Hmm, while I had recently reported that everything was looking good in 45 Nagua fish tank, it seems I may just have jinxed myself.
Completely out of the blue, one of our guesthouse-rescued speckled goldfish bit the dust a little while ago, officially making that the worst surviving species out of all the fish we’ve owned (which admittedly hasn’t been that many).
For some or other reason the speckled goldfish don’t seem to be quite as hardy as their plain orange cousins, which in turn means that I probably won’t buy any more of this type in the future (though I wouldn’t mind getting a couple of those beautiful silver with orange markings goldfish again! Our tank could do with some colour variety dammit!)
And to make matters worse, shortly after the speckled goldfish got to ride the porcelain express, we noted a particularly bad turn of events when it came to our favourite fantail goldfish – something had been eating at its tail! The result was a very sluggish fish that now seemed to lose all lust for life and will to swim around, instead opting just to sit on the bottom of the tank for most of the day.
Closer observation netted the culprit pretty quickly though – for some or other reason one of my Chinese algae eaters has become VERY territorial, chasing after all of the slower goldfish and attaching itself to either their tail or sides by means of its sucker, doing immense damage to the fish in the process!
As it was, the fantail did eventually die and the algae eater has now calmed down, but now I’m not so sure how to proceed. I’m not going to replace the dead fish because the tank is currently slightly past its fish saturation point anyway, but I am not so keen on getting rid of the algae eaters either as they seem to do a great job in keeping the tank clean. My Plecostomus does a good job of algae cleaning too mind you, but it tends to eat a different type of algae to the Chinese algae eater, meaning that it is beneficial for both to be in the tank at the same time.
Guess I will just leave things as is for now – hopefully the rest of the fish quickly learn to shoal up and put the pesky little sucker fish back in his rightful place – at the bottom of the tank or stuck to the glass!
Oh yes, I climbed up the stairs to Cape Town Fish Market last week… and pulled a mussel. (Just to finish the week off on a laughing note! I can’t help it that you don’t find my jokes funny…)