GoofyGarra's Journal

[GoofyGarra]

I've gotten back to school and working on the School tank in the past few days. It was pretty bad. While the pothos growing from the top and submerged Java moss were thriving, all the guppy grass was dead and there were several dead fish, no shrimp, and mulm everywhere. Upon checking the autofeeder I discovered it had died at some point (kinda my fault, assuming it would just work straight for 3 months was a mistake on my part), which most likely contributed to the loss of the fish, shrimp and plants. My best theory is the fish got hungry and hunted down the shrimp, and the Pothos blatantly out competed the guppy grass. As such there is some news now regarding this tank.

The school tank is coming down. The biggest reason is that last year i was in the lab 4/7 days every week and this year I have no reason to ever be in the room, moving the tank is just not a feasible option. Because of this I'm not seeing the tank and I no longer believe I can properly take care of the fish, I talked to the Bio teacher and she agrees that if the fish cannot get proper care we do not need to have a tank setup.

So I did a water change at lunch today and removed all the livestock, a few endlers'(mostly female) and a nerite snail. They have come home with me where i can take care of them better. The endlers' are very washed out so I am putting them in the 5 gallon for quarantine, i'm hoping that as long as i feed them well they should not hurt my shrimp colony. The nerite snail will be put in the big tank to be a friend for my mystery snail.

Also to me personally $5 for a snail seems absurd, I've had fun experiences, but at the end of the day paying $5 for a snail just seems fundamentally wrong in my mind. To make it worse now somebody that I know (teacher at the school who has some tanks of his own) had mystery snails breeding and now he has babies he wants to get rid of. If only I had waited a few weeks 😫, but I still might take him up on his offer because mystery snails are fun.

Tank lights just turned off so I don't have any pictures but i will gave an Endler update in the morning with some pictures.

[GoofyGarra]

Nooooo!!!!! 😭

[GoofyGarra]

Did  a water change and BBS feeding this morning, I trimmed back the guppy grass mass and scraped off algae growing on my lid and there is a lot more light in the tank now, which makes it easier to see the fish (especially Garra Guy, dark fish on a dark substrate can disappear in dark lighting...)

[GoofyGarra]

Sorry its been a while since my last updates, I wish i could say i've been busy but the reality is that I have been distracted.

Not much has changed since the last update, i've been doing some small shrimp projects so if those get interesting results ill post them here. Basically my shrimp colony has very interesting genetics so i occasionally get cool shrimp that i want more of, currently i have a yellow gold back shrimp which I have isolated in the 2gallon and already have a few very new shrimplets raising up, so hopefully i can get more yellow shrimp because they are super cool.

Cories and Garra Guy are doing great, i've started feeding 2 wafers every day instead of just 1 due to all the Cory fry needing more food, and I have started seeing much better behaviors from him now, which I missed seeing previously.

The Albino Cories will probably will going out in the next few weeks, either to try a new kind of cory, or get more panda garras, or both which is most likely. I'm open to some cool ideas for new cories, but at the end of the day it will probably come down to whatever is cheapest (besides for albinos) at the LFS.

I'll be selling out some endler's to my friend in a week for his tank, and I am also sending him my 2 platy juvinilles with darker coloration then I like. Since my tank often gets overgrown and low lighting, I like platies for it that are bright colors like yellow in this case.

Honey Gouarmi is also doing fine, i'll probably get him a few friends in the next few weeks as well,  probably a big trip to the LFS happening soon, bringing in and sending out fish.

Crazy to think it is October already, hope everybody is having a good year.

[GoofyGarra]

Just some photos from the weeks i wasn't posting

[Guppysnail]

That is a fabulous photo of Garra Guy 🤩

[GoofyGarra]

Zucchini feeding!

 

[GoofyGarra]

Going out today:

2 female platies, to my friend. Nothing wrong with them just not the coloration I wanted. (the darker coloration doesn't look very good in my tank since I often end up with lots of shaded areas from plant growth)

3 Endler Trios to the same friend, because i have excess.

3 Cory fry to a person my friend put me in contact with+as a freebie some shrimps.

[GoofyGarra]

So yesterday when I dropped off the fish with friends I went to the LFS and got a new male platy in an attempt to get more fry. 

It's not going very well. A few hours after I got him I noticed that the fish appeared to have some sort of Redworm sticking out of his butt. And now he is sitting on the bottom of the tank hiding, gills moving but unresponsive. I need to put in an order for a dewormer but I am skeptical the fish will make it at this point, he seems too far gone.

On an unrelated note I've been wanting to try a new kind of Cory for a while. My friend contacted me recently and told me that he was trading out an old tank and the person offered some Emerald Cories (Brochis before reclassification I think) so I will probably will be trying those. First I am waiting to see what happens with the platy because i need an available QT tank before i can take new fish.

[GoofyGarra]

After dosing some salt on the Male Platy i am no longer seeing any worms sticking out of his butt (which I hope is a good thing) he is also now eating better.

However a few symptoms persist:

-some sort of white spot disease

-Shimmying

I am currently addressing both of those by dosing small amounts of Marine Salt, raising hardness and adding some salt to help with the fungal infection.

Edited Wednesday at 11:07 AM by GoofyGarra
Added Pictures