*sniff* *sniff*
Unfortunately we didn’t have the greatest of greetings on our return home from a lovely weekend away in Mossel Bay last night – we came home to the dreaded tank of death on the kitchen counter :(
Looks like the presumed outbreak of Ick last week did in fact not recede all by itself as what we had initially hoped and suspected because it certainly made a comeback in a big way, leaving one Black Moor dead and three quarters of the other fish looking as if they should be dead already. Complete loss of colour, fin atrophy and a heightened, more frenetic swimming or ‘darting’ behaviour means that basically all our fishies are on the way out, leaving us with an interesting dilemma.
We could spend the money on treating the water for the disease, but the treatment is quite expensive and even then we are not assured of any of the fish surviving, or we can simply wait it out and let the fish die off and then start the tank up all the way from step 1 again.
Seriously, this keeping fish jaunt is certainly not all it is cracked up to be :(
Note: Well, it looks like Oupa (our Siamese fighter) is staving off the disease just fine, but we’re not sure for how long. Ploccie the plecostumus has got the white spots indicating that the disease now has a hold of him, but as much as I’m attached to the little sucker, seeing him perish wouldn’t be the worse loss either – Chantelle has already seen him attacking the other goldfish, much like our two Chinese Algae Eaters used to, making him instantly expendable in my opinion.