Success and failures in fish keeping

The above mpeg is a little taste of my new instructional video on setting up a nano. It's only a 3 gallon but everything I'm doing also applies to tanks up to 29 gallons. I'm going to be packaging the video with my nano guide, so if you haven't bought the guide while it's cheap at $12, now's the time!

Onto today's topic...

I've been keeping fish since 2004. Freshwater, a brief foray into brackish, marine, and full reef (soft corals, LPS, and SPS). I began with a ten gallon tetra mixed community with red and white gravel and plastic plants. This tank became a second tank until I bought a 180 gallon at the beginning of 2007.

Keeping multiple tanks, with multiple biotopes that cross saltwater and fresh, I've had my share of disasters, tragedies, and mishaps. Some were just poor fortune; others were caused by stupidity or negligence. Let's break em down and see what's what.

1. I kept a green mandarin successfully in a ten gallon tank for two years. He was fat and healthy until the end when he leaped from my uncovered tank. I tried dozens of different frozen foods before discovering my mandarin would eat fish roe, the little eggs atop sushi rolls. In the beginning I attempted to harvest copepods in mason jars and this endeavor was indeed a failure. My first mandarin starved, although I believe he wasn't eating as the pod population in my tank at the time never dwindled.

This was both a success and a failure. A success for getting the mandarin to eat roe (and Cyclops micro shrimp) and keeping him well-rounded and healthy for two years, but also a failure in his constant feedings cause nitrate swings and a hair algae epidemic. Also, it was a failure as I learned an open tank is never safe -- I've come to learn all fish jump!

2. My stingray. You can read more about this in the archives of this blog. This was a failure on many fronts... one, I used playsand which clogged the filters and chiseled away at impellors as the ray was constantly stirring up the substrate. Two, I jumped the gun and bought the ray before the tank had cycled through artifical fishless cycling of household ammonia. Three, I relied heavily on a crap product, Toxivec, which I'd hoped would have the effects of Biospira.

3. Keeping an oscar in a 29 gallon tank. Though this was temporary, and it was my wife's tank, I got lazy and didn't change the water as often as it needed (twice a week, 20% changes). The fish stopped eating, his scales and fins began to rote, and he succumbed to consumption.

4. Attempting to cure clown loaches of internal parasites with metronidazole. Never worked. Not once. Even in a dedicated tank, every clown slowly withered away. I've had clowns come down with the skinny disease two, three months after purchase. In my experience, once they start to take on that sharp knife look along their backs, they're a dead fish swimming.

5. Moving. This is probably my biggest success story. I moved every thing I had, from a 55 gallon tank down to two nano systems, two hours away and didn't have a single casualty. I planned the move down to the finest detail and dedicated two days strictly to moving fish (this includes renting another moving van and going back to the old place).

6. Puffer dentistry. My red eye puffer had stopped eating and could not longer get food into her jaws. I knocked her out with clove oil and carefully peeled back her mouth so my wife could trim off her beak with nail clippers. I actually had to perform this operation twice. I thought she was a goner as she was still unable to eat, but I used some of my lucky roe and this sustained her as her beak healed and began to grow back. Now she's able to draw blood from my fingers again!

7. Bringing a doomed discus back to health. I thought this guy was a fish sandwich for sure. His fins were ragged, his scales were withered and there were white holes in him everywhere. I cut off flake food for his tank and fed him only frozen blood worms. The discus came around in three weeks -- looked no worse for the wear.

8. Keeping a ten gallon reef tank, without protein skimming, for 3+ years. My green star polyps, open brain coral, and various mushrooms continue to thrive. The hair algae will not go away but I accepted that a year ago. As long as I keep it manicured it's not a problem -- it actually adds to the tank! People compliment me about the lush green "lawn" look I have on my rocks. Some even ask me what it is and how I grow it! LOL

I've had my share of failures with this tank too. The first mandarin, losing a clown and then my prized second mandarin through jumps, starving my clam of light by not upgrading lighting properly, losing an SPS frag thanks to invasive pink zoanthids, losing a hairy brittle star I'd had for two years, two large Hawaiian featherdusters vacating their tubes and dying within a week of purchase, etc.

Being in the fish hobby -- and business! -- has its ups and downs. As a famous scientologist once put, it's rough and tumble. It's wild and woolly. But it's a blast. It's a blast.

Josh
http://joshday.com