lydy | As the Water Churns

I wonder if there's something seriously wrong with my 20 gallon tank, or if I'm just having a bad run of luck, or something else. I don't know. Friday night, one of my glass catfish was swimming in circles, with occasional darting. Glass catfish, also called ghost glass fish, or ghost glass catfish, are completely transparent. Really. They're odd and remarkable. Their usual behavior is to hang in place, undulating quickly, usually behind plants in a good current. Swimming in broad circles is not normal behavior. Neither is darting, especially not since he kept on running into things. Very bad. I put him in the hospital tank on Saturday, and have tried various medications on him. He's gotten a little better, and then a little worse, and as of last night, he looked pretty bad.

Tropical fish diseases are either remarkably under-researched, or the information is hidden from profane eyes as if it were the inner rites of the OTO. The woman at the fish store said that he had "whirling disease", and that it was not only incurable but genetic. The Web says that whirling disease is common amongst trout and salmon, and is caused by a two-stage parasite. So, yet again, common terms among aquarists have no relationship to the rest of the world. What does my pretty little glass fish have? I haven't a foggy clue. I'm going to have to put him down, tonight. He's still swimming in circles, he's stopped eating, and his body is becoming foggy. One of the fascinating facts about ghost glass catfish is that they become opaque after death, even though they are completely transparent while alive. I'm assuming that the fogginess in his abdomen means that tissue is dying.

I hate putting down fish. I use clove oil, so it's not a very gruesome process, but I always feel sorry and guilty. After all, the poor beast was my responsibility once I bought him. I bought three glass catfish last February. What can the trouble be, that he's dying now? It's not something from the outside, after all this time. All the new fish have been through at least a 2 week quarantine before being added to the tank. You know what's worse than putting a fish down? Putting him down while having absolutely no clue why. Is there a contagious disease loose in my aquarium? Is it an isolated incident? Are all my fish going to die? Is there anything I can do? And what about...Naomi?

I'm also down to one loach -- again. The clown loaches are another mystery. They must die, there's no way to jump out of the tank, but there are also no corpses in the water. I've lost, what, six or seven loaches, all together, and never a single body in all that time. Not in the filter, not in a hidey-hole, not floating, not on the bottom, they just vanish, without a trace. The last one to vanish was rather sickly-looking. He'd had a bad case of Ich, along with the green neons, but all of them had recovered from that. He'd been tooling about the tank cheerfully with the other loach, poking around and having fun for several weeks after being sick. He remained too skinny, and his tail was frayed, but I figured he'd recover over time. Guess not. It's less distressing to have a fish vanish than it is to have to put one down, but I'm left with the same questions, which really boil down to, "What the hell is going on?"

The bright spot is my 30 gallon tank. I bought a cute baby blood parrot, still all brown and stripey, and a turquoise severum, about a third the size of the full-grown one there. The larger blood parrot in that tank is called Wesley, The Dread Parrot Roberts, so I've named the little one Buttercup. I sing the Gilbert and Sullivan song to her, cross-threading my literary references. The severum looks blue/purple in some lights, and I've named him Hello, My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die. Usually, though, I abbreviate it to Inigo. (And before you start raving about the movie, please be aware that I have an extremely limited tolerance for the movie, and am often moved to hate it thoroughly. The book is the thing I treasure. [The first edition paperback also has what may be the most inappropriate cover art, ever.]) Last Sunday, I was in the fish store looking for medicine for the glass fish, and noticed that they were having a sale on angel fish. I bought 3 golden angel fish, each the size of a quarter. I can't tell them apart, so I call them the Three Silver Pennies.

I'd hoped to move the bristle-nose pl*co, Pachinko, over to the 30 gallon soon, but I think I'll wait a while longer. The 30 gallon needs a good algae eater, but it doesn't need a communicable disease.

I lost two mystery snails, too, just recently. They were in the 6 gallon. Could it just be the heat? 90 degrees is not a good temperature for fish. Hmm. Floating bags of ice can lower the temperature, but it's remarkably labor-intensive, and I'm not home during the day, so I have to dump the problem on my housemates, which I hate to do.

Fish! Plants! Arghh!