Getting Surly Teenager an aquarium for birthday, made me want one. I haven't had a tank since the mid 90's. I have only had 10 gallon tanks. I have always wanted a big one. On a stand.
We found it on Craigslist for a pretty good price. It had some issues. Like looking like it had not been cleaned in quite a while.
So I scrubbed while Hubby worked on the other stuff.
Oh yeah. It also came with this:
Oscar
Oscar was about 12 inches long. After doing some research on Oscar, we decided to give him a new home. He was a fine fish and quite amusing; he liked to move the gravel around and make hills and valleys. But I wanted lots of smaller fish. So we gave him away to someone with a bigger tank who would appreciate his personality.
We waited a week or so to let the water balance. We actually ended up buying about 15 or 20 gallons of filtered water because our tap water is apparently very hard. And then we started stocking.
These are Red Minor Tetras.
They are all named Loretta.
Now, I did a bit of research on different fish, how many fish the tank could hold, what ph levels they liked, where they liked to hang out, and how they got along. Stuff like that. We even spent a couple of days at the pet stores just writing down the names of ones we saw that we liked so I could look them up. Naturally, I made a spread sheet with all the info. Hubby thought this was very amusingly geeky of me.
So we go to buy new gravel (it came with neon colored gravel) and we get all carried away and want to buy some fish. Hubby liked the Red Minor Tetras. They had not been on my list. I did not know anything about them, other than what the little tag at the pet store said. And Hubby's view was "They are tetras. They can't be that much different than every other tetra". So we bought some.
Now we are up to last weekend. We go to the pet store again. And this time we buy some Glowlight Tetras and 2 Dwarf African Frogs. The next morning we buy 2 Dwarf Gourami. Which I don't seem to have a picture of. Sorry. Go Google if you want to see some.
The frogs were an impulse and no prior research was done. They were not on my spread sheet.
The frogs were not happy. They squished themselves down into a corner and just stayed there. So I looked them up, and a couple of places mention having trouble with them in big tanks. I scooped them out and plopped them into Surly Teenagers little tank. Now they are happy and moving around.
The Gourami's started to get picked on by the Loretta's. I finally got around to looking them up and it turns out they are not like every other tetra. Every other tetra (just about) are very peaceful. These are border line semi-aggressive and will nip at slow swimmers.
See what happens without the spread sheet.
So we have been discussing a possible 2nd tank. Maybe after Christmas, for some semi-aggressive fish. I like Tiger Barbs. And again, no picture and too lazy at the moment to make a link. Google.
Hubby came home yesterday and the aquarium water level was down about 3 inches. And there was water on the floor. And in the closet. Being soaked up by his cloth gun cases.
So now my aquarium looks like this:
He drained the tank and made temporary fish housing in some plastic storage containers.
They spent the night in there last night. This morning, we had lost one and the others were not happy. No one would eat and they weren't swimming around. The sealant to fix the aquarium takes 2-3 days to set and then will have to be tested. Hubby made a quick trip to Walmart to fix the problem.
It's a 29 gallon. I don't know where we are going to put it permanently, but the fish are happy again.
Hopefully it won't spring a leak.
And Hubby has promised to stop mocking the spread sheet because I WAS RIGHT.
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