blogtribe

We were told last time we went to the pet shop that if we didn’t get our nitrate problem under control we’d (or rather our fish would be) be in serious trouble. Then after being offered some friendly (and very helpful) advice from another customer at that time we now have a nitrate level within acceptable limits :) Staff in pet shop were telling us to feed less often and do plenty of water changes which was good advice but the best bit of advice came from the customer, we’d been doing the water changes to no avail until he suggested we buy a gravel filter and change the water that way, because if the waste causing the nitrates was in the gravel changing the water from the top of the tank wasn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference. Basically a piece of pipe attached to a plastic tube, syphon the water from the tank through the tube and pipe by “dabbing” the tube into the gravel, this disturbs the gravel and any waste sitting there goes up the tube and into the bucket, empties water and waste for your change. After a week of regular cleaning and syphoning our nitrate levels are negligible, so thank you anonymous customer guy, much appreciated :)

We bought a couple more fish today to replace some of the lost ones, first for the living room tank we got 2 Black Widow Tetras (Gymnocorymbus ternetzi) and a live plant which also should help the nitrates. For the kitchen tank to join our rogue Angel fish we got another Angel and an Upside Down Catfish (Synodontis Nigriventris) which is the weirdest and also most brilliant thing I’ve seen. :D We’re going to go back and get him another few friends as we found they like to hang around in groups. We also added a live plant or two.

We also found out what our original catfish was the other week but I forgot to say, it is a Synodontis Eupterus or ‘Featherfin Catfish‘ . A lovely looking thing when you can actually catch a glimpse of it, as it doesn’t appear until way after dark.

Signing off tonight with: [Freebird (Full Version) by Lynyrd Skynyrd] from the album [While My Guitar Gently Weeps II (D2)] [03:08/09:08]