It's like a gift... It's like I can't control it.

Did a relatively large water change on the ten gallon nano. Over the last two months one of the best macro algaes has sprouted up... halimeda algae, which is calciferous and actually makes up the sand base of some Caribbean reefs. This is very desirable and I've yanked out about a fourth of my chaeto to let the halimeda grow and hopefully get starve out the goddamn spiny bryopsis and green slimy hair algae.

Water changed the oscar... still hasn't eaten the last surviving crawfish. The brown alenni hides in a hole in the wood all the time. Also I added the freshwater mussel to the oscar tank... so far the oscar hasn't helped himself to a clam buffet.

The angelfish has started to pick on the larger bala shark now that the 55 gallon is sans discus. Today I bought some more bloodworms because I'd been out for several weeks... I actually forgot to put the bag back in the freezer and it dethawed, ruining the food, which is something I've done a lot actually. Hopefully the protein rich food will calm the angelfish back down. Good thing the bala is so fast it can avoid her easily.

It's going to be a real pain in the ass moving all these tanks. That's really all I've been thinking about in the last couple weeks. For anyone who doesn't know, I'll be moving in three weeks an hour away. Fortunately the new home is ideal for fish and I already have a spot for my 22o gallon as well as a whole fish room if I am that crazy or so inclined.

Josh
joshday.com

Tank cleaning

Going to do some major water changes today on the 29 and 55 gallons. Also, I still need to empty out and clean the ten gallon ex-puffer tank.

Everything is looking okay thankfully. After the string of discus losses it's nice to not have to worry about losing a fish suddenly.

- Josh
joshday.com

June 17, D-Day + 11

Once again, I have dropped the ball with the blog and haven't updated. And a lot of things have transpired in the tanks...

First, the bad news.

I am sans discus. After coming back from a vacation in Pensacola FL and New Orleans, my discus all took a horrible turn. I had to put the little female down first (she was stuck to the canister filter intake but still alive) and then a couple weeks later, my first male, one of my oldest fish. He developed a strange case of finrot and was wasting away. Finally the last one was put down a couple days ago. He had stopped eating, and my angelfish was eating on him as if he were already dead.

I used extreme temp. shock to send the fish into a paralyzed state, if not instant death, then put the container with the fish in the freezer for an hour. Then decapitation with a sharp flat-end shovel to ensure they were dead.

Also my pufferfish succumbed to an internal parasite infection. I learned about this when I was out of town. My wife was checking on the fish and joked the puffer was dead (she hated this fish). Then she realized he was in fact very dead and the joke was a joke no longer.

The puffer tank is now running empty, which will make things easier when we move.

Back to the discus. I kept a single discus just fine for nearly a year. But I got greedy when I was able to land a mated pair for 40 dollars. I don't know what ended the discus, but it definitely wasn't water chemistry. I changed the water up to 3 times a week sometimes and nitrates never got above 20 ppm at the worst. But water chemistry is only one factor in keeping these sensitive fish.

I'm done with discus. They are too much work and they really aren't that rewarding. To keep a discus only tank, you'd have to invest several hundred dollars in the fish alone, and this doesn't include all the uptake on the tank and getting them to actually eat. You could set up a much easier and much more beautiful and rewarding nano reef tank for the price of a modest discus system. So why mess with them, especially when you can keep other cichlids that show much more personality if not as much color?

Lately I'm much more interested in the other new world cichlids, namely oscars, green terrors, jack dempseys, and texas cichlids.

The reef tank is doing very well. Lost the flame scallop (closed up after being invaded by some colonizing zoos, and starved), the little clam, and traded away some mushrooms that weren't doing so well. The mandarin is fine and it's now been a year that I've had him. Picked up a queen conch and it's a wonderful addition and helps keep the sandbed stirred up. (These get large and ultimately grow to the size of a ten gallon itself in the wild.)

The emerald starfish in the vase is growing at an amazing rate. His limbs are back in full force, and his central disc is expanding. I think he ate the hermit crab I have in the vase too.

My wife and I bought a house outside of Asheville and will be moving in early July. The good news for fish and this blog is that the house has a full finished basement, not unlike Buffalo Bill's basement in Silence of the Lambs if you ignore the windows, and this is ideal for aquariums. My dream of a 220 gallon freshwater tank can now become a reality and the idea right now is to stock it with my wife's oscar and the freshwater stingray I've always wanted.

To end this update how about some discus pics?