Fish Tales
Drove to Frederick this evening to take care of a friend's fish while he is out of town. This is more complicated than you might think. With his setup, it's not just a matter of dropping in a weekend feeder. He currently has three active tanks.
So my friend John and I drove to Frederick and first stopped for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants that, alas, is not in Baltimore: Famous Dave's. Awesome food and fast, pleasant service at a decent price. The only bad part was driving to and from in the rain on I-70. Every time a truck zoomed past us, it was like instant fog. Anyway, after dinner we went to our friend Jim's place, where he left instructions for feeding the inhabitants of each tank (cherry shrimp, a betta, and a general community tank). Photos of the fish are available on flickr.
This summer I gave Jim a common pleco that had outgrown my tank, which he kindly agreed to take. "Tiggy" has tripled in size since I first bought him several years ago at Petco, and he seems very happy in Jim's 90-gallon tank. He started out in my 5 gallon tank, was moved a 10 gallon tank (which he rapidly outgrew), then this summer was transferred to Frederick and a 30 gallon tank, and now lives in the 90-galon tank. A very hardy and interesting fish. A common pleco can live for 15 years, and can grow to be a foot long. Unfortunately, the people at Petco either did not know, or did not inform me, of that fact when I said I was looking for a bottom-feeder.
In my own fish tank, I recently had a black skirt tetra that looked sick (red gills and listlessnes), so I went to PetSmart and got a broad-spectrum antibiotic for a variety of fish ailments. At first I thought it was gill flukes, because the guppies we got from the above-mentioned friend in Frederick had been recently treated for that. However, the tetra's gills were red only on one side, and none of the other fish in the tank seemed affected, so I guessed it was probably something other than gill flukes, hence the broad-spectrum antibiotic for general gill and fin ailments. The tetra was tough--he hung on as long as he could, but unfortunately, the antibiotic didn't help. It could have been old age, as a little research showed that the average lifespan of a black tetra is 3-6 years; he was about 5 years old. I may get another black tetra; the dead tetra is survived by another black tetra. They were purchased as a pair 5 years ago, and have literally been inseparable since then. If fish grieve, I'm sure the surviving tetra is missing his companion.