A Fish Update

[damselfish]

A while ago I went to the fish farm to ask them about getting certain dwarf cichlids. Simply, L. curviceps has become so rare that the only place to buy them is off Aquabid and no one even knows the common names for them anymore, so I've taken to calling them curviceps. I like smiling acara, but more people know the "dwarf flag cichlid" which is readily confused for the flagfish. Kind of cool as a Florida native, but not what I'm looking for. Fortunately I took Latin so I can pronounce most scientific names. Too bad no one I talk to can.

Before walking out, I decided that since I was here, I needed algae eaters and they had some of the best. I walked out with two long-fin golden bristlenose plecos (what a mouthful). Plecos, if you don't know, are the most common algae eaters out there. You know, the brown ones they sell at pet stores for a few bucks that grow 2 feet long and no one knows this until they have a fish bigger than their aquarium? Bristlenoses are tiny versions of that. They look like this. I am not a big fan of plecos-- I think the common ones are ugly as hell-- but the long fins redeem them for being so cool.

I had them without any problem in the tank for about a week, and then I see them tussling. I took video because I have never seen fish do this before. They tumbled across the gravel, locked together in mortal combat. It was definitely not mating behavior (I have a male and a female) but was, in fact, a serious fight. By the time it was over all the male's fins had been shredded to the point where I worried he couldn't swim anymore-- he's fine, and the fish are getting along again. That's the problem with fancy fish. They can lose their fanciness in moments.

I never expected a fight between plecos of all fish. Bristlenoses are often recommended for their minimal impact on a tank: no one bothers them and they don't bother anyone. Except, it appears, each other. I'd post my fight video to youtube because it is by far the most epic battle I've seen (none of the namby-pamby bumping in the videos I saw) except I got my own reflection in the glass on the best one. Ha.

Anyway, the plecos are doing fine, they're industrious little things.

I was more excited to finally get a pair of german blue rams, though. They were something I'd been wanting for a while. They are cute, but they are incredibly shy. They've only just begun venturing out from behind the plants, and I rarely see them. They've started to come out more often, but I worry that they don't get enough food: they won't come to the surface and the angels and mollies do their best to make sure nothing sinks, and the swordtails and tetras catch anything that makes it past them. One of my angels is getting really fat, I need to figure out a mid-water food delivery system to sneak meals past them. May have to call the blue angel Charybdis.

And what should happen as I'm going to bed on Thursday that I see three spots of white fluff on the male ram.

Cue me, at midnight, tearing the aquarium apart to catch a nigh uncatchable fish. It's amazing how a fish can disappear in an empty tank. I can't even explain it. But I got him out eventually, and it's the weirdest thing. The blue angel also had a few spots of fluff on a pectoral fin. I couldn't figure out what the fungus was the first time, and it took two rounds of a fungus cure to fix it. One round of fungus cure down, and the fungus remains. Pectoral spot fungus is annoying but less terrible than anything else to have hit my tanks. It's practically benign, and seems to lend ferocity to its victims. Even the shy ram watches me from the floor, where the hospital tank sits, and paces along the glass instead of cowering.

I have no idea how he caught it, since the blue angel came with the fungus. I bought him during a cold snap, and two days after purchase there was the fungus. I take no blame for it. But the ram? I. Just. Whyyyyyy. Fight it, little buddy. You're adorable.

This brings my stock to:

3x P. scalare angelfish
2x golden lyretail molly
2x pineapple swordtail
2x congo tetra
2x german blue ram
2x golden bristlenose pleco
2x punctatus cory
2x emerald cory

I know I have some cory fans on my flist, so I have to say: the punctatus are cute, but shy. I never see them compared to the emeralds, they're always hanging out in the back. The emeralds are the busiest fish in my tank: at certain angles I can't tell if I'm looking at zippy catfish or congos. Sure the emeralds are nothing fancy compared to the nicely spotted ones, but I'd recommend them first. There's definitely videos of me screeching as I stand in front of the tank and a little torpedo comes flying at what I think is my face, and it's just a catfish nabbing some air.

Also, on lighting: my aquarium is purple. My main lighting comes from a couple coralife T5s, and I figure it's purple for saltwater. I bought planted tank lights (Florasun by Zoomed) yesterday, and despite being a T5-HO (high-output) it was also purple and dimmer than the coralifes. Gotta go return those. I spent ages on Fosters & Smith looking at lighting, but I suspect I may have to haunt the planted tank and see what kind of equipment other people are running. No equipment baffles me like lighting, to the point where I'm probably going to spring for a lux meter if I could figure it out.

I just want non-purple lights, man.

Now I need to figure out heating. My tank stays consistently at 78/79 without a heater, which is on the upper end of some recommendations for angelfish. At the fish farm, I was told that I killed my white clouds because it was too cold (mind you, white cloud minnows are among the hardiest fish you can buy and not tropicals like my others, and my misgivings about having them were from my tank being too warm). I should take my tank to 82! After much googling, I have found that some people feel that an angelfish's temperature range is from 70 - 78, from 76 - 85, or somewhere bouncing in that range. This is why you probably shouldn't bother buying books on fish: every expert has a different opinion.