a fish story

WARNING: a really long post about fish.  if you're not into fish and aquariums, you'll be bored out of your mind.  ;)

we started with a 55 gallon tank given to us by Jeremy's brother.

My first foray into aquarium keeping.

(2008) Red barbs to get the party started.  They eventually all died.

A long series of fish from Petsmart over two years.  Angelfish - so tiny and sickly when we got them.  A super cool pictus catfish named Kitty.  A first really sad encounter with Ick.  Things had been going so well...

Starting over - an introduction to aquarium salt in a tropical tank.  lifesaver, literally.

Trying a few cichlids, a Jack Dempsey, two Firemouth cichlids and a Jack Knife Fish.  Super cool fish, but no fun playing with others.  Jack got HUGE and wanted to eat everything in sight.  So no hope of more angelfish.  Jimmy the Jack Knife ate only live feeders.  Creepy and cool at the same time.  We fed him weekly.  It was like watching the animal channel.  As soon as we put the bag in, he would start poking at the bag.  Poor little fish, but apparently really delicious.  The other cichlids grabbed a few as well, especially Jack.  Jimmy died one morning when a toddler took him out to play with him...  (oops, sad first lesson on death.)  Sold Jack for double what I paid for him in a Garner Petsmart parking lot.  Hello Craig's list!  Also sold the two firemouths from my house.  Instant cash for new fish!

(1.09) This time I avoided the tiny Petsmart angelfish, and drove to Coats (~20minutes away) to buy some babies off of craigslist.  What an experience!  Driving out to a trailor in the middle of nowhere with my 4 year old!  I bought 8 for $12!  (Petsmart charges ~$5/each!).  I drove them home in a cut off milk jug.  They didn't miss a beat.  They grew into huge beautiful fish - all eight!!!  They paired up.  Little by little I sold off pairs on craigslist to give each other room.  Selling pairs in different parking lots.  Two couples kept trying to have babies.  We had wrigglers at one point but they didn't make it (even with a divider and a breeder basket.  Several got caught in the crevices of the breeder basket! We also added a Black Ghost Knife Fish (from Petsmart).  Gorgeous odd fish, but he also ate the eggs they laid during the night.  Eventually, I whittled the angelfish down to two,

A happy tank with two adult angelfish, a blackghost knife fish (Morpheus), and a pictus catfish (Oxford).  Bought two tiny fish fry - Albino Bristlenose Plecos from a guy down the road off of CL.  So much cooler than the regular grey plecos!









I found some clown loaches and a yoyo loach for a steal on craiglist.  And then picked up three Serpae tetras, a bleeding heart, an Australian Rainbow fish, a turquoise rainbow, and a Bosemani fish to add color and fill the missing space from the other angelfish.

 We lost the rainbows and boesmani due to random issues.  Probably water quality...  Kind of sad about the Boesmani (left) because he was apparently an endangered species.

Used some shady chemicals right before a trip out of town and lost three big beautiful fish.  The female angel (~5"), the black ghost knife (who'd grown to be ~4.5"), and the pictus (~4.5"), so sad.

(5.11) So I posted an ad on CL for a lonely Male angelfish looking for a mate.  Several weeks later, someone responded, he just sent me a picture of them the other day.  They've already started laying eggs.  How fun is that?!!!

I took this opportunity to do a much needed aquarium renovation.  I siphoned ~10-15gallons of water into two plastic containers, put the fish into the larger one, siphoned the rest of the water out.  Removed the yucky old sand.  Gave the tank a good scrub.  Put in a new seashell and stone substrate that had been rinsed really well.  All collected from our last trip to Topsail beach a week ago, and some driftwood from our trip to Edenton bay, and a few shells we had from past beach trips.  Put a black background up and put in a new bubble wand and stone.  It looks so pretty!

I took the money from the last angelfish and went to our new Petco - so nice and clean!  And bought two (tiny!) veil tail angelfish, two (tiny) regular angelfish, a sunset platy, a red painted platy, a red wag platy, and a mickey platy. The platys add some fun color and are small enough to be good with the tiny angelfish right now.  Eventually I would love to explore some Guorami's and some funny looking pot belly mollies, we'll see.  I'm still trying to get rid of at least the serpae tetras.

Probably my favorite fish right now is Harry the albino bristlenose pleco.  He's ~3.5" now!  He's very chill and beautiful.