Fish
Last week Austin and I went to my mom's to retrieve the old aquarium in the basement. We cleaned it out, collected a few accessories, then went off the the aquarium store (Big Al's). We thought it had a pretty good reputation, so we decided to buy all the stuff we needed from them. In the end, our free aquarium cost us about $400-$500, but once we got it all set up we were happy with it. We let it sit for a week with just the plants in it, leaving the filter to run and the good bacteria to grow.
Yesterday we went back to Big Al's with a water sample, and they said the levels were good and we could start putting fish in! They advised us to only introduce a few at a time, so we decided to start with neon tetras. I had them when I was a kid and they seemed pretty resilient.
Well, there were only six left so we decided to take them all. The sales guy who was helping us went after them with a net, and in the process stirred up a couple dead fish in the tank that we hadn't noticed. We should have aborted right then and there, but we took the six fish home, along with three snails and a couple more plants and a clam.
(You can sort of see the survivors in the bottom right corner)
By the time we got the bag of fish floating in the water (still sealed so the water temperature would even out) one of the fish was dead. Later that day another one was MIA and this morning we found it with a third one, dead and stuck to the filter intake. There are three left and one of them is starting to look pretty peaky, while I think another one might be infected with fungus. I seriously doubt any of them are going to survive. The worst part? Austin is leaving this afternoon, and if any fish die after he leaves I'm going to have to deal with them and I have a pretty major phobia of dealing with dead stuff. As in, I can't even look at it, let alone handle it (even indirectly, as in using a net). I think if they do die I'll have to beg/trick a friend into coming over and doing it for me. Le sigh.
On the bright side, we also got a small, quarantine tank from my mom's. Since we're suppose to wait for a few days to a week between introducing new fish, and since you're suppose to quarantine new fish for about a week, yesterday evening we decided to buy some more fish (from PetsMart, which strangely enough had much healthier looking fish, and more variety in the types of fish that we want) to introduce later. We got a betta and three dwarf frogs. They seem to be doing well, and the betta even ate this morning (the tetras did not).
(Meet Bert the Betta. That blob underneath him his one of the frogs)
I feel like a terrible fish parent, especially because I don't remember anything like this happening when I was a kid, and we had quite an extensive aquarium back then. Austin insists we just got sick/injured fish (one of the ones that died had one buggy eye, which usually occurs as a result of trauma), and that it's not our fault they're dying. I know he's probably right. We got our own chemical sensor thing in the tank, and the levels are good, the temperature is good. The snails and plants are doing fine, and the fish and frogs in the quarantine tank seem to be doing well. I'm sort of tempted to just scoop the remaining tetras to get this over with, but the plants and decorations and stuff make it really hard to catch them. We think the clam is probably dead as well, but it's really hard to tell. The fish didn't cost much, but I'm annoyed that we wasted the money. Big Al's has a return policy, but you only get half the value of the fish and you have to bring the dead fish back. PetsMart will give you the whole value of the fish, plus they have a much longer period. Either way, I'm not about to go carting dead fish around, especially because they're only about $2 each. The sales guy at Big Al's somehow managed to give us three plants by accident when we only wanted one (and were only charged for one), and each plant was worth about $8, so we didn't actually lose any money.
In conclusion, I'm much more impressed with PetsMart, at least for tropical freshwater fish, which is what we're keeping. I'm really surprised a big chain that is more geared towards dogs and cats has a better fish than a speciality store, but if the betta and frogs do well, I think we'll buy the rest of our fish from there.
(The betta, who we named Bert, is fun to watch. He's clearly used to living alone, and the frogs are like energetic children who don't look where they're going, so they keep running into Bert and freaking him out. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his new room-mates, but he doesn't appear particularly stressed. I bet he'll be happy to get into the big aquarium, once the tetras are dead/recovered and it's safe to introduce him. Austin observed that we put the wrong fish in the quarantine tank).
Eventually, we want to get more (healthy) neon tetras, guppies, mollies, catfish and maybe another type of snail and some freshwater shrimp. PetsMart had all of these in lots of different colours and they all looked very healthy and lacked dead fishes hanging around. So hopefully this is just a hiccup and we will soon have a beautiful, thriving aquarium.
Yesterday we went back to Big Al's with a water sample, and they said the levels were good and we could start putting fish in! They advised us to only introduce a few at a time, so we decided to start with neon tetras. I had them when I was a kid and they seemed pretty resilient.
Well, there were only six left so we decided to take them all. The sales guy who was helping us went after them with a net, and in the process stirred up a couple dead fish in the tank that we hadn't noticed. We should have aborted right then and there, but we took the six fish home, along with three snails and a couple more plants and a clam.
(You can sort of see the survivors in the bottom right corner)
By the time we got the bag of fish floating in the water (still sealed so the water temperature would even out) one of the fish was dead. Later that day another one was MIA and this morning we found it with a third one, dead and stuck to the filter intake. There are three left and one of them is starting to look pretty peaky, while I think another one might be infected with fungus. I seriously doubt any of them are going to survive. The worst part? Austin is leaving this afternoon, and if any fish die after he leaves I'm going to have to deal with them and I have a pretty major phobia of dealing with dead stuff. As in, I can't even look at it, let alone handle it (even indirectly, as in using a net). I think if they do die I'll have to beg/trick a friend into coming over and doing it for me. Le sigh.
On the bright side, we also got a small, quarantine tank from my mom's. Since we're suppose to wait for a few days to a week between introducing new fish, and since you're suppose to quarantine new fish for about a week, yesterday evening we decided to buy some more fish (from PetsMart, which strangely enough had much healthier looking fish, and more variety in the types of fish that we want) to introduce later. We got a betta and three dwarf frogs. They seem to be doing well, and the betta even ate this morning (the tetras did not).
(Meet Bert the Betta. That blob underneath him his one of the frogs)
I feel like a terrible fish parent, especially because I don't remember anything like this happening when I was a kid, and we had quite an extensive aquarium back then. Austin insists we just got sick/injured fish (one of the ones that died had one buggy eye, which usually occurs as a result of trauma), and that it's not our fault they're dying. I know he's probably right. We got our own chemical sensor thing in the tank, and the levels are good, the temperature is good. The snails and plants are doing fine, and the fish and frogs in the quarantine tank seem to be doing well. I'm sort of tempted to just scoop the remaining tetras to get this over with, but the plants and decorations and stuff make it really hard to catch them. We think the clam is probably dead as well, but it's really hard to tell. The fish didn't cost much, but I'm annoyed that we wasted the money. Big Al's has a return policy, but you only get half the value of the fish and you have to bring the dead fish back. PetsMart will give you the whole value of the fish, plus they have a much longer period. Either way, I'm not about to go carting dead fish around, especially because they're only about $2 each. The sales guy at Big Al's somehow managed to give us three plants by accident when we only wanted one (and were only charged for one), and each plant was worth about $8, so we didn't actually lose any money.
In conclusion, I'm much more impressed with PetsMart, at least for tropical freshwater fish, which is what we're keeping. I'm really surprised a big chain that is more geared towards dogs and cats has a better fish than a speciality store, but if the betta and frogs do well, I think we'll buy the rest of our fish from there.
(The betta, who we named Bert, is fun to watch. He's clearly used to living alone, and the frogs are like energetic children who don't look where they're going, so they keep running into Bert and freaking him out. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his new room-mates, but he doesn't appear particularly stressed. I bet he'll be happy to get into the big aquarium, once the tetras are dead/recovered and it's safe to introduce him. Austin observed that we put the wrong fish in the quarantine tank).
Eventually, we want to get more (healthy) neon tetras, guppies, mollies, catfish and maybe another type of snail and some freshwater shrimp. PetsMart had all of these in lots of different colours and they all looked very healthy and lacked dead fishes hanging around. So hopefully this is just a hiccup and we will soon have a beautiful, thriving aquarium.