CanadaquaBetween Pond and Tanks

Mo’ fish

Good day at the OVAS giant auction yesterday. Bought a truckload of plants for the 75G downstairs, finally found my tall piece of wood for the same tank and my angels — four adults and 5 juvies. One of the adults looks a bit beat up and can’t move one of his pectoral fins, and another one’s fins look a bit nibbled, too. But the others are in good shape, and most of them were happily nibbling on NLS pellets this morning.

I also found 5 juvie Heterandria, which brings my little colony to eight. Very happy about that one. And picked up two pairs of Endlers. I’d always wanted some of those. One of the females seems stressed, and I hope she’ll recover. Those auctions always mean a long day in a bag for fish …

Other than that I brought home some dried brine shrimp and a short-handled algae scraper, which will be much handier for the little Heterandria tank than my big one. Ver successful hunting all in all.

Very Sad

… to report that Max, the betta has left to swim wherever bettas swim in the afterlife. Yesterday he was still all perky, fighting his daily fight with my finger and begging for food, and today I found him under the big driftwood in the tank. He lived to the respectable betta age of three years – happily I hope. He’ll be missed.

Pond in purple

A visitor by the pond

… lazily sunning itself on the log above the waterfall:

The little Mosquitofish seem to like it in their Hex

Here’s a shot of their home:

Woohoo!

Yesterday we shut the air pump off for a bit to be able to peer into the hole, and all our minnows are alive. Didn’t see any of the goldfish, but then, it’s still quite icy, so I hope they’re just still hibernating.

Loot from the Giant Auction

More plants for all tanks, wood and a light for the planned paludarium, food, shrimp, a little hex tank (dunno yet, if for shrimp, a betta or plants), books, and sundry little things for 2$. We had to take a cab home; there was no way we were going to negotiate the buses with all those bags. What a spend fest. ;o)

Cherries over Spirulina dinner

Finally managed to get a shot

… of one of the Badis:

Fluval Edge

This was the state of affairs on Feb.1:

In the meantime I’ve dismembered some Chladophora, anchored down a bit of Najas guadalupensis (we’ll see how long that stays put) and gradually moved over the rasboras and the CRS. I still haven’t got all of the air bubbles out of the top. I’ll have to go find that algae magnet. But for what it’s worth, here’s my first poke at Iwagumi:

I took my time (you should have seen me sitting on the floor at Big Al’s arranging rocks on my little tank sized newspaper piece). I introduced the fish and shrimp 3 per day, even though I had material from their old tank for bacteria. They all seem to be doing well so far.

Substrate is normal Estes Black Marine Sand. Since I’m not going to play with the light, I figured my plants won’t need any nutrients beyond what the fish supply for free.

I kept moving the rocks around, because there was always an angle from which I didn’t like them, and it took me a while for the algae pieces to stay where I wanted them. I thought I could just insert come pebbles, but those things fall apart just where you don’t want them to. I also find you need a few contortionist genes to arrange anything through that opening.