fish notes

Positives today: I took the chance of moving Flash into the 10gal. It was either watch him pine away and die from a poor environment, or move him into the good home and perhaps he will die from the stress. So I moved him.

Bought a bigger air pump for the tank, the one I had was for 5gal and wanted to be assured I had enough water circulation in there. He is improving a bit- eating more, moving around more alert, color much better too. Looks interested in things again, even tries to follow the barbs around sometimes, not sure if this is aggression or just curiosity. It looks tiring- he doesn't seem able to use his tail much, holds his body stiff and bent, but propels his pectoral fins constantly. Still has clamped fins- not sure if he's going to recover fully.

The two little barbs in here are funny. I've noticed that the male acts like my biggest cherry male Sangre in the 20gal now- he follows the female about, wiggling his fins at her in a twitchy way. I think it's some kind of display. They fairly zip about when he's chasing her. I guess he's the dominant fish now, at least among those two.

I put a slice of zucchini in the larger tank yesterday. First the cherry barbs swarmed over to look at it, tried to nibble, I couldn't tell if they were actually getting anything. Then the siamese algae eaters discovered it, and they were on that vegetable constantly until I pulled it several hours later. Even the oto Tilda came over and scraped on it for a bit, and Pinkie swam down with his leisurely turns to see what all the other fish were doing I guess. I finally able to get a few good pics of the siamese fish. My nine-year-old named them Caleb and Noodle.

Bad news is I think there's ich in the 20gal. Several days ago saw two white spots on Caleb's tail, although hard to tell because his fins are clear. The next day one spot, next day none. But occasionally both siamese fish glance or flash, twisting a jerky motion against objects as if to scrape something from their skin. Pinkie has been awfully skittish lately as well, and I thought I saw him glancing too- dashing around the tank almost bouncing off objects, then suddenly calm normal movements again. I've picked up some meds, but the fish man (pet store guy who unlike most seems very experienced and knowledgeable, he told me lots of stuff -has been keeping fish since he was a kid and you can tell) told me with a mild case a steady high temperature for a week should kill the ich. (Salt works but will damage or kill my plants and harm the snail). So over the past few days I have inched the temperature up from 76° to 86°. Higher temperature means less oxygen available in the water, I've removed the baffle and lowered the water level. (My Danios are bigger now, they don't seem to risk getting stuck to the filter again). So far no one is gasping at the surface, although the oto and siamese algae eaters dart up now and then for an extra breath. Also am doing a small (20%) water change each day to keep it very clean, although this is a setback to my latest realization (I keep learning things!)

Which is: my plants grew so much while I was gone -the crypt wendtii in particular- because the nitrates built up to 40- good for the plants! So I think I have been cleaning a bit too well, for the benefit of the plants. Maybe need to just siphon off water and not gravel vac as much, although I read that can allow toxic gas to build up in the substrate. A typical solution is malaysian trumpet snails, which aerate the gravel bed, but they can be very invasive... not sure how to balance this but am thinking about it all...