Bumble Bee Goby

Well it's almost time for Christmas break and I've been resolving the issues behind getting the fish into a location where they can be looked after while I am on vacation for three weeks. I have found someone to come look after then and I am going to be using two automatic feeders in the tanks hopefully they will function and work out well.

I also was able to get some Bumble Bee Gobies for the Figure Eight tank. There are now six of them and they are all TINY. Less than an inch each, much smaller than I had imagined. They are pretty fun to watch and are already eating and seem healthy.

This weekend I will be moving my DP tank from my dorm room into my girlfriend's apartment so they can be somewhere reachable over break and they won't freeze to death when the power is shut off in the dorms. It is going to be quite a job, but maybe it won't be as bad as I foresee.

There's really not a whole lot to comment on in general. The tanks are establishing themselves and are becoming pretty self reliant. I do water changes weekly, but I haven't had much need in testing them as often because the results are most always the same. I'll make sure to do some extra work in prepping the tanks for the break, and I'll try to get some BBG pictures up as soon as I can get some good ones.

Once again Clark Feed and Seed disappoints me. They were supposed to put in an order for Bumble Bee Gobies for me, but apparently the order was never placed and so they never came in. I'll wait another week for them now and see what happens. I don't really enjoy the owner or some of the people that work in the store, but they are a good store with quality fish and plants so they will continue to receive my business. If they had some competition then maybe their quality of service would have to improve, but they are the only decent pet store that carries fish around the Bellingham area that I know of.

The Figure Eight with the fin rot is getting treated in a bath for 2 hours a day now with Melafix/Pimafix, but he doesn't really seem to be reacting to the treatment. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that maybe he will pull through, but it's not looking too good.

While at Clark's I was able to get some more rocks for the tank. They have excellent prices for them so instead of paying 15 bucks for one of the rocks like they sell at Petco, I was able to get five of them for 20.

I came back to school from Thanksgiving break and nothing bad had happened to either of the tanks, which is good. However, one of the Figure Eights, the one that had the inflamed and fungus on his fin has taken a turn for the worse. His fin is looking pretty terrible and it has begun to affect his body and his movements. I've set up a 10 gallon as a sick tank and I am putting him in it 2 times a day for an hour with some medication in hopes that he will get better, but he is looking pretty rough.

The bumblebee gobies are supposed to be coming into the pet store tomorrow and they are supposed to call me when they are in, however last time I had them order me something they never got around to calling, so we'll have to see if that actually happens.

I hooked up the yeast CO2 thing that I had ordered a month ago and finally came in the mail. It seems to work alright, but considering how crazy the plants in the tank seem to be doing without it, I might remove it. I did some trimming in the dwarf puffer tank and I went a little crazy and thinned it out quite a bit, but honestly it had been so jungle-like that it was beginning to get out of hand. I've noticed quite a bit of algae growth in the tank since I got back to school and I can only assume that that is because I was not supplementing the tank with carbon when I was away. I think the carbon helps the plants but also helps keep the algae down in the tank. Oh well, maybe the ottos and shrimp will have lots to do now!

So it's been awhile since I've updated, but a lot has gone on since. I decided to upgrade the tank for the Figure Eights, so I got on the phone and contacted someone that had listed a 29 gallon hexagon on craigslist.com for $50. When I called her, the girl said that she would sell it for $30, which was an excellent deal, I probably would have given her 50 for it. So we drove out to Ferndale to look at it, and it was in good condition and came with a stand for it. Unfortunately, the hood for it had apparently broken, so that was a minor setback, but everything else was looking good. So I brought the tank back to my girlfriend's place and I set it up, cleaned it, and cut and built my own plexiglass hood for it. After I began attempting to fill the tank with water (Quite the task) I realized that the tank had to be bigger than 29 gallons. I did some research online and found that more than likely the tank is 35 gallons. So lucky for the F8's they've got lots and lots of room.

The same day that I was setting up the new tank, I received a shipment of shrimp from Snappy. I got five shrimp, three red cherry shrimp and two green shrimp. One of the RCS came carrying eggs, so in a few weeks I will likely have little shrimp in the tank granted they do not get eaten by the DPs before.The local fish store has ordered me some Bumblebee Gobbys which will be going into the Figure Eight tank. They are supposed to act like grumpy old men and are very territorial, but according to many sources make great tank mates with Figure Eights, so when I get back from Thanksgiving vacation they will be in and I'll be adding pictures of them up!

Achilles.

As you can see I was able to get a few decent pictures of the Figure Eights swimming around the tank. They are much easier to capture than the Dwarf Puffers because they are a little more slow going in the tank and they like the attention of the camera. The one above is the biggest with, as you can see a nice chunk of his tail fin missing. Other than that large portion, he seems to be in good condition and he's got very nice coloration. I've already been able to see a noticeable change in his tail and it looks like it's growing back nicely. They'll really be beautiful fish once they have the chance to heal up their battle wounds. The Figure Eight below is the smaller of the two and if you look at his dorsal fin you can see where it is inflamed and red, just right of the nice water splotch on the glass. He also is pretty banged up, but it's not nearly as noticeable on him as the other. I'm hoping that his fin heals back up with the medication I'm treating him for since he can barely seem to move it as is. It's hard to tell if the days worth of treatment has done much for him, but it certainly hasn't gotten worse.I noticed today that their water conditions had kind of gone mad and I can only assume that it is from the medication that I am adding to the tank to treat the fin rot. I'll probably end up having to do lots of water changes daily until things go back to being stable, but it's much less of a pain to change the water at my girlfriend's place than it is to do it in the dorms so I don't mind so much. Anyway, there are the two new fish, they seem to be fighting even less now than they were yesterday so maybe they've gotten tired of it. They seem to be pretty equal in dominance.