Another Boring Fish Story...

While I know the majority of my audience is ready to say to me "Tara, shut up about the fish." But it seems to me I need to tell ONE last story.

Last I wrote, Rufus "bad ass mofo" Betta and Kikker "shitkikker" African Dwarf Frog (ADF), were the only survivors in a massacre that occured in my tank while I was away this weekend. I removed my boys and put them in a lowly bowl where they would stay until the mystery could be solved. After speaking with the lovely people at Petfish I discovered what the likely problem was, and then a little side problem.

My filter was changed last week... just the media (carbon) in the floss bag. The carbon I used wasn't very good and didn't rinse very well. We are not sure if this was a cause of "a" death or not. What we are sure of, is that the temperature of my tank, combined with a death left in the tank, makes for very sad fishies. Someone died in the tank (from what I saw it was likely a guppy - not Apollo) and the other fish nipped at his fins until there was not any left. From the tearing of the fish, and the decomposing, bacteria was released into the tank, causing a toxic environment. And all in less than 24 hours. Rufus and Kikker were saved due to the fact that they don't breathe through gills.

Tough motherfuckers. Can you imagine the stench?

So Kat and I disassembled the tank last night (nasty nasty job) and decided not to put the Java Moss back in because it infests the substrate like nothing you can imagine. And when you are trying to clean gravel, you don't want to be plucking little strands of moss of each rock. It took about an hour to clean everything, and then, once the tank had settled and the temperature was brought back to normal, we went ahead and tempered the fish and the frog.

Two interesting and yet funny when you see it observations:

1. Fish get shell shocked too. Rufus looked rather scared, and bored. There was no one to be pretty for, so he just stayed in the middle of the tank. All by himself.
2. Frogs don't. Kikker was freaking out when he was in the bag.. you could just see his little brain thinking "let me out! let me go! look im home! yay!

Anyway, I have my gigantor presentation today and I better get powerpointing. I hope all is well in your world.