Craig Maloney

I recently bought a new thermometer for my aquarium. The Chinese Algae Eater (aka Spooky Fish) has been having a field day moving it from one side of the aquarium to the other. It’s almost like the fish is sparring with the thermometer. Any ideas on why it’s doing this?

And for your viewing entertainment, a video of spooky fish performing fish-Jiu-Jitsu on the thermometer.

This morning I found our dear fish, whom we called “Big Oaf” floating underneath the filter assembly of the tank. Big Oaf was a hardy fish, having been the only member to survive the initial bout of ich, as well as just about every other fish I’ve put in this tank (read the gory details here). He was a good fish throughout his four years with us, and will be missed.

The tank has been incredibly cloudy lately, so it’s pretty difficult to see in it. I’ve been doing pretty frequent water changes, but haven’t managed to control it as well as I would have liked. Also, spooky fish (the chinese algae eater) has been really busy in the gravel lately. I thought those events were unrelated, until I made an (as yet unconfirmed) conjecture as to what spooky fish was doing. See, there is this pagoda in the tank (more like a landscape) that takes up most of the floor of the tank. It collects lots of decaying crap and such, which causes bacterial blooms. Bacterial blooms cloud water. Algae eaters like to hide in dark secluded spaces (I had two in my old tank that were constantly underneath the plastic log in the tank. They’d constantly burrow underneath it. Ergo, spooky fish is burrowing under the pagoda, and stirring up the decaying crap which is causing the bacterial blooms.

So, either I get rid of the pagoda in favor of some other place for spooky fish to hide, or I clean out under the pagoda every time I do a water change.

Gotta love mother nature.

Looks like today was the day of two fish flushings, as the plecostimous I was hoping would make it did not make it after all. I’m pretty bummed. Fortunately the rest of the fish don’t appear to have any spots on them, but I’m not taking any chances.

This morning I was greeted with another fish at the bottom of the tank. That makes two from this batch. You know it’s bad when your wife starts joking that the fish see me coming into the fish store and hide.

Seems that the littlest neon tetra didn’t make it overnight. Fortunately he didn’t get eaten by the plecostamous, which is a marked improvement from one of the times that a fish went south in the tank. Unfortunately I fear that this isn’t the last of the fish who will be making a less than graceful exit from the tank of doom.

Sheesh! New fish hit the tank, and already I have another case of Ich to deal with. Fortunately I’ve been through this before, so I’m doing frequent water changes and putting salt in the water. Seems to be helping a bit, but doing water changes every night is a pain in the ass. Oh well.

Today JoDee and I went to the Fish Doctors to pick up some new fishies. You’ll remember that last we mentioned the Fish Doctors I had a credit for turning in Plucky (the plecostamous) who had grown to the point where he was practically legal to keep if ensnared on a hook. First we checked to see if Plucky was still there (we’re not 100% sure, but we did see some plecostami who looked very much like him). We then picked up a clown plecostamous (which only grown to around 4 inches, so you’ll have to throw them back), and three neon tetras. The tetras met up with Inky and Big Oaf, and seem to be doing well. The clown pleco is trying to get comfy. He’ll spasm on occasion, but I think he’s doing fine. They’re strange little beasties anyway.