You have to leave room in life to Dream.
~Buffy Sainte-Marie

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Fish Drama

Last night I went to the fish room to feed the fish. I didn't see our wrasse. Strange. He's usually the hungry one. Out of habit I checked the floor behind the tank (we have been known to have some suicidal fish in the past). Not there either. While that is a good thing, I was very puzzled. Then I checked out the overflow box to see if the air bubble needed to be removed (hard to explain, but there is a U-tube that goes from the inside of the tank to a box outside that brings water out of the tank to go to the other tank to circulate the water to maximize oxygen flow. Sometimes air bubbles form in the U and cause the syphon to break. So, every once in a while I remove the air bubble with a hose... anyway, probably getting too technical). The U-tube looked fine, but guess who was in the small box?! The wrasse! He must have tried to jump but landed in the box (thankfully) instead! So Ben came down to help me fish (hee hee) him out of there.

So why do fish jump from tanks? The most common reason is because the water is not to their liking (too warm, too salty, not salty enough, etc.) the other common reason is out of fright from a predator. After checking salinity and temperature, we think it was too warm for our little fish. With the weather going back and forth between cold and warm, we don't have the air on any more and yesterday it was warm outside causing the house to be warmer and causing the tank to be warmer.

1 comment:

Sara said...

Well I'm glad he's still alive! It would be sad to lose another one.