Fish Stories

Sadly, our fish tank has taken a back seat lately. Having set it up in a back room that we never go in has made it far too easy to just forget about. Don't worry, the fish are still fed on a regular basis. But as a result of our lack of attention, our tank isn't doing too well.

After Malaysia, I haven't seen our urchin.

While in Austin, our yellow fish jumped out of the tank.

At some point in time, our mandarin goby went missing.

Our Wrasse is sick.

Anyway, once Ben gets home for longer than a few days, we're going to start to make the tank a priority again. It can't return our losses, but at least it will make the tank a happier place for the remaining inhabitants.

Ben's Birthday

Last Saturday was Ben's birthday. I felt really bad because I wanted to plan something special, but I wasn't even able to get to the store and get his presents. But we had a great day. I let Ben plan out the whole day. We started off with some orange rolls. Then we went on a family walk. We went to Bhan Thai for eggs rolls and fried rice for lunch. We worked on some fish tank stuff. Then we had pizza for dinner and watched a movie. It was a fun filled day. It should be his birthday more often!

Amazing Life

A few months back we accidentally left the water on in our main fish tank. We didn't discover it until the next day. (Once again thankful that the tank isn't on our wood floors or carpets!). The tricky part is that since the fresh water was added slowly, you can't just remove water and add more salt as that will shock everything (re: possibly kill). So, you need to slowly adjust the salinity. We thought that the water would evaporate more quickly than it did, so we ended up waiting a week before intervening after about a week by slowly removing water and adding salt (over the course of another week or so). We were really scared that we would loose everything. Our poor little urchin give me a scare a time or two. Amazingly, we lost very little. We did loose our serpent stars and some of our coral. But the fish all made it. And some of our coral is making a comeback. I really was surprised at how much survived! Just goes to show how good life is at adapting to change. Life is a pretty amazing thing.

Startled

Saturday I walked into the fish room to turn the tank lights on. Usually I just walk into the dark room and flip the switch. That day I had taken two or so steps into the room when I heard a very distinctive splash. I quickly flipped on the room lights and went to the back of the tank. Sure enough, Mr. Wrasse had jumped out! I quickly scooped him up and put him back in the tank. He hung around the bottom acting all weird (and rightly so, I mean, he just spent 30 seconds or so on the floor after dropping a few feet). Finally he vanished underneath the sand (that's where he sleeps). I really thought that would be the last time I saw him. I watched for a few minutes and then went upstairs to tell Ben.

An hour or so later, I peeked in and there the wrasse was, swimming around as if nothing had happened! I was so happy! And so far he hasn't shown any effects from his adventure. He is still swimming and eating. Yea!!

I really think I just happened to startle him and that caused him to jump. But since he has had suicidal tendencies before, I decided to try and prevent future near misses. I installed "anti-suicide" barriers along the top of the tank (extra plastic pieces). I'm hoping this will help.

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.

Fun with Fish

Every morning before I leave for work, I check on the fish tanks. Why? I'm not sure. I don't expect to find anything. This morning was a different story...

I walked in the room and quickly realized (due to lack of "white" noise) that nothing was on. No pumps, no heaters, no anything. What?! My brain was kind of working this morning, so I realized that the circuit had been tripped (not sure if that's the right term - the whole room is on one of those outlets that when too much current is drawn it shuts it down and you have to push the "reset" button on the outlet). So, I reset it. And it turned off again. We haven't changed anything since the big move, so I was very confused. I tried again (if at first you don't succeed...). Still didn't work. Hmmmm.... So I thought of some things that weren't "necessary" for the short term and unplugged those items. After unplugging and resetting a few times, I finally got everything to stay on. So I raced off to work (cuz now I'm running late).

On the way to work I text Ben so that he knows what is going on. Just as I returned to my desk after my 8 am meeting, he calls to find out what circuit I'm talking about. So I tell him and tell him what I unplugged. Turns out the one thing (pH probe) I took out, also turns on the heaters. Oops! So I decide that between all of my meetings today, I would run home and turn the heater back on.

I got home and was talking to my mom (van broke down in Iowa last night on the way home from Virginia) and noticed right away that something didn't sound right. I let Zoey out (she was going crazy) and went to see what was making the noise. I nearly slipped on the floor because it was wet!! (Enter frantic/panic mode). I unplugged the pump that was making all the noise (because it was out of the water). Panicked for a little bit then called Ben. He was able to cancel some of his meetings and come home. In the meantime, I cleaned up all the water, started to replug things back in, make salt water, scratch Zoey behind the ears, etc.

By the time Ben got home, everything was up and running except the part that circulates the water between the tank and the sump (big thingy that holds extra water and rocks to help keep the tank perimeters steady). We got that working again. And everything is happy once more.

So what happened?
1. The heater in the sump died. For some reason when heaters die they draw more current, thus tripping the circuit. (The heater is now replaced).
2. The syphon that pulls water out of the tank broke (we have no idea how). That caused water to stop flowing out but water still flowed in until the pump was out of the water. The tank overflowed resulting in water on the floor.

The "funny" thing was that these two events are completely unrelated! They just "happened" to occur on the same day. And the pump that ran itself dry just "happens" to be close to the top of the water, so really we only lost about four gallons of water (all on easy-to-clean linoleum).

I'm just so thankful that I checked this morning because otherwise our little fishies probably would have been very unhappy (aka dead).

Closure

The other day, Blackie (pink tail trigger) was not out swimming around. Bad sign. No sign of him when we fed the tank that night. Really bad sign. Ben said gently, "You know that probably means he's dead, right?" And yes, I knew that. But I was still holding out hope. He hadn't been sick as far as we knew so it seemed possible that he was just hiding (OK, not really, but you can't just give up).

Tonight while I was making dinner (bbq ribs, twice backed potatoes, corn bread muffins) I looked in the tank and saw his body. While I really did know he wasn't with us any more, it was still nice to see his actual body (albeit gross) to know that for sure.