the minnows

I admit, I have not paid much attention to my fishes lately. Aside from the feeding, and once a week (more like every two or three, which makes me feel guilty) water changes. Yesterday I finally started trimming old and algae-spotted leaves off plants in the 33L, put a new backdrop panel on it to block the sun (hair or thread algae is showing up again behind the rotalas) and sat back to admire how nice it looked again. Tucker showing his colors, especially when he gets excited about a worm. But of course that means I can't get a good photo, because he zooms up and down the front glass when I'm near. And leaps to nip my fingers again. I've had him just over two years now.

And I still have the one gold angelfish, Precious. And a dozen white cloud mountain minnows. One of the females has been looking particularly fat, I assumed she was full of eggs and ready to spawn. But nothing's happened- and she's been that way for a month or two now. She just keeps getting more swollen. Tucker chases the minnows when he's hungry, so I guessed she was unwilling to lay eggs with a predator in the tank. I don't want to raise fry, but I just want to give her some relief- she looks really uncomfortable. (It could be a disease, a tumor or something- but the squarish look is telltale of a gravid female, and I swear I can see the round shapes of eggs in there).

So I set up a temporary tank, in my usual fashion: half home tank water, half new, as much decor pieces with plants on them as I could pull out, some fake plants too for more cover, a piece of established sponge from one of the 33L filters, and two small sponge filters running.

It all looked good to me, but some of the fishes crashed- looking pale, breathing fast, lying near the bottom. I though maybe I'd lost my touch, forgot something important, so tested the water- no nitrite or ammonia. (That's my shrimp bowl behind the test tubes).

I figured some of the minnows were just stressed at the change. When some still looked bad on the second day, I did a water change, put those individuals back in the home tank, and replaced with a few different males (who were showing off their fins to each other). Here's the female's suitors- 

moving quick!

Except I didn't look close enough, I think this one with a slightly larger opaque white belly, is also female. She looks a little plumper today.

Then I saw something bad: a crack in the frame dead center on the bottom edge of the tank. Made me nervous. Only ten gallons but that's a lot on the floor. Sigh. I emptied it, transferring everything into my larger quarantine tote (switching out some of the plastic plants for softer silk ones) and also made a spawning mop of yarn. Because the clump of subwassertang is so small. First time I've ever done that. 

It looks kind of cool.

The minnows seem more at ease now- nobody's crashed, they all ate this morning- and I'm starting to see hints of the activity I was hoping for- the males checking out the yarn and subwassertang, flicking their fins in that inviting gesture, dancing next to each other with their fins fully extended and quivering for seconds at a time. But only the younger female seems interested- the really fat one hangs out in the back facing the wall. I think she's more distressed. I don't know if she'll actually spawn. Going to leave the setup a few days, wait and see. Feed them the best foods I have and hope. I'll just feel bad if only the young female spawns and not the older one that I wanted to help out. 

Side note: these fish were so easy to catch! In fact, the ones that got stressed on the first day, were in the temporary tank before I was even done setting it up- because I was scooping water out of the home tank with a plastic cup, and got some fishes by accident. They grew up in this tank, never been netted, had no fear of my hand moving stuff around. (They even come nip at freckles on my arms when I'm trimming plants). No dashing around like crazy trying to evade me. (Probably that's why they were stressed, being in the tenner while I was putting in all the stuff. I thought it would be better to leave them there then move them again for just twenty minutes, but maybe I was wrong).