I have a lot of pictures of this guy, because he rests for periods of time.

Bright and sunny pictures are easy.

Fish meeting.

Resting on driftwood.

Resting on rocks. This guy is so lazy.

Here are the fry from a male Guppy and female Molly.

Unfortunately, while Guppies and Mollies can cross breed, the offspring are generally sterile, deformed, and do not make it to adulthood. The fry look normal after about a week and have healthy appetites, but it’s often hard to see deformities in fry until a few weeks after birth. Time will tell how these little fellows do.

This is my Olive Nerite Snail that I have in the tank to polish off the bits of algae that do spring up on the glass. I caught him sucking the carcass of a Dwarf Crayfish clean. You can see the claw of the deceased on the bottom right. These snails not only eat algae, but I have a hunch they will eat anything edible they come across.

Both PETCO and PetSmart carry a line of plants in plastic tubes that are labeled under a sign that notes they are for terrariums and aquariums. While that sign is technically true, I would say only 15% of the plants are actually meant to be in an aquarium. The rest of the plants are not meant to be submersed completely in water. What happens you submerse them? Nothing at first, as the plants are grown in such a way that makes each generation more resistant to being underwater. That still doesn’t make them aquatic plants. They will not thrive underwater, and eventually these plants will rot away.

I was once a victim to the confusing plant in a tube marketing. These did grow some new roots, but eventually got mushy and rotted away. These plants are called Ribbon Plants, and I’ve seen them in countless videos and pictures of people’s aquariums. The big chain pet stores not only have them in those tubes, but they also keep them in little pots in a tank for sale. Unless you’re seeing the plant as it just arrives to the store, they generally look pretty ratty.

Another common plant that gets put into aquariums is Lucky Bamboo. It’s actually not bamboo at all. You are seeing it here as it should be grown. The entire plant is not meant to be submersed under water. This will eventually lead to the rotting of the plant. As long as the plant is kept with its leaves portion of above the water the, it can survive and grow.

It’s really unfortunate that there is so much confusion in the market for what really is a true aquatic plant. Some plants are an easy visual identification, but with so many plants out there, it’s impossible to identify everything you come across. If you’re not sure, what I’ve found very useful is to use my Blackberry to do a quick Google search. Although the plants may not be aquatic, the name of the plant is normally labeled properly. If you don’t have a search capable portable device with you, be patient. Go home and look it up. You’ll be happier if you get it right, rather than getting it right now.

This is a Ghost Shrimp, and that bit of material he is munching on is fish poop.

While I’ve seen this occur on multiple occasions, these guys don’t seem to consume the entire waste. They appear to pick at it, most likely removing undigested portions of food still in the waste. This still leaves you with enough of an unsightly mess. Unfortunately, the best way to get rid of unsightly fish poop is to do a regular gravel vacuum.

I tried to go with the fake tree look. The end result looked better than this with the Java Moss hanging down like a Weeping Willow, but Java Moss just gets everywhere. I have since removed the giant clump of Java Moss and am using Java Moss only to cover my stones.

On other news, the weather has warmed up and the lilies are blooming like crazy. A new leaf reaches the surface of the water every day. Water changes are down to a minimum now that the plants are growing this fast.

This is the latest addition to my collection. It is my Halfmoon Betta, Montgomery.

His colors are brilliant, and he is very active. I’m considering mating this fellow if I can find an appropriate mate.

This was the 20 gallon before moving. I drained it, leaving a couple inches of water above the substrate and carried it like that. The move went well, although the plants are flattened out quite a bit, and they still haven’t popped up since. I may have to go in and do some pruning.

The 100 gallon goldfish barrel was drained down as far as the siphon would allow. The goldfish were put temporarily into a bucket, and the whole thing was hauled to the new house. Let me tell you something. Even with regular gravel vacuuming of this barrel, the bottom of the barrel smelled horrible without the water layer to hold the smell down. Fortunately the smell didn’t bother the fish, and they are all doing fine.

This was the dreaded monster. 55 gallons of tank with lots of small fish that are damn near impossible to catch. After pulling the plants, wrangling up the fish, I drained the tank as far as I could and hauled it up to the new home.

To make matters worse, the gas at the new home was turned off earlier that day due to some gas leaks the inspectors found, so we weren’t able to get hot water out of the faucets. We took 5 gallons of really hot water from the old home in an Arrowhead to temper the water up after filling it up most of the way.

The sink I have in the bathroom closest to the tank has a faucet that is not Python adaptable, so I was using the old fashioned bucket method to fill the tank. After two buckets it was brought to my attention that the house had a water softener hooked up to the plumbing. I hesitated for a moment and felt an impending sense of doom. Then I realized I had used the same water to fill up my 20 gallon a week ago with everything doing fine, and decided to just keep chugging a long and hope for the best.

Even with the hot water from the Arrowhead bottle, it was taking a long time to get the water up to temperature. After a while the buckets were just as cold as the tank, so I let the fish back into the tank. They weren’t looking so great. My Panda Cories, Harlequin Rasboras, SAE, and my Gouramis were pale. I tossed all my plants into the tank, leaving them floating on the top like mixed salad. I was beat after moving the tank so I left it and hoped I wouldn’t come back to a tank full of dead fish.

Today marks just over a week since the move. I stopped into the house to do my feeding and when I reached in to pull out some plants that came uprooted I noticed the water was cold. A quick addition of a thermometer showed a temperature of 60F. My heater had busted at some point. I had no idea how long ago that was since I hadn’t stopped in for a couple days. Some of my Harlequin Rasboras were looking pale again, like when I originally moved them. A quick run to the store allowed me to get two heaters running, and I left with the tank approaching 70F. Hopefully this isn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Quite a few of the plants didn’t make the rough transport and the cold, so I’m going to have to get a few more pieces here and there to fill in the holes in the tank. Most of the fish seem to be doing fine right now, so I can only hope for the best.

I hated moving in college, when everything fit into one car, but moving fish tanks is so much worse.

You can see here that my Wisteria is engulfing my Moai. That’s a single plant, growing around both sides of the decoration. The Red Temple needs to be clipped into a couple more stems as it’s starting to reach into the spray bar of my filter return. The Ludwigia is already there, swaying with the current. I don’t even want to know what the roots look like in the substrate.