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Hey guys!
After dealing with a 4 day long power outage last weekend and having to work double shifts most of the week, I was feeling pretty burnt out and bummed by having to skip a weekly water change in my tanks for the first time ever. Feeling super uncomfortable after letting the tanks go for 2 weeks and dreading having to do extensive maintenance on all 5 tanks, I was rewarded with 2 surprises after an awful week.
The first being in my 3ft newt paludarium. Some of you may remember from my journal that I used some of my killifish I bred in 2018 to check the stability of the water with concerns of silicone leech before introducing my newts upon completion of the build. Now I've had these killies for 4 years in the same tank and never noticed them mating or any eggs. Somehow though, while doing a water change on the paludarium I found a fish fry! So completely unbelievable and the only way I can think of a fry being in there would be the killies. However the killies were only in the tank for about a week and that was over 2 months ago. It's pretty bizarre but I'm 90% sure it's a gardneri killi fry. It's been such a long time since I've reared killifish so I can't remember what they looked like at 10-12 weeks old, but this dude is pretty small and just beginning to develop. Maybe it's possible an egg made its way to a damp part of the tank and sat dormant for a few weeks and somehow got flushed into the submerged portion and hatched? Who knows. The last aquatic plant introduction was a TC plant, so I can't really see any other way a fish egg could have gotten in the tank otherwise. Pretty awesome if you ask me! I had not planned on keeping any fish in with my newts for worry of disease contamination, but considering this is a fry born in the tank and most likely came from fish I bred and have had for a long time, I'm going to let the fry grow out in here. I doubt my newts will be able to catch it and eat it, at least until it's almost full grown. I'm so excited to confirm what it actually is in the upcoming months
The next suprise was in my dutch tank, which I haven't done many updates on with all the craziness going on. Some bad news is the tank will need completely torn down and rescaped as I can't defeat the spirogyra algae, which is an extremely formidable enemy. The last thing I did was a major plant uprooting and replanting, then introducing scarlet badis and some caridina shrimp as my Betta jumped out again and unfortunately passed away. I will ride out this scape for a few more weeks until I have some free time, and then do a complete tear down and rescape it to a more nature style scape. Unfortunately every plant will need to be thrown out and can't be reused, so I will lose a lot of expensive and hard to find plants. On a positive note, I realized that one of my badis that I haven't been able to sex turns out to be a female, and I found a pair spawning directly after the water change. So cool and rare to get a female! If by chance they continue to spawn and I find fry I will try and rear them just for fun.
So, with all bad things came some good definitely made the water changes more fun than I had anticipated!
After dealing with a 4 day long power outage last weekend and having to work double shifts most of the week, I was feeling pretty burnt out and bummed by having to skip a weekly water change in my tanks for the first time ever. Feeling super uncomfortable after letting the tanks go for 2 weeks and dreading having to do extensive maintenance on all 5 tanks, I was rewarded with 2 surprises after an awful week.
The first being in my 3ft newt paludarium. Some of you may remember from my journal that I used some of my killifish I bred in 2018 to check the stability of the water with concerns of silicone leech before introducing my newts upon completion of the build. Now I've had these killies for 4 years in the same tank and never noticed them mating or any eggs. Somehow though, while doing a water change on the paludarium I found a fish fry! So completely unbelievable and the only way I can think of a fry being in there would be the killies. However the killies were only in the tank for about a week and that was over 2 months ago. It's pretty bizarre but I'm 90% sure it's a gardneri killi fry. It's been such a long time since I've reared killifish so I can't remember what they looked like at 10-12 weeks old, but this dude is pretty small and just beginning to develop. Maybe it's possible an egg made its way to a damp part of the tank and sat dormant for a few weeks and somehow got flushed into the submerged portion and hatched? Who knows. The last aquatic plant introduction was a TC plant, so I can't really see any other way a fish egg could have gotten in the tank otherwise. Pretty awesome if you ask me! I had not planned on keeping any fish in with my newts for worry of disease contamination, but considering this is a fry born in the tank and most likely came from fish I bred and have had for a long time, I'm going to let the fry grow out in here. I doubt my newts will be able to catch it and eat it, at least until it's almost full grown. I'm so excited to confirm what it actually is in the upcoming months
The next suprise was in my dutch tank, which I haven't done many updates on with all the craziness going on. Some bad news is the tank will need completely torn down and rescaped as I can't defeat the spirogyra algae, which is an extremely formidable enemy. The last thing I did was a major plant uprooting and replanting, then introducing scarlet badis and some caridina shrimp as my Betta jumped out again and unfortunately passed away. I will ride out this scape for a few more weeks until I have some free time, and then do a complete tear down and rescape it to a more nature style scape. Unfortunately every plant will need to be thrown out and can't be reused, so I will lose a lot of expensive and hard to find plants. On a positive note, I realized that one of my badis that I haven't been able to sex turns out to be a female, and I found a pair spawning directly after the water change. So cool and rare to get a female! If by chance they continue to spawn and I find fry I will try and rear them just for fun.
So, with all bad things came some good
definitely made the water changes more fun than I had anticipated!