Goldfish

So remember my last post about Betta fish, and how hard they are to take care of. Well I decided to stop trying to keep betta's and moved onto goldfish. I have a 3 gallon aquarium and 3 really nice big goldfish in it. They are very happy and easy to care for. I don't think I'll be having any more betta's for quite a while because these goldfish are thriving. When I went to the pet store the sales person said that each goldfish needed to be in a 10 gallon aquarium to survive. I lied and told her they were that was almost 8 months ago and all three are still going strong. I have had to deal with no ailments with any of the fish and I only have to clean the tank once every 3 weeks, so anyone looking for a great pet I highly suggest goldfish. You can even buy weekend or weekly fish food if you are going away and you don't have to worry about finding someone to look after your fish. Well worth the investment......

Betta's

So I have had many Betta fish or some may know them as Siamese fighting fish. My first one ever was named Gil, this is a picture of him along with my cat Za-hara. He was an awesome fish, the only problem was that we constantly fought with fin rot, as you see in the pic his fins are not as big as they should be. He was my little buddy for about a year till we couldn't fight off the sickness anymore. I got another betta after him, and another and another...to make a long story short my toilet is quite the fish grave yard. I learned many tings about keeping Betta's but the most important thing is no matter what anyone says, try keep your betta in a room where the temperature does not fluctuate a great deal. It is hard on betta's when the temperature is constantly changing, even if you put them into a cold room with a small heater in the tank you'll have better success then on the dresser in a room where the temperature can vary throughout the day. As well, don't clean their tanks too often, it stresses the betta and too much stress = sick betta, you only need to change the tank every three weeks, and do a complete change that includes cleaning out the rocks, when they say just remove 1/2 the water and put in new water, not true!!!! What makes your betta sick is in the rocks causing the amonia and PH in your tank to spike and make your betta sick. Another thing is have you ever noticed that when you go buy food for your single betta they give you a big enough container to feed 20 betta's. Fish food like any other food loses its nutritional value if it is not stored in an air tight container, it is in your best interest to keep one week of food readily available and the other put away until you need it. Your betta will thank you........

52 babies

So this cute little balloon Molly (not this actual one cause its a boy) about this size gets pregnant and as its about to give birth we put it into a baby breeder and head out for the evening. We get home and she has given birth to 52 little baby mollies, of course some don't make it through the night, and others through the week but in the end we had 39 living babies. Baby fish are really cute but as they get bigger you can only have about 10 in a breeder so here we are with 4 baby breeders in a 10 gallon tank. As well as the two huge pleco's and 12 other fish. I talk to my aunt and she says she's going to buy a 20 gallon aquarum and can take some fish, a couple of friends from work agree to take them as well. The funny thing about babies is that 5 of the 10 will get most of the food and grow quickly and the other 5 will be really small, so its very important to make sure that you keep the fish grouped according to size because if they are mixed some do not get food. If you ever get stuck with a bunch of baby fish you can always give them to a pet store, they'll gladly take them off your hands, but of course they will give you nothing for them so if you have friends that have an aquarium its more rewarding to give them to them because it'll give you the chance to watch them grow up. Also if you can catch the mother fish before she gives birth and get her into a breeder it will save you alot of time. Last thing you want to do is go down and find 20-30 baby fish swimming in the rocks and you having to fish them out into the breeders. You feel pretty dumb telling your boss your late because you were catching baby fish. (I speak from experience). Word of wisdom, if you have an aquarium invest in a breeder just on case, the one shown below is the most common.

So after about 2 weeks and like 8 dead fish we decide its time to go see the big guns we head to Pet Cetera to ask some questions. The associate that helped us was awesome, he told us that now that our aquarium was established its time to add some algae eaters to help keep it clean. So my roommate and I were trying to decide on the type of algae eater to buy. We walked into pet smart and there they were, a tank full of Pleco's we knew that was what we were going to get. They were so little and cute (kind of) and they sucked to the side of the tank, what an interesting type of fish. They were no longer then 2 cm's and really how big could they really get??? They'll be great for our little 10 gallon aquarium. NOT!!!!!!!! Right now they are both at 30cm's long and getting much bigger. That is in 3 years, apparently there are 3 different sizes of Pleco's and we got the medium ones. We have had to upgraded our tanks just to keep them and it still isn't big enough. The moral of this story, its ok to ask questions, and if the sales person doesn't know find someone who does because the last thing you need is 60 cm's of pleco's in a 20 gallon tank...........Where do the fish go?????

getting started

So I finally had made the decision to buy my own house and was 3 months away from moving in. I bought it pre-construction if anyone really cares. I was out with my mom who needed to buy some cat food. We were in New West and were going to go to Wal-Mart but of course she wants to go into Pet Cetera. I went in the front doors and walked into the fish section, they had their 10 gallon tanks on for 39.99 and suddenly I just had to buy the aquarium. How hard could it be to have tropical fish??? To me I thought piece of cake, I had a Betta named Gil I named him after Gil Grissom from CSI not because he was a fish and had gills. He was fairly easy to keep and I enjoyed just sitting there watching him swim around, come up to glass and look at me, you could almost here him say is it dinnertime yet??? So finally we moved in and set up the tank, we had it going and all I wanted to do was buy fish and put them into it. But of course being a responsible pet owner I followed the instructions and waited 24 hours before putting any fish into the tank. We then went to Pet Smart to look at what fish we wanted to buy, there were so many types and sizes of fish to choose from. When the associate came up and asked if we were ready I looked at her and asked where do we start, she then started explaining that you should only have 1 inch of fish for each gallon of water, this fish can't mix with that fish, this fish has to be at this temperature and that fish needs a higher temperature. The kicker was when she said and you don't want to get this fish because it will eat all the others. Wow I thought this was supposed to be a nice and easy past time..........Big mistake......... We ended up bringing home a couple of balloon Mollies and a couple of Platies to start and well there were many more to come.............to be continued next story is about pleico's