Aquarium

Last weekend I had a few minutes to spare, so my daughter and I headed out to Petsmart to get some new fish for the tank. Unfortunately the big Platy I had that had grown from a baby had just died. I was hoping to get some friends for him, but ended up getting a replacement.

Before visiting the store I had two Albino Cory's, two Leopard Danio's, and a Tequila Sunrise Guppy. I ended up buying two more fancy Guppies, and two Sunburst Platy's. The guppies are a beautiful blue color, with bright red tails. The Platy's are a softer orange, with a black spot on the tail, but one of them didn't make the transition. In total I now have 8 fish in my 30 gallon tank.

The extra fish in the tank make a huge difference. The whole tank seems much more alive and full of movement. It is awesome having the bigger tank.

Now, to get those crayfish from my co-worker!

I finally got my new tank all set up and my fish moved in. Way back at Christmas my family got me a new 30 gallon tank setup. It has been sitting in my bedroom until very recently.

Right after Christmas I got a stand, but it took until March for me to get around to setting it up. Then, while assembling the stand I had a few issues and had to wait for replacement parts. It took a couple weeks but I got them, and the tank stand got assembled.

Sometime soon after I got the supplies I needed. New gravel, new decorations, and a new gravel siphon.

Then we had to figure out where to put it. The wall we chose had out furnace thermostat on it, so we waited for the appointment with the electrician, and got him to move it. That was last week.

Monday night I got the tank centred on the wall, cleaned the gravel, set up the filter, and the heater, and plugged it all in. I definitely need more decorations, but what I have is a good start. I let everything settle for 24 hours, then, last night I moved two of my six fish in. These were my test subjects. Since they made it through the night, I moved the rest of my fish in this morning.

Once everything has stabilized I can start thinking about more fish. I am thinking maybe more guppies, or maybe a few neon tetra's. A small school of fish would look pretty cool. A Molly might be a good fit as well. I read somewhere that a Dwarf Gourami might be a good fit.

One thing I am really looking forward too is the crayfish. A coworker has a bunch of them that have been breeding in his tank. He has offered any amount to anyone who wants them since he has too many. Apparently they look something like this.

Today started off badly. A while ago a bracket for our showerhead broke, so I bought a replacement. Installing the replacement this morning I discovered it was the wrong size.

For Christmas I got a new aquarium. I bought a tank stand for it since the new tank would be much heavier. Assembling the stand this morning I quickly grew frustrated by the quality. To top it off, one of the pieces snapped, and another poked through the finish.

By this point I was in a pretty bad mood.

Then Sox wanted to go for a run, so we all piled into the car and headed to Elk lake. Beet spent the lake time in her stroller, but Sprout had fun playing in the sand, the water, and running around. After Sox's run we stoppeed at Starbucks for a cup to go. This time with my family totally turned around my day.

My last Cory died last weekend. We were away in Vancouver and when I got home it was floating belly up amongst the weeds. Bummer.

I still have 2 Danio's, a Guppy, and a Platy. After we move I will likely get a couple more Cory's.

Unfortunately the snails are still exploding. Tonight I counted 18 snails moving around the tank. Yikes. I might have to look into the Firemouths.

One of my Cory's died recently. I was bummed since they had been around for quite a while, and I thought they were happy and well fed. Not sure what happened.

In general the tank is doing very well. I haven't made any changes in a while, but I think the last plant I bought came with some travellers. I am having a bit of a snail explosion right now. The other day I counted 10 different snails, some tiny (approx 2mm wide), and a couple quite large (1-2 cm long).

I like snails, but I can't say I like them proliferating on their own. Not sure what to do about a snail explosion.