Perry the paradise fish

This is the first day where I have looked at Perry and thought: wow, he looks like a paradise fish! Here's why-

His small bin QT was still not cycled, and the ten-gallon one was sitting there next to it empty of fish but fully cycled, so... I moved him. I pulled the heater, but left the previous filter in there- it's not plugged to an airline and I rinsed out the media so it wouldn't be stitting full of stagnant mulm, but I kept it there for the bacteria load- maybe they will transfer? Perry's smaller sponge filter running next to it.

I moved all his plants over- sweet potato vine in the lid, bolbitis fern making a thicket on one end of the tank, a small bunch of hornwort on the other, all the plastic plants in between.

Subwassertang was the biggest pain to move; I much prefer when this stuff is tied down to something, but I wanted to keep it going as long as there is a fish in QT so I plucked every last bit of it out of the bin with tweezers and moved into the ten-gallon tank to sit in a corner. It does sink more or less.

I did think once Perry was in a darker tank, he'd show better colors (my daughter's friends visiting a few days ago said "oh, you have a new fish! this silver one!" because they didn't see any color on him then). True to expectation, he showed his stripes the moment I floated him in the tank to acclimate. See first photo. When I released him the first thing he did was try to eat the floating duckweed.

He seemed real excited to be in this larger, more densely-planted, dim tank (with better water!) He was going around and around the tank in constant, curious motion with his tail wiggling animatedly. So most of the photos I got were blurry, like this:

This one is only a little better. I do love the gold gleam on his eye.

And for the first time I saw him hunting malaysian trumpet snails. Yeah, I am pretty sure this fish is going to give me natural snail control. A snail on the glass wall moved, and Perry stopped short, tipped his head to roll his eye sideways at it, and nipped lightning fast at the snail's head. The snail dropped to the floor; I don't think the fish has managed to eat one yet but he sure is trying. He was constantly perusing the bottom of the tank, biting at snails he found with their heads out.

(He rejected some caterpillars I tried to feed him yesterday, plucked fresh off the rosebush. He took them eagerly then spit them out right away, rolling his eye at them but not trying again. I had to siphon them out of the tank. I wonder if they were a toxic species.)