With the upcoming move pending, I have let my tank go into a stand still. I have been preoccupied with signing paperwork for the new home. It’s ridiculous how many stacks of paper have to be signed. There are clauses for radon, asbestos, termites, earthquakes, mudslides, and I think I saw one in there about Godzilla attacks. I digress. I haven’t purchased the rest of the plants I wanted to fill in the areas that need some planting, because I figure I’m going to have to pull them up and replant them later. My dosing schedule for fertilizers has gone out the window as well. Still, my plants seem to be growing decently, which exposes another problem for me. I haven’t trimmed my plants in a while.

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Sorry for the break in posting. I may be moving in the next month. That’s good news, but I’m definitely not looking forward to moving my tanks. The move isn’t far, but breaking everything down is a pain.

Well, it’s been just about two weeks since I got my Olive Nerite Snails. I wanted to see if these little guys could live up to their fabled algae eating skills. I let my 20 gallon tank get some algae built up before the guys arrived. I put a single snail into the 20 gallon tank. Check out the before and after shots.

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I always feel peculiar when I upload videos of my aquariums to YouTube and file them under Pets and Animals. Animals is definitely correct, but pets I’ve always though of as family members that are animals. I don’t think my tank inhabitants make that cut. Anyway, I got some new additions to my tank, my Olive Nerite Snails. They eat algae. They mate. They do them both at the same time. It’s not overly interesting, but this is apparently what these snails do all day from my observations.

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We have all seen tanks overrun with algae and have probably all dealt with it ourselves. How do you get rid of the blasted stuff? Let’s start by getting one thing straight. You can’t get rid of algae. The fact of the matter is, algae is always present. Whether it is present in quantities that are noticeable is a completely different story.

Algae can look very good in a tank and give it a more natural look. I have some stones in my tank that have grown a fair amount of algae on them. I think the stones look much better with this growth. It adds more color to the tank than would exist in an algae free environment.

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I failed to noticed that I had my website set up so comments will only be displayed from people that have already posted comments, meaning I had to approve comments before they showed up. This has now been disabled so the only thing stopping your comments from getting published immediately is the Akismet filter. So as long as you post real comments, there should be no problems.

This is the story about how I got into fish keeping. This was no more than a year and a half ago.

You can see two goldfish in a tiny container. In the background you can see the bright red colors of a carnival booth with different colored bowls of water. You all know the game. The object is to toss ping pong balls into these bowls to win goldfish as a prize. Well I won two little goldfish that I knew nothing about. I left them with my girlfriend, who knew just as little about fish as I did.

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I’ve added a section to write about some of the fish I’ve kept or encountered while engrossed in this hobby. The link to the index is permanently up on the top of the site, but you can click here if you don’t want to move your cursor way up there. I  hope to write some less technical things about the fish as those have been written by other people on other websites already. I prefer to write about my general opinions and experiences with the fish. Hopefully those stumbling across can give their own input whether it’s in agreement or contradictory.

I did a water change and was dosing my liquid fertilizers and carbon supplement when my plants started pearling. That’s nothing out of the ordinary, but there was one stem plant that had its top cropped of during one of my trimmings. It had bubbles pouring out of it at an incredible rate. I have a picture and a very short clip of this.

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I have a spare 10 gallon tank that is just sitting in the garage. It seems like such a waste. I’m currently deciding what to do with it. Here are some of my options.

Nerite Snail Breeding. These little critters are prized among aquarium keepers as algae eating machines. They are highly adaptable, able to live in salt water, brackish water, and fresh water. Their eggs, however, are only viable in brackish or salt water. I would get some snails, acclimate them back to brackish and try to breed them. Then I would have to get a second tank for acclimating them back to fresh water for sharing with others.

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