Disastrous Decorations

For St. Patrick's Day I decorated my tank with a castle house decoration in my 45 gallon tank.  The decoration had two swim through holes and was hollow. The swim through holes were smaller than my goldies in the tank and the edges weren't sharp enough to snag really delicate material so I didn't think it would be dangerous to put in my tank.  

After St Patty's day ended, I removed the fake pot of gold and round green marbles  from my tank. I really liked the castle house decoration because it added a whimsical touch to my aquarium and had decided to leave it in my tank.  

It had been over three weeks with the castle house decoration and no problems...

When I woke up this morning and turned the lights on my tanks I noticed that my 45 gallon tank looked emptier than usual. Being that it was morning and I am not a morning person under any circumstance, it took me a while to realize that I was looking at a tank with three fish (Sparrow, Armani, and Jimmy-Bean) swimming around when I should have been seeing four goldies swimming. Willow, my red and white Oranda, was missing.  

Instant panick. As my morning brain started to clear in its panicked state, I saw a tail sticking out of one of the swim through holes in the castle decoration.  My heart started to sink.

I started to lift the decoration, anticipating that Willow was surely dead, when she started to thrash. Operation house extraction commenced.  She was so thoroughly wedged in there that I had no choice but to hold the decoration still and wait for her to stop panicking. I took a firm but gentle grip in the middle of her tail fin and pulled her backwards. She immediately swam away from the decorations. A few of her scales were lost but she had no open wounds or sores. I was relieved that she made it out alive and with little damage. I think she might have a permanent scar where some of the scales were scraped off.

I immediately tossed the house decoration in the trash.  No decoration is worth the life of one of my fish.

Fish Tank Update

I've got four tanks! Two main goldfish tanks (36 & 45 gallons), a fry tank (3 gallons), and a betta tank (8 gallon). Check out the link below for a video of my tanks.

My last post was a video of Autumn laying eggs. I didn't realize any of them had been fertilized until a few days later when I saw small little fry swimming in my tank. I was able to carefully take ten of them out of the main tank.  

Overnight three of them didn't make it. When I looked at them closely I noticed they weren't developed properly. I had seven left and during week two I noticed two of them struggling to swim to the surface. I separated these two into an area with more shallow water hoping to reduce the water pressure on them and giving them a better chance to make it to the surface. 

Unfortunately, I left them unattended on my counter top for a minute while I was making a custom lid for their make shift holding tank. I came back to find my black and white cat, Duo, playing with them. 

So, I have five fry at week three heading into week four.  Each of the five remaining fry are doing well. Four of the five look like they have excellent potential to be beautiful butterfly goldfish. I hope at least one of these four is a purple butterfly goldfish like their Mama! 

The fifth fry was born with a single tail and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with him yet.

Prada, my tricolor butterfly, went home with a fellow goldfish enthusiast. Rio and Midget have also been rehomed. I had these three with three more in my 45 gallon and the bio load on the tank was just to much as each of the fish have grown so much over these past eight months.

Jewel, my red and white butterfly, had a mouth sore she got during a routine weekly water change a couple of weeks ago.  

I've been doing a 0.3% salt solution and she is almost completely healed.

I've ventured into the world of Betta tanks and have had Draco, a male red crown tail Betta for a month now. He lives in an eight gallon tank. 

Here is the link to the video. I hope you enjoy it!

http://youtu.be/IO87PE_8J8w

Autumn & Laying Eggs

Check out this video of Autumn laying eggs:

http://youtu.be/zRxifPxCxNM

My Fish: Then and Now

I've been super busy and haven't had the chance to update this blog recently; Sorry, folks!

Here are some photos of the growth of my fish. Some have gotten big, and others haven't noticeable grown.

Prada - Joined the family on October 2, 2013. Last photo taken January 10, 2014 (3 Months)

Then

Now

Rio:

Then 2013

Now 2014

Jimmy-Bean-

Then 2013

Now 2014

Armani-

Then 2013

Now 2014

Sparrow-

Then August 2013

Later November 2013

Now January 2014

Midget -

Then

Now

Autumn, Jewel, and Willow are mature adults and have not grown any.

In my last post I had three tanks (a 20, 36, & 45 gallon).  I purchased a 56 gal. Column Aquarium and put my 20 in storage (aka my closet).  After three weeks, I simply did not have the time to keep up the maintenance on all three tanks. My sinks don't work with water changers which means that I have to use the old bucket method and this is extremely time consuming. Unfortunately, I made the hard decision to get rid of my 56 gal. aquarium and focus on keeping a good maintenance schedule on my two remaining aquariums. This meant that I had to re-home Jack, Reaper, Ember, Gucci, and Deville. This was an extremely difficult decision as I love my goldfish but I felt that it was best given my hectic schedule to down size. I currently have nine fish total spread amongst two tanks (a 36 gal. and a 45 gal .). I know that as my fish continue to grow I will have an overstocking issue and will need to consider upgrading one of existing tanks to a larger size or rehoming some.