OP
OP
Bruce Leyland-Jones
Fish Aficionado
The black neons have settled in nicely and I'm playing that game of There's Always One...
You count the fish and the first five are easy, but finding the sixth is/was a bit of a challenge...and it's never the same fish. Of course, I could cheat and simply count them, come feeding time, but where's the fun in that?
Seems they like to hang around as a shoal every now and then, especially at Feeding Frenzy time*, but then also split up into smaller groups of two and three, with one 'elsewhere'.
There's a reasonable bit of flow in the tank, provided by two air stones and my Juwel filter, but there are also lots of quiet areas, provided by the larger plants and bogwood.
If this was a bigger tank, they'd probably shoal/school all the time, but my 20 gallon is small enough for them to stay in touch with each other without having to do so.
Given the static nature of my water parameters, I grew distrustful of the sticks I was using for KH, GH, pH, Nitrite and Nitrate, so I'm now using liquid tests for the last two, alongside a liquid test for ammonia. After all that, the results remain static at;
Ammonia at 0.
GH 60mg/L
KH 40mg/L
pH 7.0
NO2 Nitrite 0mg/L
NO3 Nitrate 0mg/L
I did keep finding one Zebra nerite, belly-up, at the foot of my heater. Paying close attention, I found that this particular snail likes to warm its foot on the heater and I imagine it drops off whenever the heater switches on and it gets a tad warm. The fact that these snails seem incapable of righting themselves does not make my life, (or theirs), easier. Thick, or what? I've since moved it to the far side of the tank and hope that it'll find better feeding grounds, before it works its way back.
Glowlights next.
*I'm feeding them twice at day, but deliberately not the same time every day. As far as I know, food never follows a tight schedule in the wild and, whilst I accept that these are farm-bred fish, a little variety provides stimulation. That said, they already seem to know I'm 'something of interest' and they certainly enjoyed the frozen (defrosted) bloodworm I gave them. (Who says only Oscars will eat out of your fingers?)
You count the fish and the first five are easy, but finding the sixth is/was a bit of a challenge...and it's never the same fish. Of course, I could cheat and simply count them, come feeding time, but where's the fun in that?
Seems they like to hang around as a shoal every now and then, especially at Feeding Frenzy time*, but then also split up into smaller groups of two and three, with one 'elsewhere'.
There's a reasonable bit of flow in the tank, provided by two air stones and my Juwel filter, but there are also lots of quiet areas, provided by the larger plants and bogwood.
If this was a bigger tank, they'd probably shoal/school all the time, but my 20 gallon is small enough for them to stay in touch with each other without having to do so.
Given the static nature of my water parameters, I grew distrustful of the sticks I was using for KH, GH, pH, Nitrite and Nitrate, so I'm now using liquid tests for the last two, alongside a liquid test for ammonia. After all that, the results remain static at;
Ammonia at 0.
GH 60mg/L
KH 40mg/L
pH 7.0
NO2 Nitrite 0mg/L
NO3 Nitrate 0mg/L
I did keep finding one Zebra nerite, belly-up, at the foot of my heater. Paying close attention, I found that this particular snail likes to warm its foot on the heater and I imagine it drops off whenever the heater switches on and it gets a tad warm. The fact that these snails seem incapable of righting themselves does not make my life, (or theirs), easier. Thick, or what? I've since moved it to the far side of the tank and hope that it'll find better feeding grounds, before it works its way back.
Glowlights next.
*I'm feeding them twice at day, but deliberately not the same time every day. As far as I know, food never follows a tight schedule in the wild and, whilst I accept that these are farm-bred fish, a little variety provides stimulation. That said, they already seem to know I'm 'something of interest' and they certainly enjoyed the frozen (defrosted) bloodworm I gave them. (Who says only Oscars will eat out of your fingers?)
