The Little Fishies Three... sorta...

Soooo, as .... whoever reads this blog knows, I set up an aquarium a couple of weeks ago. Its a little three gallon tank, with an eclipse water wheel system. From what I researched this a nice system, that perhaps cleans itself a little too well. For an aquarium to work properly there needs to be a certain amount of biologic activity going on in the tank. It helps provide the water with oxygen, and that in turn helps keep the fish, frogs, crab, or whatever you put in the tank alive and healthy. This means that when you set up the tank you need to let it run for a day or so to let the crap they put in the water evaporate or destabilize enough for the first fish you put in to keep swimming. Considering the water that runs out of our tap smells like a swimming pool at the best of times, and a bottle of chlorine at the worst, I let mine run for a week before attempting to add fish.

I started with three Red Phantom Tetras, because they're easy to take care of and they tend to poop a lot. Face it people. Poop makes the world go round. Actually anything that falls into a cycle of life makes the world go round, but for the sake of this story we'll be talking of fishly poo. It allows bacteria to start the afore mentioned cooking. In fact starting out a new fish tank is called "cycling the tank." For a blissful week, I had three little tetras. Three little extremely SHY tetras. They're supposed to school in a tank, but these guys just hid inside their little treasure chest. It was a trial trying to get them to eat, so I was probably feeding them more than they should have been getting. Don't get me wrong. I was not by any means over-feeding, because the little buggers were too scared to eat everything I put in there. So, I made sure everyone got a mouthful and then stopped for the day. These are small fish, so I was breaking up the flakes so they could eat... except the littlest fish managed to get ahold of the biggest flake. Which caused him get too much air in his system. Which then caused an air bladder problem... which resulted in his untimely demise. Yes. Guilt sits heavy upon my shoulders.

Thus I find myself with the little fishies two, instead of the little fishies three. They're even worse now about swimming around the tank. Time is spent lurking behind the big rock on the right, or inside the treasure chest on the left. If I turn on the light they hide behind the treasure chest next to the intake filter where I can't see them at all, and since I turn the light on to feed them, they totally miss the tiny pieces of munchies I'm attempting to give them. I am told that this will change when I add more fish, but that's another couple of weeks down the road, after the tank finishes cycling. There are worse things than shy fish though, so I will put up with having to find them to make sure they're alive every day until I can add more fish.

On a totally separate note, I got back around to watching Bleach episodes. I'd let them run for a while so I can watch a bunch all at once. Episodes 266 to 272.... O.o WOW!! That's all I'm sayin'. And if you WANT to know what I'm talking about, then watch Bleach from episode 1, and hang on for a good ride. Its not the best series I've ever seen, but I certainly have fun watching it. I'm also letting One Piece run, but I suspect that's going to take longer to finish the specific arc they're on. I'm not entirely sure it'll end well either, but I still love all the characters, so I'll watch anyway.