Hi All, back with another installment of "community". But before I go any further I want to sincerely thank both
@Danno11 &
@Guppylover3x! I do my best to keep my fish happy, and healthy.
I have another fun story board, that's almost soap opera worthy. This fish tail, or rather tale, stars three fish characters from a 50G breeder tank that contains quite a few other residents.
Over the years I have found that fish, like ALL animals, do have personalities. These personalities originate from two basic camps. One extroverted, and one introverted. Now, I'm certainly not gonna go all Myers Briggs on everyone here, but I will state unequivocally that from these two basic personality platforms, there are in fact numerous fractional diversities in personality characteristics that fish exhibit in terms of their observed fish behavior.
Our story begins one day when I happened to walk into the room containing the aforementioned tank and sat down to observe them in my typical slacker fashion. I wasn't really focused on much of anything in particular until I realized that I had managed to interject my tank side presence right in midst of some significant fish hanky panky goings on. Shamefully, I must admit that it was a rather fascinatingly forbidden spectacle to behold.
Leading up to this time I had been feeding the 6 angels in this tank frozen bloodworms one or two times a day. Now you can't just feed fish protein rich foods all the time. Most all the fishes that I keep, especially lori's and angels, do in fact need other plant based nutrients in order to have that which effectively mimics their natural varied balanced diet. I do know that the blood worms are specifically what put them in the mood though.
Few people that keep fish think about the fact that fish in the wild are ravenous eaters that almost never stop eating as their growing. Even when they're adults, apart from annual or naturally scheduled spawners that fast for a period of time relative to spawning, they eat MUCH more than the average aquarist can or is willing to feed them.
Having noticed in the proceeding few weeks that two of my wild angels had paired up, been getting frisky, and at times hinting at courtship behavior, I really wasn't completely surprised. However, it was an unexpected sight, and I certainly was delighted to watch the female gracefully depositing her eggs in neat, yet tightly condensed vertical rows, so that the male could return from his constant nearby sentinel duty to fertilize the fresh eggs. As he did his part, she would take turns making certain that no other midwater fish came anywhere near her eggs. They both were colored up to an extreme degree, as they both literally glowed with an almost unnatural vibrance of hormone induced
coloration.
Deep down inside I was both thrilled and troubled simultaneously. And no, I don't mean that I had a guilty conscience from watching them do the "wild thang"either. I was troubled because I had nothing prepared to put the piece of slate in that the eggs had been deposited on. Actually, the only way that I would have done such an extraction is if I could have isolated the male and female prior to spawning to begin with. Call me irresponsible if you like, but breeding is simply something that I'm not prepared to take on, or rather, facilitate at this time. At least not with any real degree of proficiency due to my present space and time limitations. So I did what any respectable fish keeper would do. I sat there taking rather lame photos and videos of the action that was unexpectedly unfolding in front of me until I noticed some shadowy movement of a different sort in the tank.
Yes, you guessed it, or perhaps you haven't yet, but having kept plecos forever I know that they are not exactly the most discriminating nor discreet bunch of fish in the pond so to speak. This is especially true when it comes to their ravenous appetites. This tank has roughly 10 plecos in it and most of these are relatively small, except for one...
Enter Lurch, the tank butler. Lurch is a well meaning, and gentle chap of a pleco. His personality is one of complete amiable ease and on this fine day, he was truly in an exceptionally rare and wondrous form. Unfortunately, this included one of Lurch's most consistent and dependable trademarks, a thoroughly ravenous appetite. It's nothing for him to polish off 4 big Hikari spirulina wafers each day. There he was peeking out from behind the very piece of slate upon which all the angel couple's eggs were neatly strewn. Even though I'll provide a couple of current tank photos here, the glare and reflections on this tank were a nightmare while all this was taking place. I really apologize for not having better documentation here. I actually recorded a video on my phone before these photos were taken, but it's so bad that I wouldn't even attempt to include it here, as the photos are bad enough! I have since started using my camera exclusively to shoot fish photos.etween the blurry images, as well as the tank being far less than dressed out due to being a very new set up, I give you the rest of this fishy tale in what are far less than stellar phone photos. I'll also include a few photos of relevant members in their more so newly decorated digs...
lol!
