New Fish

Keeping with the community theme of the fish tank, I added more fish to the tank. I got an upside down catfish and a mickey mouse platy. I try not to add more than two or three fish at a time, to avoid losing fish to stress.

The upside down catfish provides a great cleaning service for accidental over-feedings. I have seen it cleaning the algae of the plastic plants in the tank. He has taken refuge in a tiny aquarium decoration that he can get inside and will not move from it even at feeding time. Mostly a night time feeder, I have rarely seen it swim around in daylight hours. It is very peaceful and plays very well with the other community fish, to the point of letting the pleco share his little "house". Its a neat little fellow, and it is fun to watch him patrol the tank upside down at night looking for food; I actually drop a couple of sinking pellets in at night. I have had a couple upside downs before, and I feel that they die very easily if the gravel is not vacuumed and the water is not changed on a regular basis.

I was expecting a peaceful personality from the little mickey mouse platy, but I ended up getting a bully. He has taking a liking to "herding" the guppies and pushing them around. I may not exchange him for another fish yet, but I will keep a close eye on him for the following week to be sure he isn't an extreme problem. He eats flake foods like the guppies and swims about mid level in the tank.

I plan on keeping more fish, but I have to remember that the tank can only support one inch of fish per gallon of water. Although that is not an exact rule, I plan on keeping below that number to be sure that all my fish are healthy, have clean water, and have plenty of oxygen.

Pregnant Female Guppies

About two weeks after I set up the tank, a female Guppy was lingering near the heater (a telltale sign of pregnancy). Although the gestation period for a guppy is usually between 20 days and a month, this guppy had been pre-hit by another male guppy in the fish store. I wanted to keep the babies alive the cheap way, so I built a little device to prevent her from eating the fry. I simply took a Tupperware bowl and placed two plastic plants into it. The plastic plants will provide a refuge for the fry as they desperately try to escape "mom", (and I thought my folks gave it to me bad). I generally try to keep the female well fed while she is in the breeder to prevent the ravenous case of the munchies she gets after the fry are dropped.

It will float, but If you need a little bit of tape to secure the breeder to the side of the tank, don't be hesitant to use it. I also make sure I replace the water in the breeder every other day with the tank water.

My Start to the Hobby

I am a college student with a love of freshwater fish. I have had aquariums for years, and it is always been something enjoyable for me! Not only do I spend days and nights observing fish in my home aquariums, but I also spend time diving down and experiencing natures' own tank with my scuba certification. No matter how busy I may be with my school studies, I always seem to sneak away to my local fish shops to pursue a different kind of study: that of the fish, the plants, and the truly living art of the tank. How do I treat that? Will that fish mix well with this one? How do I grow this? How do I stop the growth of that? These are some of the questions I have answered and I am still trying to answer.

From the first documented cases of fish keeping by the Romans, to the coinage of the word aquarium by Phillip Henry Gosse, there have been many people that have tried and failed at keeping freshwater aquariums. As Sir Isaac Newton one said, "We stand on the shoulders of giants," that is especially true with us Aquarists. We must learn to ask questions and to learn from each others mistakes. If one Aquarist loses a fish because of salt concentration or finds a new way of treating a fish disease , he must provide others with that information. That is my purpose in writing this blog. I hope others follow the progression of my tank and learn from my triumphs, and avoid the mistakes I have made.