Tropical Fish Fun

A couple of weeks ago at our aquarium society meeting, I purchased a pair of black Moscow guppies at the auction.  I took them home and put them in a 2.5 gallon tank.  The tank had a mature sponge filter and a heater.

I had planned this to be a temporary location for the pair, but life being what it is; I just didn’t get around to it.  At one point in the last couple of weeks, I thought that the female looked a little large and might be pregnant, but I thought she couldn’t be very far along because she wasn’t that big.

Yesterday as I was getting ready to go to work, I noticed 4 fry swimming in the bottom of the tank and trying to stay away from the adults.  I quickly grabbed a small tank and siphoned off the fry and about half of the water from the adults’ tank.  I installed a sponge filter that I keep in one of my established tanks as an emergency back-up and a heater and now have a new grow-out tank.

I probably lost some fry to the adults before I discovered them as livebearers are noted for their tendency to make a meal out of their offspring.  But at least I was able to save four of them.

Have you ever had an unexpected occurrence with your aquariums?  What happened and what did you do?  Please leave a comment.

This is to continue the story of Rocky the goldfish.  Two days after his arrival, my granddaughter decided that Rocky was hungry and she should help with that.  The good news was that she found his goldfish flakes and didn’t decide to feed him something else.  The bad news was that she fed him about half the container.

 My daughter discovered the tank with the filter full of food, a pile of food on the bottom and Rocky furiously trying to consume it all (well at least all he could get at). 

 I received a call for advice.  My daughter was concerned about how to change virtually all the water and be able to acclimate Rocky to the new water when she didn’t have another tank.  I advised her not to worry too much about acclimation at that point and talked her through the process.

 Rocky is now doing well in his clean aquarium, my granddaughter has had another lesson in aquarium care and the goldfish food has a new home well out of her reach.

 Without a doubt, aquariums are great learning tools for children, but the lesson here is that children usually want to help and there needs to be some safeguards in place to keep them and the fish safe.

 Besides keeping the food out of the reach of your children, there are a few other things to consider.  The aquarium should be placed on a sturdy support so that there is no chance that the child can topple it in an effort to climb up and see the fish.

 The tank should also be placed so that there is no chance that the child can fall into it (children have drowned by toppling into a bucket of water).  The electrical connections should be made in such a way that the child can not tamper with them (water and electricity are needless to say, is a bad combination).

 Some children are more inquisitive and active than others.  The key is to take every precaution to be sure that the aquarium learning adventure does not turn into a tragedy.

 My 3 year-old granddaughter went to a party this weekend and “won” a goldfish.  I received a call from my daughter who was at a pet store trying to figure out what to buy.  It was an interesting conversation because I knew that she had some preconceived notions about what the fish needed and she really didn’t want the fish in the first place but didn’t want to disappoint or upset her daughter.

 Most people think that goldfish belong in bowls (why else would they call them goldfish bowls).  They have this notion that goldfish do not require a large amount of water.  Of course this is not true and although she has heard me say it enough, my daughter was definitely not ready to hear that they should have a minimum of 10 gallons per fish.  She finally bought an aquarium that she felt was larger than necessary and I felt was too small but at least it was much bigger than she had intended.

 After several phone calls (she lives about 400 miles from me or I would have gone over there), Rocky was set up in his/her new aquarium home and my granddaughter was happy with her new friend.

 At the risk of sounding too much like an animal activist, I have to ask why do people have goldfish (or any animal really) as a give away at a party?  I have often said, on this site and in other forums that you should research your fish before you bring them home but this goes beyond that.

 This person not only gave away an animal to someone who knew very little about it (I am sure that there were some people at the party who knew even less and had fewer resources available to them than my daughter) but they also had no idea whether the person who would be receiving the goldfish even wanted to have it and would be willing to spend the money and time to properly care for it. 

In the interest of fairness, I am sure that the person thought that they were doing something that the children would enjoy.  The probably were trying to make the party a unique experience, but giving away animals?

 What do you think?  Should people give away fish (or any other animal for that matter) at a children’s party?  Please leave a comment.

This past Friday, I attended my local aquarium society meeting and broke one of my cardinal rules: Don’t buy any fish without first researching them!

I have a reason (some might call it an excuse).  The fish were being offered for sale by a long-time member and no one was bidding.  Usually when this happens, if someone starts the bidding, it will pick up from there.  So I did and it didn’t.

Now I have a bag of three quite nice yellow cichlids that (as of Friday night) I knew nothing about except that they were from a very reputible source and they could be kept in an aquarium.

Unfortunately I was not able to talk to the seller after the auction for several reasons, but there is always the internet so that is what I did… I searched and found them.  At least I think I did.

If I am right, they are Labidochromis caeruleus, a mouth brooder from Lake Malawi.  I intend to confirm this when I talk to the seller this week.

I am not unhappy with this purchase as they are relatively small and very attractive fish.  If I am right about my identification (and possibly if I am wrong) I am going to try to breed them so you will be hearing more about that in future posts.

The real point of this post is to say that I could have been in real trouble by buying the fish without knowing anything about them!  They could have been tank busters or extremely aggressive or could have had special needs that I couldn’t meet.

It is just generally a bad idea to do this without checking the fish out first and making sure you can accommodate them in your aquarium.  It worked out for me, but I could have ended up with a fish (or several) that I couldn’t keep and possibly couldn’t get rid of (after all, no one else bid on them).  Enough said.

As a preview of more to come – I also bought some other fish at the auction – three other pairs to be exact: a pair of Black Moscow Guppies, a pair of Black Belly Limias (Limia melanogaster) and a pair of Spotted Sawfins (Skiffia multipunctata).  These are all livebearers and I will talk about them more in upcoming posts.

So have you ever purchased an aquarium fish on an impulse?  How did that work for you?  Please leave a comment below.

Happy New Year!  Here we are in a new year and a new decade!  So what are your new year’s resolutions?  Do you make any?  Do they include tropical fish?  Typically I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I am going to resolve to be more focused on my to-do list.  You have one don’t you? 

 One of the things I heard recently is that people tend to over estimate what they can do in a day or a short period of time and tend to under estimate what they can do in a year doing a little bit each day.  My focus is going to be on doing a little bit each day with the long-term goal in mind.

 So what is number one on my list?  Water changes of course!  I am currently running 16 “tanks” and water changes can sometimes be a challenge.  Let’s face it: life sometimes gets in the way.  Right now I have to do the old bucket hauling thing to make those changes.  Now for some of the “tanks” it is pretty easy since I do have some killifish in 1 to 2 gallon containers, but for the 55 to 60 gallon tanks (I have 3), it is more of a task.  And even the 5 gallon and larger aquariums aren’t all that much fun when you have so many of them.

 My project for this year is to make my water changes easier.  I am still working on the design, but my plan is to create a fish area (right now the aquariums are spread throughout my house) and build an easier, if not automated system that doesn’t involve the use of buckets.

 More will be coming on this as the plan evolves.  Do you have any suggestions or comments?  Please feel free to leave them below.