CanadaquaBetween Pond and Tanks

In case you’re wondering why there are no new pictures

It’s because there’s still not much to see but a big heap of snow with a hole in the middle. Aaah, the glories of spring in Ontario. As you can see, though, the top of the chain-link fence in the background is peeking out again, so it must be melting.

Glowlight update

So far they’re okay, though they weren’t terribly interested in food this morning. They’re incredibly fast movers, which is why there’s no picture yet. I’m trying out videos, but they need to be worked on, and I need to figure out the software before I can do that. So, only verbal update for now.

I went to buy some neons …

… and came home with three little glowlights. The neons were still in quarantine and not for sale yet. I saw the tank full of beautiful glowlights a couple of weeks ago when I went to get my bristlenose, but thought they’d all been sold by now. Lo and behold, though, there were three left, swimming a little forlornly in a tank full of small rasboras. Since they were the last of a whole shipment,  I named them The Mohicans.

They still look a little lost in my tank, but they’re checking out all the hidey holes and occasionally surf in the filter current. Now I just hope they’ll survive the next 72 hours.

Happy Paddy Day

I got a really nice macro shot of him just now. You can even see the pale green spots under his eyes. (He’s a Green Dotted Bristlenose.)

He’d been hiding all day, to the point where I got quite nervous, but he came back out around 5pm. I put in a spirulina wafer, but he hasn’t discovered it yet. Still busy munching away on the wood.

Finally. A fish.

Meet the first resident: Cthulhu, the cutest little Bristlenose this side of Peru:

After a couple of hours of hiding shyly behind the rocks, he’s now happily scampering all over the place, not the least bit fazed by the flash.

I got the fitting hood

Looks a lot sleeker. No ugly waterline, no huge gaps.

Me’s happy.

 

Aaaand: Lights on!

Could use a leeetle top-up. But otherwise bright and shiny. Yeah. Now, if the parameters keep being good, I’m ready for a fish next week.

After the big one

A blizzard dumped roughly half a meter of snow on us since Saturday morning; not only the pond is gone, but so is the fence on the left and half of the lilac. To say nothing of the neighbour’s tool shed.

The nano apparently already had a snaily inhabitant

He looks different from the ones I had so far. This one is about 1,5 mm. Ramshorn?

 

Looking around for the macro snails, I noticed that there’s also a batch of eggs on the Vals:

And here I thought I’d be bored waiting for the fish. ;o)

 

The eggs seem to be hatching. There are teensy snails in the nano now:

About the size of a quarter pin head. I left the side of the tank in the picture when I cropped, so you get the thickness of the glass and the silicone strip for scale.

 

And? Is that a Physa?

Anyone want to hazard a guess? To me those triangular horns (see 2 pics below) look quite different from the one I first fished out and think is a physa. But I find it hard to get relevant info on the net. The pages that are there all seem to be disagreeing as far as taxonomy is concerned.

 

And another one:

Both have been kicked into the nano. I also found more leaves with eggs (they were on the Crypts), which I at this point just threw out. I’m sure there’ll be more.

 

Found another one in the big tank.

And here’s the captured snail

… that I think belongs to the eggs (or vice versa). It looks like a tadpole snail (Physa), about 2-3 mm:

 

I put her and the leaf w/ eggs in the nano tank. I was afraid she’d run out of oxygen in the jam jar. Here she’s on her way to the surface to get some air:

 

Takin’ a deeeeep breath.

 

Happily munching away.

 

Here’s a better picture of the eggs:

It’s easier to photograph in the tank than in the jam jar. ;o)

 

A view of the nano tank after replacing the twisted with the straight Val:

If you look closely, you can see a speck on the glass; that’s the snail heading back down after her breather.

Seems I have imported some small snails with the plants:

They’re hard to make out, so I put up a trap. Maybe I can identify them. I want to know if they’re friend or foe. Looking around, I also spotted some eggs on a leaf. Sorry for the poor picture quality. I have to learn to take pics through water. I carefully put the berried leaf in a jar with aquarium water to see what’s going to happen.