video of the tank just after feeding time curtesy of the visiting pascal, sonia's friend from paris.



and..... i went to Oasis Aquatics in salford for the second time. the place is amazing and has become, in just two visits, my favorite stockist of tropical fish. the amount of equipment and fish is huge and i have never seen so many rare (and expensive) fish before. there were a lot i have never seen before and they all looked in such good condition.

so, you guessed it, i bought a few fish. 4 celebes halfbeaks for the 180 tank to ocupy the top zone and a little bristlenose pleco which wont get any bigger than about 12cm, to control the algy situation which has arisen. more to come on those another time, they have only been in the tank for about an hour. :-)

70 litre update

yesterday i decided to move the siamese fighter from the big tank to the smaller one. i originally bought this fish to occupy the top zone in the large tank but after putting him in it became apparent that the current in this tank was too much for him. so i altered the angle of the return in the tank to reduce the circular flow of water. well, this was not a good idea, although the siamese fighter was much happier, the rest of the fish were not. in parrallel to this i had planted quite a few new plants and the fish had started ripping them apart. pretty they were, sturdy they were not.

these two factors compounded and the result was that the filter was getting blocked up daily and subsequently due to the reduced volue of water going through the filter, toxins started to build up and i had to start doing more frequent water changes. on top of this, the smallest clown loach got ich (white spot) for which he is now being treated (not to worry, i've cured the other three clowns of ich before now when they were smaller as well... small clown loaches are quite prone to ich with the slightest stress so i'm not suprised or worried)

the solution. get rid of the delicate plants and the siamese fighter is now in the 70 litre tank. the 180 litre tank is back to how it was with a fairly strong current which has increased the activity of (cheered up) the other fish. :-)

other than that i did some maintenance on the 70 litre tank and found the missing red crab, dead in the filter compartment. i'm a bit baffled as to how he scaled the filter box as there is only one hole big enough for it to have gone through and thats on the top. once he fell in, there was no way out..... :-/

tawny dragon catfish - adopted

first off, yesterday i picked up one tawny dragon catfish from the petshop in knutsford. the kind woman who works there had decided that he(she) was not suitable for her fishtank as he had started making a meal out of her neon population. so, i said i would have a look at him and if he was suitable i'd take him home. prior to this i had been thinking of what other fish to add to the community and had considered trying a pictus catfish (again - bad results the first time due to the bad man-handling of the fish by the woman at "a drop in the ocean" aquarium near the dirto trafford centre - i won't be going there again for this reason amongst others). this fish is very similar if a little less boistrous so i decided to take him and see how it goes. reading on http://www.planetcatfish.com/ it says this species is a cold water/sub tropical species but can be maintained up to temperatues around 25 degrees C, which is what my tank setup is at, so that should be fine. i do suspect that he will take a shine to the smaller tetras in the tank once his mouth is big enough.... we shall see.

secondly, i have bought a blue led light to light the tank a little during the morning and evenings between switching on/off the main lights. apparently it is the same wave length as the sun reflecting off the moon at night and people use them in marine setups to try and coax their coral into spawning. h'anyway... it looks very very cool and i shall try and get some decent pictures of it tonight.

and finally, i managed to get a picture of the sand loach and here he is..... int he pretty :-)

and the beat goes on....

a quick update while on my lunch at work... you may have noticed that the resident citizenship in each aquariums has changed somewhat since my last post. with the big fishtank up and running smoothly, having gone through the cycling process sucessfully and after having gradually introduced the fish we currently own, it was time to get them some new play mates.. =)

so, for now, here is a quick update on the 180 litre tank. =)

9 silver tipped tetra - i bought six of thses and then added another three the next day to basically try and liven the tank up a bit. they seem to be really happy, bazzing about the tank, couples keep forming and they show off to each other but their attetion span seems somewhat lacking in that department and they soon go off and try someone else haha.

6 red-eye tetra - increased from our original three to six, they now seem more lively with some mates to hang out. they generally hang around in the middle zone with the silver tips but are not quite as active as they are.

4 clown loach - i spotted one lonely little clown loach in the shop in town oever the weekend and had to get him to add to my other three. brilliant, his addition seems to have perked up the other clowns and now all 4 seem to happily forrage around the tank in a little posse.

1 upside down catfish - looks cool! is currently 10cm long (i bought the smallest one). he seems quite happy if a little shy. he tends to come out more in the evening but hides in the clowns cave or pleasures himself on the bubbles from the airstone most of the time with his new mate mister plec. he is not a particularly upside-downy type of upside down catfish but he does do the upside down thing in the cave and along the branches in the tank. with his big cat like whiskers searching for food. i like him a lot. :-)

1 siamese fighter (betta splenden) - beautiful light blue fish with a black head. he has taken over the small area on the right of the tank near the filter box where the little green lillys are. i had to change the setup of the tank a little after introducing him. he does not like current at all as his fins are so long and the drag effect they have on him while he is swimming is huge. i had to quickly, and i mean really quickly, put a fine mesh over the slats where the intake for the filter is as his tail fins got sucked into it within five minutes of him bening in the tank. and i also changed the direction of the return from the filter from horizontal accross the back (strong current) to vertically up. which still creates a small current but has the added effect of extra aeriation as the water spashes back into the tank. changed the airstone setup slightly so that the is a current in the tank but instead of it being a strong cyclone type current it is more of a barrell motion in the tank now with water rising on the left and decending on the right (a bit)... sort of, ah well maybe you get the idea.....

1 plec - still happily growning, digging up plants and bashing into stuff.

1 ghost shimp - is still a dude!

thats it for now, lunch over so i'll do the update on the 70 litre tank next time.

nums.