The Mother
The Father
The Fry (a couple of different batches)
Close up OB Fry!
Friday, October 18, 2013
We're Pregnant!
So this past summer, one morning, John came running up the stairs yelping that one of the cichlids was holding. I could barely understand him and I don't think I've ever seen him that excited. I've had pregnant guppies before but never cichlids and neither has he. After a couple of days and a bit of finagling, John was able to fit a 20g long underneath the 125 and transferred her there. Some people strip their holding cichlids but we're going to let her do her thing naturally. As far as any precautions to take, we're not aware of any other than the fact that John has been religiously testing the water parameters. So now we're just anxiously waiting for OB fry! Update: Since that batch of fry, she's been knocked up twice more. We've been stripping her after about 7-10 days. We also have an egg tumbler that we partially used once. Reason being is that every time we strip her, the fry were free swimming so we didn't need to use it. Recently, we set up a 30g upstairs in our bedroom for all the fry and it's been working great compared to the bare 20g. It's easier to maintain now that its not sitting on the floor. I know this is weird but you can totally tell that the fish are loving it and I swear they're growing faster. John notes the dates every time she gets preggo and it seems she does it once a month. I'm not sure how we want to handle that because that's a lot of fry.
The Walking Dead: Cichlid Edition
Or shall I title it "The Swimming Dead"...I wish I had pictures to show you what I am about to describe but the scene was so horrific that we could barely stand to look at them, let alone take pictures. We've had an entire 75g tank wipeout once due to ick (we didn't catch it in time). But this...this was not ick.
One day, John found a fellow hobbyist in our area selling some of his full grown rare Africans. He came home with two 7 stripe frontosas and a 6-7" VC-10. The moment he walked in to acclimate his new finds, he notices that something is wrong. A couple of fish had started to rot and shed flesh. This disease did not look familiar at all and it got exponentially worse by the day. Fish quickly started to literally deteriorate from the inside out. Half of them were blind due to their eyeballs melting away. He frantically searched online for answers and went out to got meds. We tried 3 different medicines, some supposedly the best on the market (also the most expensive), treated the tank for at least a couple weeks until we used up all the different types of medicines we got. We did small and large water changes, whichever the meds recommended. We tried to segregate the really bad ones to prevent the entire tank from turning inside out (literally). In the end, most all the of the OGs were gone and the new additions were also gone. What was crazy to us was the fact that most of the ones that died were the larger ones and we were left with the small and dull colored ones that didn't seem to be affected at all.
So, now that the gory part is over, one of the meds we used turns your tank ninja turtle green. No joke, neon green. Not to mention, it dyed all of our beautiful lace rock green. John read that people have bleached their lace rock to rid the color but we were too afraid that we wouldn't be able to clear all the bleach with all the natural holes and crevices in the rock. So now, we've got 50lbs of ruined lace rock just sitting there. This entire 2-3 week span was just awful. The fish we grew out along with the rare finds we JUST purchased were pretty much living dead. While we were treating, we both knew in the back of our minds that even if we got rid of the disease, there was no way the fish could reverse their conditions.
Whether you're a fan of fish keeping or not, everyone who encounters a tank no matter the size always stops to look. So every passing was just super depressing. After we moved on from this horrific episode, we tried to determine how the disease got in our tank. I came up with the explanation that John had brought home 9 fish one day from a local fish store so I thought that was where the it came from. And after talking to a Petco rep, we were introduced to a flesh eating disease that fish develop when they become stressed. I believe it's called Columnaris. But you know how all fish carry diseases (ie. ick) and how it's just controlled and gets worse when stressed? Maybe this is how it emerged. Introducing that many fish in a tank at one time may have stressed them out. Regardless, it is done and over with and we have slowly rebuilt the tank. (This was written this past summer but like I said before, I'm a noob about blogging and haven't had a chance to post).
One day, John found a fellow hobbyist in our area selling some of his full grown rare Africans. He came home with two 7 stripe frontosas and a 6-7" VC-10. The moment he walked in to acclimate his new finds, he notices that something is wrong. A couple of fish had started to rot and shed flesh. This disease did not look familiar at all and it got exponentially worse by the day. Fish quickly started to literally deteriorate from the inside out. Half of them were blind due to their eyeballs melting away. He frantically searched online for answers and went out to got meds. We tried 3 different medicines, some supposedly the best on the market (also the most expensive), treated the tank for at least a couple weeks until we used up all the different types of medicines we got. We did small and large water changes, whichever the meds recommended. We tried to segregate the really bad ones to prevent the entire tank from turning inside out (literally). In the end, most all the of the OGs were gone and the new additions were also gone. What was crazy to us was the fact that most of the ones that died were the larger ones and we were left with the small and dull colored ones that didn't seem to be affected at all.
So, now that the gory part is over, one of the meds we used turns your tank ninja turtle green. No joke, neon green. Not to mention, it dyed all of our beautiful lace rock green. John read that people have bleached their lace rock to rid the color but we were too afraid that we wouldn't be able to clear all the bleach with all the natural holes and crevices in the rock. So now, we've got 50lbs of ruined lace rock just sitting there. This entire 2-3 week span was just awful. The fish we grew out along with the rare finds we JUST purchased were pretty much living dead. While we were treating, we both knew in the back of our minds that even if we got rid of the disease, there was no way the fish could reverse their conditions.
Whether you're a fan of fish keeping or not, everyone who encounters a tank no matter the size always stops to look. So every passing was just super depressing. After we moved on from this horrific episode, we tried to determine how the disease got in our tank. I came up with the explanation that John had brought home 9 fish one day from a local fish store so I thought that was where the it came from. And after talking to a Petco rep, we were introduced to a flesh eating disease that fish develop when they become stressed. I believe it's called Columnaris. But you know how all fish carry diseases (ie. ick) and how it's just controlled and gets worse when stressed? Maybe this is how it emerged. Introducing that many fish in a tank at one time may have stressed them out. Regardless, it is done and over with and we have slowly rebuilt the tank. (This was written this past summer but like I said before, I'm a noob about blogging and haven't had a chance to post).
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Hello!
My name is Anna and I'm an engineer in Washington, DC. I live in Northern VA with my boyfriend. We're in our late 20's and share a love for traveling, experiences, food and fish! I've never considered blogging because there are so many blogs out there and I imagine it takes time to upkeep. Not to mention my lack of coding knowledge despite that one intro class I took in college. But after I realized the size of the fish fanatic community on the internet, I considered sharing our experiences with others in hopes to exchange information. So if you happened to stumble upon this noobie's blog, thanks for reading!
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