It's all too much

[lydy]

It's pretty much been nothing but bad news for a while, now, in my fish-keeping world. I've been having a major die-off in my 20 gallon tank, my first one. Oh, it also has really ugly algae, but that's merely tedious and annoying. From a population of almost 30 eight months ago, I'm down to 7 tetras and 2 white clouds. The pl*co is in the hospital tank, and I don't expect him to survive. He's got a huge area underneath his right pectoral fin that looks to be a bloody mass, possibly where some parasitic cysts have ruptured, and a bloody nodule between his gills and his eye. He has several additional cysts on his ventral side. I'm continuing to treat him, but he's not really responding. Last night and this morning, he was hanging out in full view -- something he never, ever does. He's always in hiding. There's a fish-vet here, and she's going to make up some medicated food for him, and I'll pick it up on Thursday, but I don't know that he'll live to Thursday, and I have grave doubts about it working anyway.

I lost my last cory cat from that tank a couple of weeks ago. He never looked sick. I think he may have died because there were no other cory cats for him to be with. They're schooling fish. I'd wanted to move him to the 30 gallon, which has several corys and everyone there appears to be healthy, but I wasn't sure if he could carry whatever my pl*co was dying of to the 30 gallon, and was unwilling to take the risk.

My betta, Ruby Tuesday, dropped dead one day of no known cause. He was voracious that morning. When I came home from work, he was too weak to get away from the intake tube for the filter. I went downstairs to tell DDB that my betta was sick, and I wasn't sure what to do about it, since I had no idea what was wrong with him. I came upstairs to discover one of my mystery snails snacking on Tuesday. Ah, the joys of Nature, red in tooth and claw.

Sunday, I had to euthanize a tetra. I always hate doing that. It went well enough, as these things go. I got the proportion of vodka to clove oil to water close to ideal, and the fish slowed down and stopped, not showing much in the way of distress other than the usual panic of having been moved from the aquarium to a small glass.

This morning, I came to work to find Phailin, the betta, dead. Phailin is kind of my first fish. I had an employee that suggested getting a small aquarium and a fish to beautify the desk, and I went ahead and put in a request. It was approved, and Jennifer bought the aquarium and Phailin, who was a crown-point, midnight blue beta. Very attractive. I started reading up on how to take care of fish, and was pretty soon over-ruling Jessica's judgment on what needed to be done (which didn't please her, I suspect), and ended up taking care of the beast full time. This was so interesting that I bought a 20 gallon aquarium for my home. I'm up to 5 tanks at home, and another one almost ready to be put into commission.

I feel exhausted, and I have a splitting head ache. I want to go home and take a nap.

Comments

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Kind of you to offer the convicts, but I really can't take them. I need to figure out what the hell's been going on, and then do something about it. This may or may not involve taking the 20 gallon completely apart, washing it in bleach, and starting over. I don't know what I'm going to do about the neons and white clouds still there. Are they sick? Are they carrying pests? At this point, I might as well do something pretty drastic about the 20 gallon. I haven't liked the way it's looked for a while, now, so now's the time to either replace it (and the 6 gallon) with a larger tank (say a 30 or 40), or completely redesign the 20 gallon. Any way you look at it, I'm not ready for new fish any time soon.