fishes every way

I moved everybody out of the buckets this morning (Perry is still in the bin). They continued to look very pale, stressed, the snails and kuhlis were trying to crawl out, and I thought it was a very bad location for them- near a door, so lots of foot traffic around (closest available plug for the spare air pump). The 20H as-is wasn't cycled yet- small reading of ammonia (0.25) zero nitrite, I didn't test for nitrates as I did a 50% wc earlier in the morning to clear out some of the silt. But I thought: hey, if the buckets are continually reading zero on ammonia/nitrate having those chunks of media in there is working- if I move all that into the tank, surely it will stay relatively stable.

So I did. The fishes started to color up as soon as I had them floating in the tank- they saw the plants down there and immediately wanted out. It makes me chuckle. They sure are spunky. Tank looks awful ugly now- two large panels of sponge media propped behind the overlarge filter (it's a bit crowded on stocking now), three mesh bags full of sintered glass bio-media, and two more with the ceramic rings. It's all in there, tucked between plants. And the fish look fine as can be. Funny, they swim with a tilt again, as if re-orientating themselves to the walls. It's odd to see them back in here again, the tank where my keeping of serpaes began.

I did not mean to introduce any of the smaller critters with them; I was going to put all the shrimps in Ruby's tank, and the striped kuhlis downstairs in the 45, along with the zebra nerite snails. But I only found two snails when I had the buckets empty- one must have been clinging to a piece of media and I didn't see it. I accidentally transferred two of the shrimps- I saw them leap off into the tank when I moved a media piece over, and I was kinda surprised when I emptied the leaf litter and only found two kuhli loaches in the bucket. I have Tiger and Albert (who looked ghostly pale)- I acclimated them to join the three black kuhlis in quarantine, where I can keep a closer eye on them for a few days.

I can only think of three things: either my other two kuhlis jumped out (but I see no sign of them on the floor), or died of stress and the shrimps ate them, or they had wriggled their way into one of the bags of media, and got moved into the 20H. A sudden, abrupt entry. The tank is draped in dark cloth, but I keep glancing in there, and I did see Sassy creeping around. I hope Monty made it safe too. I don't want to leave them in there long term- but I will be patient and bait a trap this time, not stress them out with a net again.