New Tank Photo

Same cichlids, new 20 gallon tank! I had to move the multies and their babies over to a bigger tank, and decided to put them downstairs in the formal dining room. My office is getting overrun with fish tanks! I added some fake plants to break up line of sight, new sea shells for the babies to choose from, and a rainbow rock as a focal point (thanks for the goodies, Eric!). They may eventually pull the plants up, but it looks really pretty for now.

I took this photo with my Galaxy S4 and am surprised by how vivid the colors turned out. The only thing I did with it in Photoshop is add my copyright and save it in PNG format instead of JPG. I’m quite pleased with how nice the tank looks.

Neolamprologus multifasciatus

Neolamprologus multifasciatus

Tetra Safe Start

Set up a new 10G on the 5th, and then on the 6th added Tetra Safe Start and 4 Pygmy Cory and 1 Cardinal Tetra. Fingers crossed!

There should of been 5 Pygmy Cory and 6 Cardinal Tetra (I actually bought more because I knew a few wouldn’t make it), but for some reason there was a massive die off in the QT right after I brought them home. We still don’t know what caused it (parameters were 0 ppm Ammonia, 0 ppm Nitrite, and Nitrate was roughly 20 ppm), but the store manager gave me a total refund for the fish loss. I’ve never had fish die like that, so I was seriously bummed.

I cannot take the 1 fish back and I’m scared to buy more Cardinals. I need one more Cory though. Any suggestions about what to do with the 1 Cardinal? I dunno if there’s other fish he will school with (he loves his little Corydoras and seems to think they’re his babies) or if I should risk getting more.

New Canister Filter

First things first… Happy Birthday Doug!! Love you bunches and bunches!!

I finally got off my butt and added a canister filter to my 30 gallon tank. Don’t get me wrong, I love HoB filters and the Fluval C Series offer amazing five stage filtration. I just wanted a bit more.

The AquaTop CF400-UV canister has been installed since Friday night. I took the bio-media (C-Nodes and Bio-Screen) out of the C3 and the C2 (I was running a backup) out of the HoB’s and put them in one of the trays in the new canister. Once Doug and I got everything all set up and running I tossed in a bottle of Dr Tim’s One & Only Nitrifying Bacteria. Normally this is not necessary since I used the bio-media from the other filters, but I wanted to ensure the nitrogen cycle was not interrupted, and I wanted to prevent any chance of a mini cycle.

Going on day 4 now and everything seems to be peachy in the tank. Whether or not it’s all in my head that my aqua babies are more colorful than before, I don’t know hehe. Though they sure seem to be!

AquaTop CF400-UV

AquaTop CF400-UV

Panda Garra

I finally snagged a decent picture of my favorite aqua babies! I was only able to get two in the shot though. They are so adorable!!! I took this with Doug’s Canon G9 (his Canon DSLR intimidates me, so I didn’t use that one…. yet). If you look close enough at the one on the right, you can almost see a little grin haha.

Panda Garra

Panda Garra