lost

some fishes. My quarantine/hospital tank failed me, or perhaps the disease was just too aggressive. Kid begged me to bring home two little guppies for her tank, and they looked well until the second day one got a white ring around the mouth- a mouth fungus, or perhaps the dreaded columnaris (practically impossible to cure). They both died quickly. Then Hector got fin rot. Deteriorated swiftly. In a matter of days his tail and dorsal fin shredded to nearly nothing. When half the tail rotted all the way to the body, that was it. I treated with aquarium salt and furazolidone medication but it was futile. I think part of the problem was that my emergency tank has no filter- just an airstone to circulate- so I was doing water changes to keep it clean but our building has been without hot water for several days now. So I had to heat water on the stove and mix it with cold from the tap, getting the right temperature was tricky. It maybe have been off by a degree or two despite my best measurements, but that is enough to seriously shock an already weakened fish.

It's sad. Hector was the oldest of all our fishes. We'd had him for over a year. My daughter is not too heartbroken, though. She's come to the conclusion that "fish are boring" and the upkeep on a small tank too troublesome (she's right on that) and has decided she'd rather have a hamster.

Posts are infrequent right now simply because I've misplaced my camera- I know it's somewhere in the apartment but I set it down in a not-usual spot and now can't find it. Half of the fun (and record-keeping) here is in the photos, so I'm still looking.