The Aquarium of Life
I realised the other day that I haven’t posted on the Haddock Aquarium of Death for quite a while. Well since I last reported, the causality list has risen steadily. Several restockings didn't seem to help the situation, and I realised things were getting bad when all the plants started to die. We checked the water ph weekly and everything seemed to be ok. We couldn't figure out where we were going wrong. Perhaps we were buying our fish from the Leonard Cohen shop of the fish world. We were at a loss. The only thing that seemed to thrive were the snails. So there was a bit of an ethnic cleansing incident, which resulted in the majority of the snail population being deported to the compost bin. This was the tanks darkest hour.Then a miraculous thing happened. Mrs H bought some Guppies. I was never too keen on these fish as they seemed to be a bit too girly for my liking - too much flapping around and stuff. Well, I take it all back. These little fish brought a breath of fresh air into the tank (and I know that doesn't sound right!). Since their introduction no other fish have died, infact Guppies are the underwater equivalent of rabbits.......and now there are babies.......we now have the Aquarium of Life!
Technorati Tags: Aquarium, Marburg, Guppies
posted by Haddock at 12:32 AM
13 Comments:
That's great. Sometimes you just need to shake things up. Have the other fish started eating the guppy babies? Don't be too upset if this happens. We did this when the girls were young, but I just don't have the patience for it now.
When the tank is just set up it will go through a stage were contamination rises sharply until the biological filtration comes into play. I had been out of fishkeeping for quite a while but set one up about a month ago or so, everything died recently even down to the pleco and cherry barbs. I ordered a Golden Pirahna off the net he is small now just have him alone, but he is doing fine I feed him frozen bits of fish and a little shrimp from time to time, the guppies you have are very nice fish I think and hardy too.
Keep an eye on Nitrates and water hardness.
I recommend getting a full tank testing kit. You're levels if nitrites, nitrates, and ammonias are probably all messed up. Once you get a biological filter set up the aquarium should basically be fine. Do a little research on it online and you'll see it isn't that hard to take care of. But I don't remember all the details since we set our tank up last year.
"rabbits of the sea" is a very funny expression but probably describes these little guys quite well, they'll keep your aquarium alive for sure ... no matter what the conditions :-)
The water has quite a brown tinge to it on the photo - algea?
Very nice aquarium though - how many liters?
Aquarium of Death! Too funny, it sounds like something that we would have in our house. I had a fish tank once, but got tired of the cats (they were just kittens at the time) taking a "swim".
When I was a kid, we had fish with a death wish. He jumped out of the tank four times before he "got the job done".
Enjoy your aquarium, even if you have girly guppies. At least everyone is alive now!
Cyn
Wow, I can't remember if we had guppies or not, but as I've said before, we had our own Aquarium of Death and eventually got so fed up that we gave away the few remaining survivors and called it a day. Weird how the snails seem to be indestructable.
Maribeth - The 3 that have survived seemed to be big enough to escape the bigger fish now :)
Floyd - Thanks for the advice. The tank does seem to be quite stable of late.
Jax - we checked the nitrate levels the other week and they seemed to be fine. I guess we should check more often. Lately though the deaths have stopped so we are hoping that the tank has become stable :)
Franzie - The girl guppies seem to be in a constant state of pregnancy! :)
Karen - I think the brown tinge in the photo is caused by the colour of the wallpaper behind the tank! :)
I think the tank is 56L (if memory serves me well!)
Cynthia - We keep our aquarium up stairs. We dont allow our cats upstairs as the Tomcat would find a way into it. They do escape upstairs from time to time and are always found fish watching! :)
Christina - I'm sure the snails are alien life forms and cannot be destroyed! :)
Cass - I didn't realise you cannot win fish at fairs anymore. That was always a must as a kid when the fair came to town! - Tuna! LOL! What are you feeding those fish on? :)
TJ - The water isn't really that colour. I think its the reflection of the wallpaper behind. Or maybe one of the cats took a leak in the tank! :) Remind me never to go swimming off Santa Monica pier! :)
James - It makes me feel good too :)
That's good news. The good thing about Guppies is that they're robust little "water cleaners". I guess they eat things that might develop to be harmful to other fish. And yes, "rabbits of the sea"!! LOL
Fish dying -- not enough oxygen? Kind of makes sense if the plants are dying or if you have too many fish.
Did you also change the plants? (obviously you took the dead ones out, but did you try different types?)
"Guppies are the underwater equivalent of rabbits" LOL! I need to store that one somewhere under cool qoutes.
As for guppies being "girly", I had an uncle that had pet Piranhas.
Glad to see someone else is posting with about the same frequency as myself here lately:-)
Canadianswiss - I really like Guppies now. I'm glad they are robust! :)
Mike - We have changed plant types and the ones we have now seem to be more hardy.
Just another - I would like Piranhas but I dont think my tank is big enough and the other fish wouldn't stand a chance!
It's hard to post when the weather is so good. I'm spending most of my time outside away from the PC :)
We used to have guppies and well they were probably the best in the tank too. And yes they have babies but then with some neotetras and a few algie eaters in the bunch, we were happy. It seems the tank might be the same size. But make sure the fish are getting enough air and the tank isn't too cold or too hot.
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