…after getting a new one..(or its parts)…it didn’t fit. We did get a foxfaced rabbitfish (one-spot variety) to eat the cursed caulerpa weed (see Discovery Channel: Killer Algae) which has been the bane of this tank setup.
But the tang hated him. We got him because the tang wouldn’t eat the stuff. So this time Mr. Tang had to go back to the fish store to find a new (and larger home) because he spent all last night blustering at Mr. Foxface. So…
We took the water out of the tank and caught Mr. Tang, and also caught Mr. Pistol Shrimp, whom we believe responsible for the demise of 2 firefish and a scissortail. He did not play nice, had grown to look like a 2″ long lobster, and we got him. He also will go to a new home.
You have to picture the living room Jane so lovingly rendered fit for company now scattered with 7 buckets, siphons, wires, pieces of ballast, lights, you name it. Not to mention sections of pipe we’ve removed, the lid, the pieces of the jump-guard, jugs of vinegar (used to remove deposits) and bowls, pans, boxes, bags, salt—it was a zoo. OR rather, the back room of your average zoo.
We caught both offenders, headed off to the fish store, got a proper ballast, handed over our problems, got back after a detour to a Japanese garden, where I hoped I might find either a Kyoto or Oribe lantern…they didn’t have that, but did have one. Jane and I have now lost our mothers and fathers, and wanted to set up something in the garden, and we are hoping to find a granite lantern to stand on the pond edge where we can put tea lights into it and have it light our garden on nights we’re out late.
This is a link to what one looks like. http://www.cherryblossomgardens.com/product.php?id=263
We did find one locally that isn’t an Oribe, but is still a very handsome lantern with just a little crack in its top, and we both like it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to fit us.
Right now we have got the whole thing put together, and we hope this will be the last fish tank crisis for a while!
Ah, the joys of fish ownership! I had been missing my old aquarium, but not so much after reading this! LOL
The lantern is a lovely idea. I’m sure you’ll find the one that suits you both, and it will be a peaceful addition to your garden.
Cheers!
I had fresh water tanks for years and they were never as much trouble. But then, the fish aren’t nearly as interesting. Except a huge Tiger Oscar with an underbite that feared nothing, fishy or human. He’d launch himself from the tank–forcing open the cover–to get to dinner before the other fish, and I’d end up chasing him around the floor. He was huge, muscular and slimey. Envision panicked woman with small hands trying to grab ahold. Oh, nice lantern! BTW, the Japanese Iris seeds should be ripe soon and I’ll see you get some. Hopefully the bag of columbine seed didn’t go missing in the midst of all the upset, but if so there’s always more.
We have columbine, thank you, indeed, and they are right now on our dining table—not on the menu, to be sure. We have kept our old greenhouse frame (upright) and plan to start some seeds in the spring!
I have a fresh water tank, too. I used to have fish (tinfoil barbs) launch themselves to freedom. I usually returned them to the tank unharmed, but once we discovered a fish mummy behind the tank, and were heard to exclaim “So that’s where he went!”
We got a glass cover specially made for our octagonal tank and that problem was solved. Until one of the kids knocked over the top heavy tank/table system we had. That was a mess. We only saved half the fish that time! The current system has been up and running for 5 years or so. I think I learned a bit in the mean time.
The fish tank is a great deal of pleasure and minimum work once we do a little long-postponed maintenance.
Mr Wabbit is being a doll, and shows great promise, though we will ultimately have to trade him when he gets too big for our tank—never believe that fish will ‘only grow to fit the tank’…and his species tops out at 8-9″. Better than the Magnificent Rabbitfish, which reaches about a foot and a half. In a 36″ wide corner tank, even 5″ is getting too much, and he’s already 2″. The other inhabitants, however, like him a lot better, and the shy ones are coming out, even the yellow watchman, which hates all other things yellow including his own kind. Plus all rabbitfish are venemous, about on a level of a fiddleback spider, if you get finned, so you do have to pay attention to his whereabouts and not corner him by accident. They will not attack, but they will defend if you put your hand down on them.
Mother nature is planting her columbine seed in the garden now–that’s how I ended up with so many, and of various kinds–crossbreeding at will. You might try spreading some where you want plants to appear, starting others in pots mid-winter. Probably nothing flowering next year as they’ll be too small, but the year after for certain.
Amazingly, I really can imagine this from your description, along with a completely frazzled Jane smack in the middle of it wearing this…..look.
It shouldn’t make me laugh, but it does, just a little.
I happen to think Pistol Shrimp are really interesting…but knowing how they get their name I would never want to have one with my fish, LOL.
They’re fascinating, even science fictional creatures, right along with clams, which have a driveshaft that spins at a fantastic speed…hundreds of rpm.
Pistol shrimp and one variety of mantids both kill by a sonic snap so powerful it generates a micro-area of plasma. It proliferates through the water and can stun or kill a fish that insists on sharing its burrow…well, in the case of the mantis, it’s lunch; but in the case of the pistol, which dens with gobies, it’s a case of any fish that is too pushy about moving in for the night in a burrow not their own—they don’t dig. Firefishes and dartfishes have this habit, and are always getting a faceful of bristleworm bristles for pushing in on them at night—but moving in on a pistol shrimp or mantis is Not A Good Idea. You can keep them with fish—but don’t keep dartfish or firefish with them. It’s unproven that they will break aquarium glass, but then my tank glass is toward half an inch thick. If you keep one in a very thin-walled tank, who knows?
amazing .. very entertaining to read about your adventures with fish and tanks
I have been struggling with tank chemistry for months in my freshwater tank. It It turned out to be childishly simple. Although the general hardness was fine, the carbonate hardness was close to non-existent, which means that nothing was buffering the pH, which was therefore crashing back to 5.5 regardless of water changes, which was too acidic for the filter bacteria to establish themselves, which means that the ammonia produced by the fish waste was not getting converted into nitrite and onwards to nitrate, which means poor new fish got ammonia poisoning to add to the shock of swimming round in something not that far from battery acid.
I always hated chemistry. But the addition of a few handfuls of coral sand finally got it fixed. Had to work that out on my own though- the shop people could only offer expensive pH buffer. It’s great to watch the fishes swimming around not dying though, very relaxing.
You’re probably going to be amazed by what I’m writing but, I change a carbon activated filter on my fresh water tank every 2 weeks or so, siphon out half the water and after adding 1/2 a teaspoon of “Start Right,” I refill my tank from the garden hose. I have done this for 4 years and have had no problem with the health of the fish. I never need to measure the pH or anything.
But, I think that after gouging out the Grand Canyon, the tap water in Las Vegas is full of natural buffers.
Yep. Carbonate hardness is a pita! You get a tank, you WILL learn chemistry. ;)I’ve been caught by that one. I hang out also on Reef Central, and I shudder when somebody asks the inevitable: what’s alkalinity mean?
I run a marine tank: no tolerance for chemical imbalance when you’re raising corals. I use a reverse osmosis filter to remove everything but 2 H’s and an O, then add sea salt (read: sodium chloride is only a minor constituent of this powder.). I have to top off a gallon of evaporation daily, and if I added anything but ro/di water, we’d have a huge calcium carbonate brick at the end of the year, instead of a tank. Water evaporates: minerals don’t.
So with this zero/water, I am topping off only hydrogen and oxygen, and I don’t pile up stuff. THe corals grow like bandits—or did until the recent crisis, but they will again, putting on new heads every week or so. If the hammer coral gets any bigger, it will have to be subdivided. Which is how you can proliferate corals into new tanks where they get to go on growing. Since some corals may be 13,000 years old (last ice age) this is a good thing.
You can consider a fresh water tank to be a calm spot in a river. Every 2 weeks or so I change the filter and siphon out half the water. Most of the solid wastes and much of the accumulated minerals go with it.
A marine aquarium, on the other hand, is a dead end for minerals. They come in with the water, but don’t leave when the water evaporates. Since the oceans are very large, they can absorb the minerals that rivers bring in slowly enough that the fish are not affected. (Pollutants are a separate issue.) But, an aquarium is so small that tiny variants can have a big effect.
On the other hand, while fresh water tanks might be easier to maintain, fresh water fish are not as beautiful to watch.
But they don’t grow as large! My rabbit will top out at about 8″ and that’s too much. THankfully, my gobies and blennies are as big as they will ever get, at 2″, much nicer for this size tank.
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Susan
http://onlinemariogames.net
Welcome!