Fish Chronicles

We've been enjoying second-hand visits to a fantastic salt-water aquarium at the home of our friends, David and Teresa, and figured, hey, why not find yet another hobby to dump money into?

So, we got a second-hand salt-water aquarium, 100 gallon oak pedestal, with all the acoutrements at a very reasonable price, around Christmas 2000. Here's a chronicle of our experiences, with pictures and, I'm sure, a web-cam to follow:

January 2002

Purchased a new lawnmower blenny, which seems to be adjusting quite well to the tank and already munching down on our algae problem.

December 2001

On a whim, purchased a pair of coral catfish. I have grown to really love them. They are fascinating to watch, as they swim together constantly, and really unusual looking. They are eating some algae, but not enough to dent our huge problem (sigh).

November 2001

Our tank is still ticking along. We had a bit of an algae problem that bloomed due to our total immersion in a community theatre production of Brigadoon, but we're slowly putting it back into shape.

July 2001

Why didn't someone tell us that our initial store misled us? Chocolate chip starfish FEED on snails. They don't just scavenge the dead and sick ones, they KILL them. That probably explains why we have only one surviving snail left. Egads. Murder and mayhem in the tank.

We also developed a pH level problem, which we've been combating with buffer. Our water has gotten much improved.

Much to our dismay, we discovered a nasty bristleworm in our tank substrate. We managed to find him and send him to the sewer system.

We bought a small 10gallon tank to house the starfish, along with one blue damsel that appears to have gotten crossways with the other two damsels, who had picked this one almost to death. The isolated damsel is now doing quite well in the new small tank with the starfish.

May 2001

Tina the tang is still thriving, as are the clowns, damsels, and starfish. However, we've lost several snails and crabs. Starfish are incredibly vigilant, and the second a snail gets a bit slow, why those little scavengers are right in there munching down. Such is life.

April 2001

Our store went out of business. So, we didn't let it die in vain, we bought a ton of stuff at huge discount. Tons of new living rock. We have now added four percula clowns, one yellow tang named Tina, two chocolate chip starfish (named chip and chocolate), more snails and crabs. Yes, I know, when you name them, that's when they start dying... So far so good though!

March 2001

The lawnmower blenny suddenly died. It apparently had some sort of intestinal problems, and basically just starved to death. Egads. Then, we acquired three Sally LightFoot crabs, one of which was DOA unfortunately. One day I came home and thought that one of them had died, but realized finally that it had shed its exoskeleton because it had grown. Now that's a weird thing. Several days later, though, I think it really did die. We're letting it sit there for a day to make sure it's really dead and not just molting again. Sigh.

After further investigation, we discovered the problem was a high phosphate level. We went to our favorite fish store, where they are sometimes quite helpful but sometimes play this little guessing game with you that can be irritating.

Store

Invertebrates died because your phosphate's too high

Me

What do we do about high phosphate

Store

Usin' tap water?

Me

Yes

Store

Shouldn't use tap water, it's high in phosphates

Me

Okay, but we did, and we have a 120-gallon tank, what should we do?

Store

Don't use tap water

Me

Okay, we've addressed that, but NOW what do we do?

Store

Use RO water

Me

Okay, okay, I will from now on. But what do we do NOW?

Store

Oh. You can buy a phosphate sponge to get the phosphates out

Me

$15? heck of a deal better than emptying the aquarium and starting over, why didn't you say that in the first place?

February 2001

We have progressed to the point of acquiring our first fish. We took David's advice and got four yellow-tailed blue damsels. These are colorful fish, fairly hardy, relatively non-aggressive, and most importantly cheap.

One of our fishes was a bit undersized and weak when we got them, and has since had the proverbial burial at sea.

We developed a rather alarming algae problem, and subsequently purchased a lawnmower blenny (algae eater) and three snails. The largest snail is a total dud. The smallest snail is pretty ineffectual in cleaning. The middle-sized snail is, well, just right. It's eating like a little snail-pig, and has almost cleaned the entire front side of the aquarium in two days time.

January 2001

We had to figure out how all the pumps went together, with the help of David, and discovered that one of the pumps was burned out, but other than that everything was in fairly good shape.

This month was spent getting the water in reasonable condition, purchasing substrate and living rock, and getting our lights in order.

December 2000

It took us about a month to get it moved into the house, because it's incredibly heavy even without water. We bartered with Lisa and Blair to use our trailer for moving some furniture in exchange for helping move it into the living room. Not sure who got the bum deal.