Owens L'ill Slice of the Web » fishy

Bedroom Companions.

Owen — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 11:22:51 +0000

Five fish in a heap

Current state of play with the Goldfish; all five are now in my tank at home, the tank at the College is full of White Cloud Minnows. Kali (the big fish with the white face) is behaving much better now she has more space and four companions; when she was with just one companion in a small tank she half-killed the other fish. I’m watching closely to make sure this does not start again..

I have a little video of them here..goldfish-Nov2010.

Best buddies

Owen — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:42:03 +0000

Well, the attempt to re-unite Lilly with her buddies failed, they are still in a way too small tank in Amsterdam. But doing OK and provided with a lot of attention, proper water and feeding regimes, and lots of people peering in and saying Hello.
Lilly, on the other hand, certainly enjoys her new home. But was obviously bored, spending huge amounts of time swimming end-to-end and not interacting with the tank at all. So I have put my two little Ryukin goldfish into her tank. So far so good, she certainly seems more stimulated and engaged with the tank, her new buddies and the eternal competition for food
You are not really supposed to mix Comet goldfish (like Lilly) with fancy species, but all the time they are getting on OK and nobody is chewing the others fins I’ll leave them together. I think the incompatibilities really come to the fore when the fish are crowded and food is scarce.

Fish Rescue

Owen — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:49:20 +0000

New 110L tank for goldfish

I’m inheriting some goldfish; ones I have been helping to look after for a year now in a Charity in Amsterdam. The people there are moving on and we’re worried the temporary staff the management now favours will not really be able to care for them properly. It’s not that they would hurt them (far from it), but things like feeding and maintenance schedules would go awry.

So I’m getting Lilly, Kali, Chocoloupe and a whole bunch of snails and plants. I even went out and got a nice new, bigger, tank for them

I suppose if all else fails they could go to the Goldfish Hotel..

Very Tiny

Owen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:56:06 +0000

Dario dario

Two Scarlet Badis (Dario dario) in my 10L nano-aquarium with some Red Crystal shrimp. This picture does not do them justice really, they are a real living jewel; truly beautiful and tiny (1 to 1.5cm adult size). They are related to the Perch family, and lots of interesting behaviours. I was having a small issue with minute water bugs; sub millimetre dots swimming and crawling over the rocks and plants in the Nano tank. I have always wanted to keep some fish in that tank, so this seemed like a good opportunity to go for it on the basis that the shrimp were ignoring them, but a predatory fish would not. They will eat very young shrimp too, but leave juveniles and adults alone, having some shrimp population control in that tank is no bad thing.

10L 'Jewel' of a tank

I’m already keeping Celestial Perl Danios, and Microrasboras in a 35L aquarium, the Danios are a bit bigger than the Badis, but the Micros are even smaller (possibly the smallest invertebrates in the world). I like these very small species, and the shrimp I keep them with, it’s like owning Fabergé miniatures or a precision mechanical watch, they are so tiny but so perfect. I have a pair of males, I’d hoped the smaller one was a female but it turned out to be a male that had not coloured up yet..

What I had not reckoned on was that they are fussy eaters in a way that would make most girls with ‘Anna‘ really, really jealous. I’m currently having to feed them individual live bloodworms with a pair of tweezers.. But they seem to have finally got the idea that the little critters in their tank can be eaten too. I noticed the number suddenly start to decline last week, and I eventually saw one of the Badis chasing and eating them; they seem to have cleaned them up now. Going forward I need to wean them onto frozen live foods, and if I can I’d like to get them accepting small flake and pellets. I actually tricked one of the them to eat a pellet last night, he spat it out really quick. This may be even harder than I imagined.

Life everywhere

Owen — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:08:47 +0000

shrimp, just hanging around

In the midst of bad news in the family, there is good news in my aquaria, I have baby shrimp in the nano-cube tank. And the female is carrying eggs again.

Baby shrimp, and an adult for comparison.

The baby shrimp are amazing, even after a week they are just 2 milimeter long red-and-white blobs, hard to see any detail at all, but they move and feed like adults already.

She’s got the berries..

Owen — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:07:53 +0000

Wonderful! A crystal red shrimp carrying eggs in my 10L tank; look for the little ‘berries’ under her belly. I’m really rather pleased to see this happen in such a small tank. Now I need to think of how to get rid of the juveniles, at 3-7 euros each it may be worth feeding them up and selling them.

Click on the image for a better view, she will carry the eggs for a month or more before they hatch as minute versions of the parents.

I only like tropical phish!

Owen — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:26:25 +0000

So, I just had a sudden message from an infrequent MSN contact.. It went like this:

Danger.. Phishermen at work.

Looks like a phishing attempt… no reputable site would ever ask for your MSN username and password.. The alarm bells went off for me immediately. I’m sure http://ImageStoriez.com/ is a scam.. Now who do I notify? :-S

My other concern is that this probably means that one or the other of us has had their MSN account or system compromised in order to send the initial IM to me in the first place. So who has the infected machine.. is it their end or mine.. or is it somewhere in between? Irritating stuff.. and all just because the world is stuffed full of antisocial greedy people and ruled by a profit at any cost motive.

Nano Shrimp Aquarium

Owen — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:54:49 +0000

In a moment of weakness I brought a 10L Dennerle nano cube today, it’s to house freshwater shrimps, and some micro rasboras.

Should be interesting, I think it will live in my bedroom, nicer to look at than my alarm clock in the morning

I’m really keen to see how the shrimp work out, they are totally fascinating, I spent far too long checking them out in the shop. It will be a few weeks before it’s set up properly, getting it stable with some plants, rocks and decoration comes first, then shrimp. The fish will follow later, once I’m happy with the shrimp.

Whitebait?

Owen — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:19:00 +0000

Chinese Danios (Tanichthys albonubes); beautiful to look at, and can live at room temperature which keeps my tank plumbing simple.

They are also known as White Cloud Mountain minnows, after the mountain in China where they were first classified by someone named ‘Tan‘; hence the first part of their latin name, and are actually a species of carp.

Another Go?

Owen — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 17:08:00 +0000

Well, my last attempt at keeping Goldfish went tragically awry, but I think I can see where I went wrong. Cleaning out the tank after Charles died I had way too much gravel in there, and there was a lot of, frankly, crap in it. So I’ve removed 3/4 of the gravel, I´ll fit a nicer filter, and try again! I also plan to add some sort of algae eating fish to the mix.