spawning?!

Wow, I can't believe this. Less than 24 hours in my tank, and I swear I'm seeing spawning behavior.

Watching the fishes just a moment ago, it looked so familiar. The pair of serpae tetras going back and forth through the anchored apono capuronii leaves, one was doing this familiar wagging motion with its pectoral fins and when among the foliage there's a second where they press their sides together and quiver in unison. I'm pretty sure that fin-wagging motion is the male courting the female- it looks just like the attention-begging gesture my male cherry barbs make towards the females.

I kept an eye on them, and when the pair passed close by the serpae with a missing eye, the one who'd been fin-wagging paused cruising with its partner to position its body stiffly broadside to the weaker fish, and buffet with its tail strokes. I'm fairly certain now that pair is male and female, and the one-eyed fish is another male. Who is quickly becoming the pariah. I gotta get more of these fish. And move them into my main tank, soon.

They must like it here already, and I sure know it's not really an ideal tank.

settling in

I am really pleasantly surprised. I fully expected to have a slight ammonia or nitrite spike this morning on the window tank. After all, I just put seven fishes into a newly-cycled, sparsely-planted tank! First thing I did this morning was a water test, and it was perfect. Zero Ammonia, zero Nitrites. (Goes to show how well the fishless cycle method can work, even though I did hate dealing with the moldy crap and stink of rotting fish food...)

I'm still doing a partial wc, just for the health of the fishes. The swordtails both have slightly degraded fin edges, and the female is still crashed on the bottom- although she breathes easier and makes brief attempts to swim now.

Named the male swordtail Fabio. Here's a better picture of him.

The pictures are still kind of dim because when I took cover off the top and sides, the fishes all hid down in the plants, apparently feeling alarmed or exposed. So I've kept the backdrop piece on.

The red-eye tetras have a lovely blue sheen when the light hits them at a certain angle.

I think they look fairly healthy.

 Here's a closer picture of the serpae that's blind on one side.

The good side. It's more timid than the other two serpae- quite understandably I think. But otherwise looks alert and active.

I never kept fish before that have the semi transparent body, there's rather fascinating about being able to see your fish's innards when they are backlit.

fish dream

From last night. I wish I had written this down sooner, because now I can't remember most of it...

In the dream I'm at some kind of fish convention, responsible for a display tank that has live plants, driftwood and a few various species including some really large cory catfish and kuhli loaches. It's a glass open-top, oddly shallow and square. I'm walking around just as the public comes in the door and passing my own setup glance over see that one of the catfish is upside down in a gap between two pieces of decor, the fins sticking up straight and stiff. I think Oh crap a fish died I have to get it out of there before a visitor notices, but I don't want to grab it right in front of people (someone is looking at another part of their tank with a kid) plus I really abhor touching dead fish with my bare hands so I hurry over to my supply cart to get a pair of long-handled aquarium tongs, picture myself grabbing the dead fish by its fin with the tweezers to lift it out but I really don't want anyone to see me doing it and know a fish died on me so I'm anxiously waiting for a gap in the steady stream of visitors-

then stuff happens and I go back to the tank instead of getting out the dead fish I'm going to move two live ones into another tank but I don't have any equipment with me I have to do this fast so I scoop them up with my hand, put them side by side on my forearm held carefully level, cover the startled fishes with my other wet hand so they don't jump or fall off, and dash over to the other tank drop them in!

Then I'm walking through the venue looking at all the displays and on a corner there's a huge tank installed it's taller than I am. Three or four huge gorgeous white angelfish with those pearly scales and flowing fins drift a foot or two above my head, their bodies at an oblique angle to the tank wall, leisurely looking down at us. They're more than a foot across (not counting the tail), giant fish. I stand stock still and stare up at them in awe, then I notice something that horrifies me. Their eyes are blank. Flat, silver reflecting blank. Blind, I think. I look very hard and can barely make out a tiny pupil like a little pinprick. It's creepy.

I glance down and see a placard in front of the tank that explains in great detail with numerous illustrations, how the breeder had a some fish with a genetic mutation that had smaller-than-normal pupils. It made them look perpetually startled and to his surprise people found that intriguing, so he kept breeding them like that and got ones with even smaller pupils- people thought those looked like "zombie angelfish" so he kept going with it. And now these beautiful, gorgeous, horribly blank-eyed freaks.

I woke up at that point.

I must note: in real life, I have never been to a convention having to do with the hobby, though I would like to someday. (However, I have been to numerous mineral-related shows with my husband so I think my brain filled in some details about what it's like to run a table at a show, from that).

I've never kept an open-top aquarium.

I do have an aversion to touching a dead fish with my hands. (Unless it's one I'm cleaning to cook. It's a pet one in the tank that just yesterday was alive and now is dead that I can't stand to touch)

I would never transport a fish on my forearm!

I saw tetras with completely black eyes (iris and sclera same color as pupil) at a store a few months ago, I'd never seen anything like that (before or since) and kept going back to that tank numerous times to stare at them. Maybe the angels with flat blank silver eyes relates to that memory. It's really stuck with me.

I do love angelfish. I am often taken aback by new shapes fish take on with breeding- the excessively long fins, the balloon bellies... I guess blank eyes was one step further my dream came up with! Ugh.

Real angelfish don't get that big, either!

got fishes

Brought home the adopted fishes today.

I took as much care as I could with their transport to minimize stress. The prior owner had them in a gallon ziplock. I opened the bag set it in a small cardboard box inside my cooler, clipped the sides up so it would stay open, and put in a generous handful of spirodela polyrhiza floaters from home. So it stayed nice and dark, even temperature no lack of oxygen and maybe the plants helped absorb some ammonia. Once home I floated the bag in the aquarium to equalize temperature, then siphoned out some of the bag water that had waste, and started adding portions of tank water in ten-minute intervals. The fish were pretty calm through this.

There are three serpae tetras aka red minors (one has a missing eye). Two silvery red eye tetras, and two fancy swordtails I think they are hi-fin lyretails. One has a black body with long, flowing orange fins I swear it's like watching a pretty girl with long hair blowing in the wind. The other is red with black fins.

My husband came over to see the fish and he remarked on how the fish stuck with their own kind- the serpaes shoaling together, the silver red-eyes cruising as a pair. Even momentarily in the bucket you can see this (just before I started netting them to put in the tank).

I have the tank covered sides and top to keep dark for the first day- another stress-reducing measure. At first the fish cowered on the bottom. The flow of the filter is pretty strong, so I put plastic baffle on and almost immediately the tetras and the "golden-haired" swordtail started swimming around. The serpae tetras were even sparring a bit, displaying their fins and buffeting each other with sideways tail strokes. I think two are males- I can see white edging starting to show on the anal fins and I read somewhere they develop white edges when mature? I have never been really interested in tetras, but once they were in the tank I am really taken by these. Their color is striking and they look very good among the green hornwort stems.

Blurry image of one swordtail

The red swordfish does not look good. It has a very fat belly and lies on the bottom quivering its pectoral fins. I don't know if it is bloated with food or an egg-bound female. If I loose a fish to shock it will probably be this one. I am going to be testing the water and doing daily partial wc for several days at least- even though I did the fishless cycle to build up as much beneficial bacteria as possible, the fish load is probably too much all at once. Plan is to put the tetras in my largest tank, but I first want to observe them for a week or two and make sure they don't come down with some illness from the stress of moving. Easier to treat them in here if I have to.

ready!

Window tank finished cycling this morning. I don't know why it always makes me so giddy-happy to see the pale blue in that little test tube. It's ready! So this morning I did a big water change- probably 90%- siphoned out down to an inch above the substrate. Not because of sky-high nitrates, they were only about 50ppm, but because I wanted to get out all that disgusting fuzzy white mold from the food remains.

These pictures really don't do the tank justice. It looks somewhat pretty with the ambient light through the haze of hornwort needles, but I can't get a decent photo unless I put a backdrop on. Oh well. Closest equivalent.

Windelov fern seems pretty content in here. I haven't seen any foliage die off, and if you look close can see a young leaf and a tiny new fiddlehead near the center. It's growing!

I found in my tenner this week a little scrap of java fern leaf floating around with two tiny new plants sprouting on it, and a small bit of windelov rhizome. Put both into this tank.

Although they are all shorter from being trimmed at bases, I nearly doubled the number of anchored hornwort stems in here this week. Most of them seem to be done transitioning, I cleaned out all the shed needles and decaying stems, kept only healthy growth which got divided up, new budding ends tethered onto more chips of granite.

Some are so small they lie rather flat when dropped in the tank, so I propped them up against the front glass.

Still have two stems of pruned aponogeton crispus and half a dozen of the capuronii in here. As expected, the crispus leaves are quickly decaying- I'm taking those out tomorrow. To my surprise the capuronii trimmings have held up really well- they've been in here a week and although I cut off a quarter inch of the cut end of the petioles and retied it, haven't felt the need to throw them out yet. They really add something to the tank and I am going to probably add more, see how long they hold up before need to be composted.

Pothos cuttings have grown roots. There's a bit of new stem sprouting too. I haven't kept pothos cuttings like this since I had bettas in bowls four years ago...

I had to rig up my prefilter sponge with a bit of fishing line and rubber band to stay in place (because the fittings got ruined that hold this onto the intake tube).

I'm picking up the adopted fishes tomorrow. Dropped in more sinking food to keep the cycle going meanwhile. Trumpet snails immediately converged.

tenner notes

This one tallest stem of bacopa in the tenner, the leaf changed shape at the water surface. It's much rounder (compare to second picture). I never saw that before. Is it going to flower?

Most of the bacopa got trimmed and replanted- leaves on the lower half of the stems melted severely this week. Replanted them in a denser clump, and added a few rotala stems trimmed out of the main tank- and checked my sponge filter again. It seems to be doing a better job, it seems there is less mulm to siphon out. I threw out the last few brown/clogged bio-cubes and replaced with a some pebbles for weight.

Samblu struggles against the current of it if he gets too close- but he keeps going back there. Is he dumb, or does he like swimming through it?

If you look close, can see the scattering of blue scales across his black face. Deformity in his back end really visible in this pic. One of these days I'll have to get a photo of him flaring at the mirror- he's got a large streak of red in his fins that you can't see here.

still waiting

Still cycling. Last stage takes the longest.

I took this photo with a large sheet of white drawing paper as backdrop (yeah, there's a piece of hornwort stuck in the windelov. And please excuse the hasty photoshop job to obscure reflection of a framed image that was on the wall behind me),

otherwise it's all washed out. But then I love how the light shows through these apono stems, doomed as they are. Trimmings of the longest leaves from the main tank- I put them in here just for looks- I know they will rot. I have been trying so hard not to look at this tank because it's very hard to keep myself from cleaning out the moldy food. Today I siphoned out just three clumps of it that were getting loose enough to start drifting around the tank- I really don't want it fouling the filter or getting all over the foliage.

The hornwort is holding up pretty well- I trimmed a few at base and added more cuttings from the main tank. Some of the stems have been drooping at the terminal ends. It needed a bit of top-off this week and I used old tankwater from the main one. Figured it would have a bit of nutrients for the plants. Not sure if it's my hopeful imagination, but I think the stems look straighter at the tips today.

Also have tossed in another few mts and bit of gravel that got siphoned out of the tenner (I always get some of it accidentally, now it can feed this tank).

heater blip

Main tank got too cool yesterday. I forgot the water in pipes probably still near freezing, and guess I added too much colder water with the 50% wc. It felt cooler to my hands than norma, when pruning plants, and some fishes were hanging around suspiciously still, then I looked at the thermometer surprised find it was only 72°and the heater wasn't kicking on. Can't see the light well because plants now grow up in front of it, even harder to see numbers on the thermostat dial. I'd have to lift it out of the tank to check it and lacking time, floated a bottle of very hot water (could see the heat waves emanating off it in immediately surrounding tank water) and that helped it warm up a bit more. Later in the day unplugged the heater, plugged it back in and now it triggers on. Hope this blip doesn't mean it's faulty, I've had it just two years!

new roots!

The sweet potato cuttings are already sprouting roots. So are pothos cuttings in the window tank.

warmer

Over 50° today. Warm enough I have the cooler-tolerant plants in open air: broccoli, lettuces, borage- and it was nice to be able to leave them outside overnight. The lettuces don't look so good. Some of the broccoli babies look like they got damping off- wilting pinch at the base of stems and falling over. But I have plenty more stout ones.

Seedlings in the coldhouse! All day.

Nasturtiums- still among my favorites.

Three varieties of coleus.

I shoveled snow onto my garden. Upper deck just pushed it off through the railings onto the two nearest beds (one obscured by deck railing planter here) and lower deck I moved shovelfuls of snow and ice over to the further beds. It doesn't benefit anything melting into the gravel under the decks, and I've read that snow contains nitrogen and minerals that are good for the plants. Uncovered all the mulched plants around the yard; everything survived the freeze.

looks a bit like grass

The flame moss I glued onto stones is growing up! I am loathe to trim it, although that might make it sprout more along the lengths and get thicker.

It's easiest to see when the tank lights are off, otherwise glare bouncing off the paler stones the fine green strands get lost, visually. Need darker-colored base rock, for them to show well I think.

But I did take the flame moss patch on upended basket out of Samblu's tank, took it apart and started another stone. Hello, kuhli!

weather and plants

We had 4" of snow. It was heavy, wet snow and freezing rain in intervals- very icy. I'm glad I covered the plants. In the yard I can walk across the frozen crust on the snow without breaking through. Went out there yesterday when the weather was a bit milder and uncovered a few to check-

rosemary

and borage look fine! Uncovering pot-sheltered plants for the sun today but it's supposed to be very cold again tonight so I will cover them once more. When the snow melts I'll uncover those that got leaf mulch blankets and see how they did. It's down to 19° at night. I've blocked drafts on windowsills with small towels, and move the seedlings and tender plants away from windows at night to avoid chill.

I lost a few basil seedlings - probably to the cold- there are only five in that tray now. The rest of the seedlings are doing okay.

A few more summer savory sprouted, three pepper plants (finally!) and the tray of borage is completely full (I showed it to my daughter and said: "do you know why I grow this plant? we don't eat it, but I think it disgusts the squirrels!")

Nasturtiums are almost big enough to pot up individually

First true leaves are showing on the marigolds,

tomatoes

and dill

I think I see one just barely growing out on the broccoli as well (second seedling from left, center).

I need to get a thermometer to hang in my coldhouse. I can feel with my hand and face that when I open the door, it is significantly warmer in there than outside air, but not sure by how many degrees. When it's 32° outside, I feel comfortable setting out in the coldhouse the plants that are supposed to be hardy down to 40°- broccoli, onions, lettuces

and borage. (This plant btw I recently learned can withstand near-freezing temperatures- as the one survivor out in the garden patch proves. But it doesn't do well transplanting due to a long taproot. Have to set out seedlings before they get more than four leaves or may fail- last year I timed it just right).

When it's a bit warmer at 35° I feel ok to put out in the coldhouse the tomato, marigold and nasturtium seedlings. At 40° I'll put out the celosia, sweet potato cuttings, and the tray of herbs. Okra, celosia, peppers and basil seem more tender- they wait until it's 55°. But it would be so much easier if I knew the actual temp inside my coldhouse, so I'm going to look for one to hang. With big fat numbers so I can read it from the kitchen window.