Tang update, and freshwater tank update

After spending the week looking for another suitable tang to go along with the yellow tang, nothing turned up. I didn't want to wait any longer starting preventative hyposalinity treatment on the yellow tang, so I think at this point, I'm finally ready to bring the initial stocking to a close. The yellow tang will finish his hypo treatment, and at that point, everybody except Sarge will go into the main. Within a week, Sarge will go in, and I'll deal with any stocking issues then.

Of course there will be more fish I want to get, but I don't want to prolong this process any more than I already have for a convenience issue. The benefits of adding the damsels last aren't worth the risk to all of the fish in quarantine right now. I'm pretty sure I want another tang, though I'm not sure what kind. Maybe certain types of butterfly fish or cardinals would also work. Once the tank is stocked and a new quarantine filter is ready to go, I can start looking locally for additional fish.

Anyways, things are going pretty well, and I want to focus on keeping them that way. The yellow tang has become sort of a picky eater, he eats the brine shrimp but he doesn't eat much algae anymore, so I'm going to try and get him to eat a more balanced diet with lots of vegetables. If Sarge can eat them, he can too.

Speaking of Sarge and his vegetables, sometimes he gets a little excited, and he's kind of a messy eater...

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/messyeater.jpg

The freshwater tank finally looks good enough that I'm not embarrassed to take a picture of it! I recently did some cleaning, and everybody (plant and animal) in the tank seems happy, especially Herbert. I'm probably going to order some more shrimp and some more plants and hopefully they'll do well with the proper food.


http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank.jpg

A quick update...

Some good news and some bad news. The good news, is that I've finally figured out how to make Blogger send E-mail notifications to people when I update the blog, so hopefully that will work this time. The bad news is that the powder blue tang got sick and died Monday night, it happened so quickly that I didn't even have time to really get hyposalinity treatment started. This weekend we'll probably get another tang and start with a whole bunch of preventative measures, so if that happens, there will be pictures this weekend.

It was bound to happen...

Well, I was warned to be cautious with the tangs, and last night I'm glad I was. The powder blue tang appears to be sick. I've separated the two tangs in their quarantine by putting an eggcrate barrier in between them, hopefully this will keep the yellow tang from picking on the powder blue too much, and it will make it easier for the powder blue to eat. They're both still eating, but it's pretty clear by now that the powder blue isn't doing too well. Here are some recent pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue03.jpg

...and some more from last night, when it was a little worse.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue05.jpg

I've asked around online and I'm going to start hyposalinity treatment tonight, along with some de-worming medication (even if that's just preventative). Once the powder blue is better, it will probably be at least a month before they get to go into the main tank at this point. I'm contemplating putting some of the smaller damsels into the main tank before this happens, but Sarge is finally starting to settle in to his new home and I would hate to take him from there if he didn't want to leave... I'll post updates as they happen.

On a lighter note, I saw something kind of cool in the display tank -- I thought one of the hermit crabs was going to change shells, but he eventually decided against it. Here's a picture of that:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish11.jpg

Also, the freshwater tank is starting to recover from the algae attack. Dosing the tank with nitrates seems to be helping, and I trimmed down the parts of the java fern that were covered in algae. It's not picture-worthy yet, but I put a piece of cucumber in the tank for Herbert, and even though Herbert didn't appear interested, guess who did?

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish12.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish13.jpg

Ctanley just wouldn't leave that thing alone... Also, one of the black neon tetras has taken to sticking his tail into the bubbles coming out of the pink coral. He's starting to get one of the other black neons to do it as well. I got a couple of pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish14.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish15.jpg