldn't be stirred very well by a single back-mounted HOB. And since this tank is on the bottom of my 55 stand, it's far easier to access the filter if it's on the side rather than the back. But that means that all the commercial tank tops won't fit - they're all configured for back-mounted hardware. Enter the wisdom of the internet: the DIY side-opening lid, constructed from a piece of plastic molding and your choice of clear flat stuff from Lowe's. I ended up going with acrylic - I would have preferred polycarbonate (Lexan) but that stuff's more expensive, and unfortunately it looked like Lowe's was out of a lot of their stock options when I went shopping, so in order to "waste" the least amount of material when I got the panels cut, I was pretty much stuck with the Duraplex. It's a little thinner than would be optimal, I suspect, but as long as I don't try to rest things on it, it should hold just fine. For added stability one could glue down the tracks, but that also means you'll have a hard time getting the thing off if you need to, so that's right out.


Oh yeah, I also added a thin layer of sand and some rock hiding places, since the fry are from two different batches and the little ones need hiding places from the big one! Half an hour after install, you can see the lid trapping humidity - hopefully this will drastically cut down on water loss through evaporation this winter.


Now all I have to do is figure out a background for this tank...

Pruning

Did some pruning this week, while doing water changes on the 75 and the 10g quarantine. I ended up taking out one on the Amazon sword plants and putting it in the 75! That tank gets a little indirect sunlight from north-facing windows, and it has a T8 and a T12 for lighting. I gave the transplanted sword a good pruning and tucked a Flourish root tab under it, but that's all the TLC it will be getting. I'm hoping that as the only plant in a tank full of fish, there'll be enough nutrients with just the root tab to sustain it. Since African cichlids are diggers, it's not practical to plant a tank with them. Everyone liked the new look - the large plant softens the barren look of the rock "reef" and makes the colors really pop. Barring a few exploratory nibbles it looks like the fish will coexist pretty well!

While trying to adjust to a new work schedule, I ended up not adding the fertilizer to the planted tank. Most of the plants did okay, but not the H. pinnatifida (large serrated leaves, center background) - major potassium deficiency showed up. Hopefully properly dosing the tank in the morning will help it come back! I don't want to lose this plant, since I got it from another aquatic gardener. In the meantime, the java fern was busy reproducing, so I'm hoping the little plantlets will eventually grow into a huge, awesome mass for me.

Three acei fry now live in the 20 long underneath the planted tank - with a 13" base, it's a perfect size to go under the 55g on the same stand. That gives me more options, since the 10g is too small to comfortably grow out those fish, and I need the 10g for quarantine! Although the second-largest acei male is still there - I may trade him in to a nearby store (only one that gives you anything for trade-ins, although I really wish the closer store would give something for trade-ins, their quality is a lot better!). He's a lovely fish, but the Tank Boss really hates him. Bossfish is fairly timid when observed by people - but he comes out just to harass this smaller fish if they're together in the same tank. It's a shame, but they just don't get along. Tiny McTinyfish is actually at least two and a half inches now - pretty big! I think he's about three years old - slow grower due to competition for food from his parents, no doubt.

Speaking of cichlids and personalities, my German blue ram male divorced the female to pair up with the golden morph female! I dislike this outcome, since I want to eventually have two pairs, one the classic color and one the gold morph. I tried getting another gold ram, but he was a new fish at the store and didn't thrive - a few weeks later I found him floating. Last week I spotted another one - I may end up going for that one and, if I can catch the female, quarantining them together to see if she might not prefer a male her own color. This sort of thing is why experts recommend buying juvies and letting them pair up naturally, but I haven't seen a source locally. What's even more a shame, is that the German blue female gets a washed-out look to her colors when nearby the male now - she had such beautiful color before. Definitely need to adjust things there.

The baby plants on the ozelot sword plant's flower stalk haven't put roots out yet, but when they do I'm thinking of selling them to other hobbyists, and maybe seeing if I can't keep one as a houseplant! As far as I know, the Echidnodorus species can live both immersed and emmersed, thanks to the seasonal flooding of the Amazon river. The plant is definitely oversized for my aquarium - a 200+ gallon would be more to scale, or an outdoor pond during the summer!

The dwarf gouramis are fighting with each other again - I suspect the pruning and rearranging has altered the desirability of the tank territories and now they're duking it out for the best spot.