So in the effort to clean up our fish tank’s performance and make it all sparkly again, we managed to kill off all three existing plants and frighten a whole lot of fish in the process, thanks to our violent digging around in the pebbles which true, resulted in cleaner pebbles but came at the price of a tank we couldn’t see through for at least a day.
After leaving things as they were for a little while, Tuesday finally saw us give in and make a move to make things right again. First up, after introducing the two beautiful bronze ‘rocket’ goldfish to the tank on Sunday, we decided that it was time to swap out some of our orange goldfish in order to bring a little more diversity to the tank. Two, the two Chinese algae eaters that are costing us so many fish have finally got to go, and three, we had better toss out those rotting plants before the fish notice that there is something not quite right here.
So Tuesday afternoon saw Chantelle and I with our hands in the water with our little green net, frantically chasing the fast as hell algae eaters all about the tank, slowly but surely removing everything but the pebbles from the tank! We eventually managed to trap the algae eaters and toss them into a plastic bag, but this was only after we had literally taken everything, plants, filter and all, out first! Even our big plastic jug was holding a host of rather surprised and slightly stunned fish!
However, putting the fish we were to take to the pet shop in see through plastic bags turned out not to be our greatest idea ever as Olympus promptly jumped up onto the counter and put a hole through one of the bags, flooding the counter and causing a panicky team of C & C to grab ice cream containers to put the rest of the fish into.
Our three orange victims and the two bugger algae eaters safely tucked away in their private ice cream container, it was time to put everything back the way we had found it (apart from the more than half-eaten and pretty dead plants of course), jump into the car and zip off to Pets Aquaria, a place which now seems to recognise us by face thanks to all the business we’ve done with them since getting the fish and kittens.
Actually the guys there are pretty helpful and they said it was no problem just to swap our goldfish and algae eaters for other fish, so Chantelle was instantly at the back picking out two Black Moors and a nice silver and deep orange fantail as ‘The Replacements’. At the same time we picked up three new plants (all three different this time around) as well as some goldfish flakes and a nifty dual-purpose tank cleaner apparatus which Chantelle immediately put to good use on our return to the house.
So there you have it. We now have a nice and diverse fish tank that is home to one Siamese fighter, three Black Moors, two common orange goldfish, one orange fantail, one white with a red spot goldfish, two bronze rockets, one silver and deep orange fantail and one Plecostomus.
It’s just a pity that the tank looks so bare now with three baby plants in it! At least our sunken ship and ancient vase still give it a little credibility!