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.

The Figure Eights are in their tank and they seem to be doing good. They've been exploring all over it and for the most part the two get along. They fight a LOT when it's time to be fed though, and it's pretty troubling to watch, but once the food is gone they swim together and seem to forget all about fighting 10 minutes before. I have some pictures on my camera of them, they're a lot easier to capture than the DPs are, but I just don't have the time tonight to post them, I'll try and get to it tomorrow.

One of the F8s seems to be suffering from a little fin rot, so I got him the medicine to fix it and he's undergoing treatment. All of the fish in the store had some pretty torn up fins which I can only imagine is from being shipped and then stored in a tank with a bunch of Green Spotted Puffers. Either way, treating their fins is probably a good idea. I've been assured from many sources that fins will grow back and heal very quickly, so the new fish should be fine, they just need some time to heal, they have been banged up pretty badly. I'm slowly adding marine salt to their tank to hopefully get the Specific Gravity up to 1.008, it's already at 1.004 so it's getting to what will be optimal low end brackish water for the puffs.

Snappy is sending me some shrimp that she has bred, Green Shrimp, and Red Cherry Shrimp which are going to be a colorful addition to my DP tank. After getting and testing the Ghost Shrimp in the DP tank (They are a dollar for three because they are considered feeder shrimp) I am excited to get some bright color added to the tank and they should be fun to watch. Apparently, they breed very easily so maybe I'll have some little shrimp on my hands that I could sell.

Not much else to comment on for tonight. I'll try and post some pictures as soon as I can, keep in mind the poor F8s are still recovering from being pretty banged up so their fins don't look all that hot, but they have nice round bellies and they seem to be pretty happy.

Yesterday I got my shipment of plants from Snappy and they were great, she sent me tons at a very, very low price and all of the plants appeared to be in top notch condition. I arranged the new plants and the fish seemed pretty excited to have more places to explore. I took some pictures and got a few somewhat decent ones. Fish are extraordinarily difficult to photograph unless you can find a way to distract them so they can stop moving for a second.

Since I hadn't been able to get any pictures of any of the Ottos, I finally caught one while he was upside down and exposed. They are easy to get pictures of during the day when they're out in the open because they just sit still for long periods of time during the day.

Also, I dropped a snail in to the tank and was able to catch Achilles as she was hunting it. Achilles often gets the snails out of their shell before they even hit the ground in the tank, but in this instance I got lucky. It's an ok picture, but I wish I could manage to get some better ones!

Well this evening I added two 20 watt compact fluorescent bulbs to the tank at 6500K which should be better for the plants. It's a much "redder" light than the old bulbs that I had in there, so it should be better for the plants. The lights were pretty cheap and it really upped the wattage on the tank from 20 watts to 40... However, after adding the new lights the loaches have been acting very odd. I'm not sure if it's because the new light is easier for them to see in because it is more yellow/red, or if they are just feeling spunky for some reason, but I got a pretty funny picture of a loach actually digging himself under one of the plants and coming up on the other side.

I might be getting the call for the new Figure Eights tomorrow, but it might also be another week. Snappy's plants will be arriving tomorrow, which will be pretty awesome, and hopefully by tomorrow night I will be more satisfied with how the tank looks.

Sad news. Two of my DPs passed away today. Hector died sometime during the night and I could not find her until I took the filter apart and saw that she had been caught in the intake. The male died also today this evening while I was out with friends for my birthday dinner. I honestly believe that both fish died from the internal parasites that they had been suffering from. I ended up buying a new DP today while I was out after Hector died and I have decided to name her Dot. She looks very healthy and hopefully won't suffer from IP like the other two did. I am going to treat her with the IP medication just to make sure that nothing bad happens to her.

Snappy from the plantgeek.net forum has sold me some plants from her crops, they should be here by Wednesday so I'll have some new foliage to add to the aquascape. I intend to get one more male puffer for the tank now that the guy I had died. Picking out a male is kind of difficult, but I wouldn't mind getting stuck with another female, it really isn't all that important.

It's possible that my Figure Eights will be getting in this week which will be pretty cool. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Well today as I was changing the water in the F8 tank I had a heater explode of me, which sent me out to Petco today to get a new one. While I was out I also went to Wal-Mart and got two light timers so my tanks can get on a regularly regimented time schedule for light and day.

I really wish that the two puffers with IP would start eating and get better, I can't seem to find a way to cure them and they don't really seem all that interested in eating or trying to eat, they just keep getting worse and worse. All of the other fish in the tank seem to be doing great, though, and the F8 tank seems to be fully cycled and I'm just waiting for the new fish to come in to the fish store.