I really do miss writing here.  But I have been sick as a dog too….or should I say sick as my cat.  I have so many blog entries I have written in my head, I decided to forgive myself  for not being able to writ them and move on.  My crud started out as allergies, got my resp system all irritated and now it is a viral mess.  I am either coughing, snotting, blowing my nose, sleeping, reassuring people that I am alright regardless of that bit of lung I just coughed up, reassuring them I am not contagious, or complaining about how crap I feel.  That is about my existence these days since the weekend before Labor Day.  I am not on an inhaler and a nasal steroid- my doctor told me last week that it could be weeks before I a am well…..she sucks…but she was also right.

So funny story for today…..I went to the fish store and bought $50 worth of fish.  My tank was getting pretty low and I decided today was the day.  I added 16 new ones…yeah me!  After I had done about half of them, Barrie offers to help me put the rest in the tank.  Since you can’t add the fish store water to your tank, you have to fish the fish out of the little bag they send them home in and then add them to your tank.  There 3 fish in the bag, and they kept huddling in the corners of the bag, where the round net could not scoop them up.  So he takes the net and I try to push the fish through the bag into the net and he is all “No, no, that won’t work.”  So I just leave him with the net and the bag and walk away…he’s ticking me off.  I leave him for 5 minutes, when I walk back in he is holding the bag over the net and pouring the water and the fish supposedly into the net over the sink, with the open garbage disposal.  “I say can I help you? I don’t think that is a good idea..”  he offers me the net.  Now so far there are no fish in the net yet, they are all in the bag still.  He offers me the net and as he is pouring I move the net away from the open garbage disposal saying “maybe we should move it just in case…” but I get cut off by him saying “Stop moving the net.”  So I shut up and watch as he pours one fish into the net, and the other 2 are now stuck on the plastic in the bag.  So he starts shaking the bag over the net and one plops out and in the net and the last one does what?  You guessed it, plops into the sink and jumps like a fish out of water will do and hopped where?  Yup, right into the open garbage disposal.  I was furious and wanted to say about 50 nasty things but instead I walked to the tank, but the 2 in that I had, closed the lid and walked away again.  He went back to the sink, stuck his hand in the disposal, and felt around and poked at that fish until it jumped and he caught it and went over and put it in the tank, about 3 minutes he worked at the sink.  The 3 are swimming happily and we can’t tell which one had the garbage disposal adventure.  I am not sure what the problem was….maybe I am off, maybe Barrie is off.  He was really irritating me when we got home from the pet store…maybe he is tired to from the crap week and we were just rubbing each other the wrong way.  TGIF big time.  Hope the weekend is better- I know those fish are saying the same thing!

His name is James.  James the fish guy.  I am really buying into making my fish tank work.  It has been 5 weeks since I took my tank all the way back to basics.  I have been back to my LFS (local fish store) twice.  The first time I went looking for guy who helped me decide to buy the new light and totally redo it, I didn’t see him, he was off, but I did meet James.  James was a wealth of knowlegde and answered my questions even though he was technically off.  He took time with me and explained stuff to me and was just nice.  So Friday my reward for a hard week was to go to my LFS and talk with James.  I broke several speed limit laws to get there before he leaves at 4pm, and bless him he not only stayed late again to help me, but I took up 30 minutes of his time and he still had work to finish before he could leave.  This young guy is making an old woman happy!    He is teaching me about keeping a planted tank, and he is doing it in small chunks….my preferred learning style.

This weeks lesson consisted of checking my water (it was in good shape) then he talked about viewing the tank as it’s own ecosystem.  Everyone has a job to do, no freeloaders and you buy the worker fish first, then you get the pretty ones.  I bought 4 new  fish (2 flagfish and 2 algae sharks to start eating the algae that will come with more light and more plants).  I also bought 2 new plant bunches to hopefully fill out the tank a bit more.  Sensi warned me not to be impatient, the growth will come but I must not rush and make mistakes.  Today, I sat down and looked up the names of all the plants and fish I have now and saved this info so I can be in the know, and find it easily.  I think I am going to save it as an excel doc and put it on my phone so if I make a impromptu trip to my LFS, I’ll have the info.  And next time in respect to Sensi James (and the other people on the road) I am going to leave work earlier to respect his time and assistance.

This weekend, I have added over 20 new fish to my tank. It has been a long time since I have really done anything fish related since we did a overhaul on the lights back around the fall sometimes. I love keeping fish as a hobby, but I apparently suck at it because this hobby is all about me feeling inadequate and throwing money away. My fish are always dying, my plants are always dying, my tank is always not what I want it to be, and I can NEVER find the cause. One guy I talk to says I need more light, one guy I talk to says I need more nutrients, one guy I talk to says I need to do a water change, one guy I talk to says I need to buy new substrate. It is on and on. I try to get on the web and read or buy a book and read and I just get so confused I want to cry. I get so angry when fish die or plants die, because I can never seem to figure out what I am doing wrong. Honestly, every time I go to another person at the store with my long list of problems, I get a different answer; how infuriating is that? Barrie says “what makes you think it is anything you are doing? Well, of course it must be something I a doing (or not doing), the tank can’t ruin its self can it? Argh. I decided it had been a long time since I had had any new fish, so I went crazy. The store was having a kick butt sale, buy 2 get one free, buy 3 get one free…..so I couldn’t resist. Barrie went with me today and we even bought some new plants. Pulled the old plastic ones from tank that I bought the last time I was fed up with live plants, and put the new plants in. I hope everything goes well this time……

New Fish:

3 albino tiger barbs( some kind of weird variant, they look like tigers but their body is a light blue/green hue with black fins and mouth) These fish are the crazy relatives in the fish world. They will spend hours chasing each other around and around and around….always the same route through the tank.

3 rosy Barbs I love these fish!. They look like goldfish from a distance but up close the colors are really gold/red. They are great to have in a tank because they are manic too.

7 checker barbs smaller fish like neons but a pretty grey with a black checkerboard pattern on the body. Also the fins are orange….cute.

7 cherry barbs same as the checker barbs but they are red.

These were added to what I already had:

1 female betta, 2 green barbs and 2 regular tiger barbs, 5 yellow barbs, 3 cobalt blue gouramis, 4 rosy barbs 2 giant plecos

I could only find the name of one set of plants we bought today, (Anacharis (Egeria densa)
according to the web they are great for plan novices and grow fast an like low light….let’s see what happens….

Last weekend I did some over due fish stuff. I did a water change, gravel filtering, and filter maintenance. I rest my timer, and conditioned the water. My plants that are to supposed to die are starting to look damn awful, so I added a CO2 system. That along with the new plant minerals that I have to add daily will I hope perk up my plants. I also bought 10 new fish to add to my tank. After going to the Georgia Aquarium, I realized that I REALLY like schooling fish, so I bought blue longfined Danios. They school as a group, and sometimes they will join up with the black neons that I have in there…it looks pretty cool now. I will try to get some pictures today to add to my visual library and check in next month about the plants.

Yesterday I cleaned the gravel and did the water change.  Today I changed the filter.  I only have one pitiful high light plant left, I have replaced them all.  I finally got the java fern wired tied to the plant too.  All 3 catfish are still living, surprise, and I bought some new fish 4 black tetras and 2 barbs.  To lazy to take pictures today, but I will take  some tomorrow.

I lost a catfish today. For some reason, it makes me the mot mad when I lose a catfish. That just pisses me off. Of course, the tank was LONG overdue for some maintance, so after I found him, I got my ass in gear and did the do. I cleaned the gravel, the filter and did a water change. Hopefully no one else will kick the bucket. I even took pictures and in a month plan to take more so I can compare. I guess tomorrow as a treat I will stop by the fish store and get a new catfish, maybe the panda catfish that I love so much but always eem to kill, and maybe even some now regular fish and a few new plants. I lost the last amazon sword plant today. It looked AWFUL. The leaves were doing that decaying, holey thing that grosses me out…this time I even spent some time staring at it to see if it would send me over the deep end like before, it did not. I still have 3 more old plants to go. The 3 new low lite ones I bought last time look great. No decaying on the leaves so maybe this will solve my plant issues. I just need to stick to the low lite ones…but they grow so S-L-O-W! UGH. Atleast the big anubis has grown a new leaf since I put it in the tank. That is so very encouraging. Maybe it means I am not a plant growing failure after all. Another thing I cam cross off my list. Well, let’s see how the tank looks in a month shall we?