NEW FISH! and other news...

Tom and I took a trip out to The Fish Place on Saturday (I love that place). He bought what he thought was a Siamese Algae Eater to take care of his red algae problem. It turned out to be a Chinese Algae Eater. When these little guys get older they get nasty and suck the slime coat off of slower flat fish; this could be trouble some for his Rosy Barbs. Into the 10 gallon tank he went. His name is Guy.
I bypassed the molly plans and went to more platies. I love those little guys. I bought 3 Panda Platies. I think they're all females. The front half of each one is white/fleshy and they have varying degrees of black tails. I'll have pics up soon.
I lost my male gold guppy last week. :( And his girl is on her way out too. I have no idea what happened with him. My gold girl I think is suffering from swim bladder disease. Poor girl. :( In other sad news, I found a dead baby guppy during my cleaning today. Due to the lack of seeing baby guppies from the summer batch... I think I have more tragedies to find... Sad.

fishy plans

There have been no new purchases but there has been many new additions. Darn livebearers. ;) If you asked how many fry I've had, I'd tell you a handful. :) I'm still working on sexing them... Anyone need any guppies? The platies are NOT up for grabs. They are too cute.


The 2 surviving platy fry (Bully and Fatty Platy) have made there way into the main tank. Those little guys made themselves right at home! A couple weeks ago I found one more platy. Not sure if it's a total Hi-Fin or a dwarf/hi-fin mix. She's in the baby tank.

I moved the 2 largest guppies to the main tank last week. Lost one immediately and the other hid. I felt so bad, he was moved back to the baby tank. A couple days later the lost one emerged. Seems to be fine. Still hides but I think "she'll" make it.

Once the baby tank is cleared out I plan on getting a silver molly pair. I miss my silver mollies. Sniff. Maybe a I'll get a pair from Markheim. Then silver molly babies!

MORE BABIES!

The second batch of guppy babies showed up this week. I've caught 6 so far. I think they are all gold pastel fry. One may be a blue Moscow baby. We'll have to wait and see! :) I found another hi-fin platy today... escaped while I tried to catch him. Hope he made it to safety.

Dirt!

Meet my new Betta, Dirt.

This little guy's a trooper! He survived a car accident on the way home! Thank goodness for Petco's shortage of Betta cups and having to bag Betta's. Had he have been in a cup he may have ended up on the floor. :( But all is well... in fish world. I have minor squabbles to tend to...

Sadness

There's been some tragedies in my fish world. In the past couple weeks I have lost Debbie, Gloria, the small platy baby and last night, Kirby. The other babies are doing fine. May have lost one of the guppy babies, but they move so fast it's hard to tell how many i really counted. might go to the store to day and get a new Betta. If not tonight, then soon. :(

Really?

One of my pet peeves is people who are misinformed or not informed at all. Sometimes they can't help it, they're just idiots. There's no nicer way to put it. An even bigger pet peeve is people who know (or should know) the information and fail to tell the misinformed. I mean, what the heck?!

So Tom and I went to Petsmart Saturday to look around. This happens pretty regularly. :) Anywho. I eavesdropped on a conversation between a customer and a Petsmart employee in the fish section. They just so happened to be by the live bearer tanks I was looking at. The old woman (customer) wanted a pleco. And 3 black mollies. And 3 dalmatian mollies. OK, sounds like a reasonable days purchase for me and my 55 gallon tank. Here's where things go sour. Very few Petsmart employees can sex the fish in their store. This one (a girl) could not or just did not. My guess is on the latter. She sent the woman home with at least 4 male mollies. Bad news for the 1-2 females not to mention male dominance issues. Poor girls. :( AND failed to remind the woman that the pleco can reach 18 inches. No wait! It gets worse. The woman only has a 10 gallon tank! AND it already has neon tetras and platies in it! Where are these new fish going to live lady?! Poor things don't have a chance.

A Tale of Two Guppies...

...ok, make that four. I mean, six. No wait, ten. Yes, ten. For now...

10 guppies. I bought 4 and got a freebie baby. A week and a half later, 10. The gold female had hers sometime between last Thursday and Saturday. I found the two by accident while cleaning the tank on Saturday. Cute little things! And then on Tuesday I found 3 from the Black Moscow female. I possibly found number 4 last night. It may have been a duplicate counting as they move so fast!
The adults are probably going into the main tank this weekend to cut back on all of the excess babies. Plenty of hunger mouths in there to keep that population under control. It's a fish eat fish world out there!

New Fish!

Hooray! I got new fish today! I love new fish... But first, here are the platies that I got last month. Welcome Thing 1 and Thing 2!

Until Thing 2's tail completely heals, I can tell them apart. T2 is on the right with the pointed tail, darn fin rot!

Made another trip out to The Fish Place. I love it there, thanks Renee! I left with a pair of Blue Moscow guppies and Gold Pastel guppies. I got a free pastel baby out of it too! Heck yeah! Tom bought me my fish for a vacation present. Too cute! Check 'em out!

I might be going to Petsmart this week fora couple more male guppies. They have some pretty turquoise ones. Today I saw one the hada grayish purple body and a pink speckled tail! Beautiful. i need him. Maybe tomorrow.

Overview

Let's recap! Molly is no more... :( Took 2 days for her to go. Then the little sucker hid herself in the back corner, had to dig her out.

Been busy so no creative juices to get those narratives going. Someday...

Big fat mama platy had babies the other day. Well, I'm assuming she did. Really fat one day, not so fat the next. you do the math. I haven't found any... Those danios are crazy little eaters!

T1 & T2 made their way into the main tank on Wednesday. all of the other platies came to check them out. It was so cool to see all of them together. Hasn't happened again since... T1's babies are doing well. I can see them eat now. So cool!

Going to the Fish Place this weekend for some guppies. I plan on breeding for a bit then just letting them do their thing in the big tank.

Went thru some pictures yesterday. I'll put them up soon!

New friends

Fish stores are so tempting. It took me at least 20 minutes to make a decision to even buy fish this past Sunday. I decided to buy more... Welcome Thing 1 & Thing 2 to my fishy family! They are Hi Fin platies, orange bodies with black fins. This is where a picture would appear...I haven't gotten that far yet. As always with my Petsmart fish purchases, something is wrong with these too. Not ich, but i think it's a parasite. Here we go again! Before medicating I decided to give the QT a cleaning. An to my surprise (I mean it, I was surprised!) I found 2 babies hiding under the sponge filter! Went back later and found one more! 3 little play babies, adorable. I hope they make it. My last batch of molly fry didn't.... :( more to come!

Narratives

I've always been interested in writing but lacked the confidence. I even signed up to learn to write children's books; backed out to get back my money when I became unemployed. So I've decided to try again. Here.
My fish provided me with so many smiles and hours of entertainment. I'm not kidding, I could sit for hours staring at them. Tom and I often give them dialogues and they interact with each other. My new venture is to provide the world with excerpts of my fishes lives, as I imagine they would convey them. So keep checking back and let me know what you think!

Salt Bath

I had a bout of ick back in February that was devastating. Only lost 2 fish shortly after the outbreak, but I don't think their deaths were ick related. P did not get the white spots. Instead she got thick white film over her eyes. Poor little thing couldn't see! I don't know if it was a fungus or popeye or what, but this is the treatment I used to cure her. I tell everyone to try it. It's not word for word from the book, I've written it more like a recipe. Good luck!

the simple guide to Freshwater Aquariums by David E. Borvchowitz

SALT BATH

- put a couple of cups of tank water into a small container

- mix in/dissolve 1/2 teaspoon to 1 teaspoon aquarium salt

- Net afflicted fish and lower(still in net) into solution

** if fish shows signs of distress(thrashing), remove and dilute solution, try again**

- Keep netted fish in solution for up to 2 minutes

** this can be done 1-3 times a day until fish is well again

R.I.P DF

I lost DF yesterday. She wasn't looking too hot over the weekend. I obviously didn't want it to happen, but I knew it was coming. At least the pretty little thing left me a baby, WT. That's all for today...

Busy...

...that's what my tank is now. Busy. Full of activity this weekend. Yesterday, Tom and I made a trip out to The Fish Place (Tonawanda, NY), D&D came too. Tom left with his coveted Striped Raphael Catfish. Me? 7 long fin zebra danios and a red dalmatian lyre tail molly. The tank is swimming! Pun very much intended. The new molly, Molly, took to Gloria, fast friends. The danois, still unnamed, are...well danios. If you have any you know exactly what I mean.

I had to do another switch today. DF isn't doing well. Her tail is drooping and its hard for her to swim. I found her in a flower pot yesterday. Alive but lazy, so I put her in a baby breeder net to keep a closer eye on her. I put her back in the main tank today but the current and activity are too much. Sooo... DF and P made the big switch again.

I haven't been able to find the second male platy all weekend.... We'll see...

New addition! (sort of)

Last night Gloria made her 1st appearance in the main tank. Gloria is a yellow and black hi-fin platy. She's been in quarantine for nearly 2 months. I think she was fine, but the other 3 fish with her were riddled with ick. Sadly, all three have passed. :(

She was bit cautious at first. Swimming slow, fins down. The two female sunsets approached, Gloria raised her fins and they backed off. Gloria decided they were safe and followed them. She even picked on the male sunset! DF and WT are another story. She's not too sure about them.

After she explored the tank, she pretty much kept to the back wall. Up and down and back and forth, but right next to the wall. Maybe she'll school with the girls...

The switch

A few weeks ago I had to move my female Dalmatian molly (Dalmatian Face)into my 10 gallon tank that her only surviving baby lives in(Wild Type). She was being picking on by my black molly, Pustulio. DF and WT are getting along fantastically. The other in the big tank are not. P is picking on everyone! I think one of my platies has a small injury from P. :( Sooo... Sunday night was the big switch. P went into the 10 gallon tank all my her lonesome. If she could stop being nasty to others she'd have some friends. DF went back into the 55 gallon and WT made her first appearance into the main tank (55 gallon).

P is fine in the 10 gallon. She immediately got to work cleaning off the heater and airline tubing of algae and whatnot. DF seemed to slip right back into being at home in the main tank. WT took some time to adjust. The platies chased her a bit, but then she followed them around too.

UPDATE: Tom let me know that WT did her fair share of bullying at feeding time today! That little stinker!

The rest of the betta family

Meet Kirby, British Kid and Steve (left to right)



With the exception of Debbie and my most recent addition to my main tank, Tom does most of the naming of my fish. He doesn't mean to, he just calls them something and it sticks.

Kirby and BK share a divided 2.5 gallon tank in the corner of the kitchen. Steve lives in the basement on my desk. 3 different little personalities, 3 times the smiles.

A tale of two tanks.

Soon after the "betta explosion", I wanted more fish. I mean a lot more. No more single betta tanks, a tank of different fish. I did some planning and research and decided on getting a 55 gallon tank start up kit.

Shortly thereafter, my uncle offered me his 55 gallon tank. He had grown tired of fish keeping but didn't want to garbage all of his stuff. Hooray! Free stuff! Problem : at the time(July 08), i had no where to keep a tank. Catch: I had to take his fish he had in the tank. With the "problem" I can't accept the "catch". I sadly declined his offer.

The basement was finished that summer giving me a place to start my watery fish world. I saved up and purchased that starter kit. In all the planning, Tom's interest in fish had peaked. A few weeks after I bought my kit, my uncle calls. He emptied his tank and he needs to get rid of it... Do I want it now? Heck yeah! So it was then that Tom and I had 2 fish tanks, one for each of us

Both tanks are now up and running. I have small pretty fish, Tom is leaning more towards bigger ugly fish. To each his own. :)

In the beginning...

It was spring of 2007 when I found my new passion, fish. I thought it would be fun/pretty to have a betta on my desk at work. But noooo.... boss wouldn't go for it. I don't blame him, some people may have taken advantage of desktop pets. Imagine brightly colored hamster tubes running up, down and around rows of cubicles... not very professional. However, impatient Sarah did not wait for the negative answer. I went out that night and bought the prettiest little fish in the world. Debbie.
Ok, not the best photo, but she's pretty. Her home was half circle glass bowl(you could push the flat side up against a wall), some glass stones and a stalk of bamboo. She was a bit lathargic for the first few months I had her, as I've heard most bettas are. Then with some research I found out how to give my betta a better life! Bettas are tropical fish, they require a heater. And all fish like clean water. Enter new home. I'd post a pic of that new home, but it's changed so many times over the past 2 years. Basically, it's a 2.5 gallon tank, mini filter and auto shut off heater. The gravel and deco has changed.

She's my happy little girl who's given me a few health scares and many smiles in the past 2 years. I hope for a lot more time with her!

Under the Sea

Welcome to my little fishy blog!

I'm a crafty girl who has been meaning to scrapbook photos of my new love, fish/aquariums. But who has the time? I wish I did, but I don't. Sooo... I decided to share my hobby with the blog world. Maybe I'll get around to scrapping the pictures someday...Enjoy!