AWESOME NEWS!!!

We found our fish! We found our fish!!!

I could have sworn that little dude was dead, but no. No. He was in the filter, underneath 4 layers of biomedia. HOW!?!? I have no clue. I guess he swam? I don’t care! I found him, thank God, and i’m so happy I did. I’m starting to think that fish shed some type of stress coat when they are stressed because the fish that was seemingly left alone in the thank was darting all over. Now I understand why. He was stressing about his brother stuck in the damn filter. Poor little guy. I’m so happy I found him. He is back in the tank with his brothers and his shrimp friends, eating and being merry.

It’s such a relief to know it wasn’t my water parameters. I even treated the tank with an anti-bacterial solution. Good grief.

Update!

Hi Everyone,

Sorry it has taken so long to update. Mommy is in the full swing of finals and hasn’t had a lot of time to do anything but eat sleep and…well, you know.

So, how are the fish? I wish I could say good…but we lost another Endler this week :(. I’ve tested the bageezus out of the water parameters and everything looks great. We are down to 2 Endlers and 2 ghost shrimp. The ghost shrimp seem to be doing well but I can’t figure out what’s going on with our Endlers. They just got all of their color in and, for some reason, it seems that once they do reach this milestone they start having trouble in the tank. Our eldest Endler died on week 2 – he had color. Our 2nd Endler died within a week of getting his beautiful colors.

These little guys are the first inhabitants in the tank and so I am not suspicious of any parasite as the tank was newly established and brand new. I am wondering if it is the hardness of our water or some other mysterious measurement that I do not have access to…I am considering looking for RO water to at least mix with our hard water to see if that might help. My poor little Endler’s. They are too cute to die like this. I will think of something!!!

I think my shrimp are fixin’ to get it on

Remember my big cherry female that I thought something was wrong with who is always in hiding? Yeah, she’s out now. And the other dude is swimming around like a crazy person. I looked this up because I was worried about the water. Google says they’re about to do the deed. Lordt. Have. Mercy.

I’m fixin to be a momma (again), y’all!

Finally, some good news!

Tank Today

We finally have some good news to share! Our little Endler’s fry are starting to gain their color and are super super cute. They seem to be doing very well. They’re eating and pooping which is always a good sign. The RCS that I was worried about has finally come out of hiding and is grazing the tank. She went back into hiding yesterday after a partial water change. That leads me to believe she hides when she’s stressed out. I think she was just getting comfortable and then I went and changed the water on her ;).

Our RCS, Pierre.

The plants are doing relatively well. My dwarf sag has really taken off. I get a lot of yellow leaves though, which are quickly replaced by green runners. As you can see in the first picture, it has outgrown its side of the tank. Unfortunately, algae has taken up residence on a few of the leaves of every plant in my tank and I’m annoyed by that. But, the RCS loves it. I get in there and manually take it off every now and again. Other than that, I’m not sure what to do. My lights are only on 6 hours a day. There’s gotta be something I can do to get the algae outta there.

fry baby

Seriously? How cute is that little tail fin? This is “Jaws”. He loves to eat.

Bros

These two are always swimming together, bugging the hell out of each other. We’ve named them Flotsam and Jetsam.

In hiding; as usual

There’s Gloria. Hiding. …again.

And then there were 5

Well…guys…it’s been awhile. I have been avoiding writing this blog because it just makes me so sad.

We lost one of our Endlers a few days ago and the worst bit is that we don’t know how or why. It was our eldest, whom had a gorgeous color pattern and was so beautiful to watch. I tested our water parameters and nothing was a wry.  More mysterious was that we could find no “body”. I searched everywhere both inside and outside the tank. My hubby seems to think he was eaten, but with his brothers so much smaller than him, and in such a short amount of time I find that very difficult to believe. It remains a mystery.

SIGNS
In truth, there were signs that something was not quite right. It took me a little while to notice,  but he wasn’t eating as well as the little fry. The 3 littlest guys would go right after the flakes as soon as they dropped in the tank, and our eldest would swim about the tank aimlessly,  almost frantically.  I didn’t notice any parasites and our tank parameters were OK (I tested shortly after noticing the stress).

MOOD
I was pretty bummed. I spent the next few days searching the tank, the outside of the tank and the filter for any evidence regarding what happened to our little friend and after coming up short,  pronounced him dead.

I reflected on that for a while and considered giving up on the hobby. That seems to be my first initial thought every time something goes wrong. But, you know what? The 3 other little guys were eating and doing great and my shrimp seem well, too.

So, I moved forward. Happy I did.

RCS
The Red Cherry Shrimp are worrying me a little. Well, one of them is. Our very cherry shrimp likes to hang out in one spot while her tank mate likes to roam all over the tank exploring, cleaning, eating. I’m not sure what’s wrong, or if anything is wrong at all, but it doesn’t move very much at all. I have been researching reasons why this might happen but other than molting I can’t find anything solid…

That is my tank as it stands today. My poor Lox has the flu so we have been quite shut in this week. Once he is feeling better I will add pictures and update more!

First pictures

We had to bust out the canon in order to get pictures of these little guys and so far, only the shrimp are still enough to get a good snap. The Endler Fry are so cute and enjoying exploring the tank. They ate very well this morning which Loxley got a real kick out of watching. He was giggling like a fat kid in a candy shop (which I was one of). At any rate, we are having a blast with this little tank and our new additions. We’re off to Disney for a couple of days and then we’ll introduce a mystery snail to our quarantine tank.

We put these 6 right into the tank since they were all from the same tank. Since our snail will be from the LFS, it’s going straight into quarantine for a few weeks.

Otherwise, all is well in fishy paradise. As soon as I can get a snap of the Endlers, I will!!

Drip acclimating!

Drip acclimating our little Endlers and RCS! We are so excited!! Loxley is super excited as evident by his destruction of his room that I just went through all kinds of trouble to clean up *sigh*. Mom life.

At any rate, we are so very excited for our little buddies to get acclimated. I have the hospital tank up and cycling as we speak in case I need to save a life or two. We are so pumped and so excited for our new friends!!

WE’RE CYCLED!!

We did it! We did it! We’re cycled!! YAHOO!!

So, I’ve been away for a week and my husband and Loxley have been in charge of the tank. I came home to the tank evaporated and with brown algae and a little hair algae around and in my intake tube. But, you know what? The tank is cycled!! The algae is coming off pretty easily mechanically, so I believe it’s pretty new and I can get a handle on it before it takes off, but more than anything I am excited to finally bring home some freshwater friends!!

I think we can fix our intake issue pretty easily, but I’m not sure how much of an issue the little bit of algae present is. So, off to research I go until I can get our stock started and ready to go! I am so excited!!!!

Going out of town DAH!

Well. I’m leaving my tank in the hands of my 2 yo and my husband for one week. I’m terrified I’m going to come home to it looking like this:

I made them a schedule to follow and everything and I will be counting down the MINUTES to the time I come home to save my parameters and my plants. I hope they will be OK and that Loxley will not drink all of the water in the tank. My husband can pull this off. I know he can. I pray he can. All the money and time and energy I threw into this thing depends on it!

Just to humor ourselves…

BEFORE RESEARCH

AFTER RESEARCH