Owning fish is supposed to be calming, relaxing and zen-like. At least that’s what I keep telling myself while my tropical fish community seems to have other plans.

Yes, here I am again in yet another death cycle. It starts simply enough – I buy some new fish. Some die off within the first few days (despite very careful acclimatisation) and then the aquarium somehow spirals out of balance precipitating more deaths in the older community.

This time, introducing six neon tetra into the tank has left me with only two left after a fortnight and has wiped out a much loved cherry barb (and probably more fish… am on the “wait and see” holding pattern).

Careful daily water testing during these cycles show nothing awry, so presumably it’s something viral/bacterial that gets introduced each time. I’m not sure how I can prevent that other than setting up a quarantine tank (which I wouldn’t want running all the time and don’t really have the space for).

Technically, a good fish retailer should have their own quarantine procedure and not sell any fish they haven’t had for at least two weeks, but the shops around here don’t seem to do that as far as I can tell. I have stopped buying from a previously excellent shop that on a recent visit had dead fish in its tanks and were selling fish with obvious white spot infection.

I did have plans for a much larger aquarium once we’d redecorated the living room (and I’d saved up for it!) but quite honestly I’m starting to wonder if I could cope with all the stress of it.

Repeat after me: fishkeeping is meant to be relaxing, fishkeeping is meant to be relaxing, fishkeeping is meant…. ARGH!

I’ll give you a clue – no, my plants and sofa haven’t shrunk!

Yes, I’ve upgraded my 30L Biorb to a 60L version. This should make water temperature and quality a bit more stable with it being a larger body of water. It also gives me more scope for fish stock.

The process of changing over was quite stressful – it took me about an hour and a half in total, and I was very aware of falling water temperatures for the fish.

I’ve kept the old filter and media (just topped up the media with a new bag) to let all the good bacteria seed in the new tank. Hopefully this will mean I haven’t disturbed the nitrogen cycle at all. Catching the fish was the most “entertaining” part as it was the first time I’ve ever tried to catch a (live) fish with a net… and they did NOT want to be caught.

I deserve a very large glass of wine tonight.

The new one is still looking a bit cloudy, due to stirring all the muck up on the change over, should settle soon though. It’s also looking rather empty – going to need some nice tall plants in there I think. Will try and avoid adding anything new for a couple of weeks though, just to give the ecosystem a chance to recover.

All in all, I’m very happy with it. Except I keep doing a double take every time I walk through my living room!

Warning, those of a squeamish disposition may wish to skip this entry and move on to others, or browse my very extensive blogroll instead.

I’ve had two bumblebee nerite snails in my tropical biorb for just under a year, but over the last few weeks, I’ve been battling with the return of the brown algae. This is partly because nitrates in my tap water have suddenly increased but also because one of the nerites seemed to be ailing, not feeding well and mostly staying in one spot. From what I’ve read on the internet, nerite snails only have around 1-2 year lifespan anyway, so it wasn’t totally unexpected, so it was time to buy a friend.

This time, I ordered a Ruby Nerite, and as my original bumblebee nerites were (for reasons forgotten) originally christened Bill and Ted, there was only one name I could bestow on him: Rufus.

There was only one problem, from the moment he was placed in the aquarium, Rufus the snail seemed painfully shy. He didn’t want to come out and say hello, instead staying curled up in his shell on the pebble I originally placed him on.

Not to worry. Snails can sometimes take a couple of days to aclimatise. I checked that the water parameters were fine, made sure there was some fresh cucumber in the tank to tempt him out of his shell and hoped that he wouldn’t take long to shake off his sluggishness (‘scuse the puns). Every day, I would pick him up out of the tank, check that his trap door was closed and that he didn’t smell (I’d been assured I would know if they were dead – dead snails hang out of the shell and smell VILE). Apart from the odd Monty Python joke between me and Akra (“they’ve sold you a Norweigan Blue” … “he’s pining for the fjords”) nothing very exciting happened.

Until the other day. I picked up the shell for my nightly sniff (that’s a particularly disturbing sentence, but I shall leave it alone, just for the comedy value) and as I slowly lifted it up… everything suddenly fell out. Trapdoor … rotting snail innards… the lot. I’m only a little ashamed to confess that I did let out a rather girlie scream at the shock.

So it’s a little bit dead then.

Replacement is on order.

I know, I seem to lurch from fishy crisis to fishy crisis these days.

A couple of weeks back I had to euthanize my first ever fish as it was emaciated with suspected fish tuberculosis and clearly suffering.

Even though the white cloud mountain minnow’s last moments went swiftly and kindly in a little dish of 50% vodka 50% tank water, I still felt like a murderer.

Now today, as I was giving them their food, I happened to glance at the tank thermometer. I don’t check the temperature nearly as often as I should – there’s a knack to getting just the right angle to read the damn thing and usually I only end up bothering each water change – the last one being around 8 days ago.

Imagine my shock when I saw that my tropical fish aquarium was at 19°C – a whopping 7 degrees lower than normal. Just what I needed, an emergency trip out with toddler in tow to Pets At Home for a new heater.

Oh well, I’m now £27 poorer and have a brand new Visitherm 50W heater and a Reef One submersible digital thermometer so I am more likely to include checking the temperature into my daily routines. Let’s just hope these are reliable.

So, my top tip for beginner aquarists – when was the last time you really checked your aquarium’s temperature? Please learn from my mistakes – someone has to, because I don’t seem to be…

I have two new additions to my Biorb – they’re Bumblebee Nerite Snails and, despite an awful lot of aquarium owners trying to get rid of snails that have sneakily snuck into the tank, these two were intentionally bought from the The Snail Shop (don’t worry – nerite snails’ breeding habits are rather complicated, so I won’t be overrun with baby snails in the very near future… I hope).

I’ve named them Bill and Ted. Akra Jr thinks the names are hilarious, but doesn’t get the actual reference, fortunately. Then again, you’re never too young to learn to play the air guitar and say “excellent!”

The snails are already demonstrating unique personalities. When Ted was added to the tank, he set off (quite speedily for a snail) to explore his new home and took in several laps of the bowl, grazing on unsightly algae along the way (“Oi, Ted! You missed a bit…”). In contrast, Bill sat on his pebble for a bit, moved a centimetre, fell off… had to be put back on his “foot”, eventually got back on his pebble and explored it and its neighbour lazily, pooing a lot along the way in a very creative large spiral pattern that stuck to his shell.

Who knew that snail watching could be so much fun?

Do you think it might be a bit excessive to buy a new large fish tank just so I can buy the 8 Apple Snail Rainbow Pack?

I have grown complacent by the success of the white cloud mountain minnows and completely forgotten just how frustrating fish keeping can be.

Last week, I bought six neon tetras – nice, bright, cheerful and fairly common little tropical fish – bringing the total stock in my 30L biorb up to twelve fish.

I watched over them carefully, did everything I could to aclimatise them, then slowly and gently released them into the tank. It was great fun watching them explore and settle in. I started to relax and mentally planned the next additions for a month’s time.

Then, on day 2, they started to go missing.

One by one, they’ve been failing to show up for breakfast time. Mysteriously, all survivors are showing no sign of distress or disease and only one corpse has been found (they’re a bugger to find anyway – they go transparent on death, conveniently blending in to everything – also their “loving” companions tend to use fish corpses for a midnight snack…) It’s enough to make a girl very paranoid.

Water quality has been checked daily and nothing is amiss there. I’ve had the water checked by the fish supplier too, to be on the safe side. The verdict seems to be that neon tetras can be a bit peaky and it’s “just one of those things”.

Then, while discussing the problem on the biorb forum, I find out that most neon tetras are wild caught. To capture them en masse, a dose of cyanide is squirted to stun them, then they’re scooped up and sent abroad to be sold. Over half die in transit. Unsurprisingly, loads of them die within a month of them being sold.

I’m pretty shocked, to be honest. I’m obviously new to the world of the tropical aquarium and never knew this went on. I assumed that at least the more popular and common tropical fish were captive bred in the UK. Sadly, it seems I was pretty naive.

So now I’m on the hunt for some captive bred neon tetra. I have three left – I’m not sure how long they’ll last. I’m still on corpse watch for the other two unaccounted for fish.

Maybe I should just get a tank solely stocked by hardy minnows instead…

We are no longer fishless! Finally, we have some new residents in the fish palace, although (as you can tell) I’m yet to get a really decent picture of them. Here they’re still in their polythene bag from the shop, acclimatising to the temperature in our orb (newly boosted – I got a heater so I could go tropical).

They’re white cloud mountain minnows and incredibly pretty. They have little orange tips to their fins and tail – they’re “supposed” to be red, so not sure if this is a variation or they’ll just get darker as they grow bigger. They’re also very nippy and like swimming together in a shoal, so great fun to watch. At the moment, they’re still a bit timid and only sit out in the front of the tank when no-one’s around, otherwise they hide around the back. Hopefully they’ll gain some confidence soon.

Let’s hope they fair better than the last resident, eh? If these do well, in a month I’ll be adding some neon tetras to keep them company. Fingers crossed.

16 Feb 2006 – 6 Mar 2006

Not a terribly long life, really.

Let’s hope in his next one he gets a more capable owner.

Happened this morning after 10am sometime so Akra Jr doesn’t know yet. Have disposed of the corpse. Resisting temptation to rush out to the pet shop to buy another identical black moor in its place.

Poor Ishy :(

At the risk of sounding overly defensive, I just wanted to respond to a comment left yesterday. I started typing in the comment box, but it was getting ridiculously long, so I decided it warranted a proper blog entry all of its very own.

1. The fish (otherwise known as ‘Bob’) is in a proper 30 litre aquarium with more than adequate filtration and aeration – it just happens to be bowl shaped. This is not a ten quid plastic bowl from Argos with a bit of gravel in the bottom. Yes, keeping fish in bowls is cruel – but keeping fish in a Biorb is not. It isn’t the shape that is cruel, it’s lack of aeration due to surface area and air pump that is the killer – not the case with a Biorb. (Oh, and I can thoroughly recommend the Biorb forums as a friendly place to get information of all things biorby and biubey).
2. He is currently alone, that is true. Once he gets better and the tank is fully cycled then friends are planned for him (in the form of white cloud mountain minnows – hopefully less messy than another goldie) once they can be properly sustained.
3. The water quality isn’t great (for those who are interested – look away Zip) – as of last night: pH 8.00 ammonia 0.50 nitrites 0.25 nitrates 15 – but not bad either considering the tank is still cycling. 20% water changes are happening every other day to keep the fish comfortable and safe until the cycle is complete.
4. I can’t vouch for the water quality of the fish shop, but it was chosen with care – all the fish looked happy, no trailing faeces, no dead fish, everything clean… no obvious signs of distress (unlike several other fish shops we visited before choosing this one).
5. Bob is getting a good varied diet of quality flake and fresh veg (although he doesn’t like peas, in case you’re interested – cucumber is the food du jour). I’m also getting some freeze dried bloodworm in for him for a bit of a change too… mmm, tasty.
6. Having read around, I suspect what I (and Urban Gypsy) might be experiencing is the overbreeding of fancy goldfish to the point that their immune systems are weakened and more susceptible to these things.
7. I suspect that you’re right, and the prognosis isn’t good. However, I’m not prepared to write him off quite yet, expensive treatments or no. It may not be “value”, it may be a lot cheaper to get a new fish every month, but somehow I suspect that is missing the point. A fish is worth more (to me at least) than its £3.50 price tag.

And here endeth my overreaction. I just didn’t want the implication out there that my fish was being cruelly treated either intentionally or through ignorance. On the contrary, there’s days I think he’s getting looked after far better than the rest of us…