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lydamorehouseMore tetra troubles.
I'm sure many of you are sick of hearing about the fishy woes, but if I don't vent here, my family has to hear me moaning day in and day out... and I've been told that gets old fast. In fact, while driving Shawn in this morning we had a conversation like this:
Me: "I think I gave the fish the wrong medicine."
Shawn: "Hmmm. When you talk to the car people, be sure to ask them if the front struts need to be done before we go to Indiana."
Me: "What? Oh, sure. I hope my fish are okay."
...and then Shawn goes on about the car again, and I point out to her that neither of us is obsessing on the same thing. I'm obsessed on fish and she's worried about the car (and for good reason, we found out on Friday that it needs a bunch of $$$ work done. So I delivered it to Ben's this morning, and am once again camped out at a coffee shop awaiting news.)
So, here's what's up with the tetra. This morning, when I turned on their light I noticed they had white spots on their fins. Whenever I see white spots I think "Ick!" (Not just the "oh gross," but the actual disease called "ick.") So I ran downstairs to the fishy medicine cabniet and frantically read the instructions for the ick medicine. After taking out the filter I popped half the tablet in, per instructions. Then, when I got Shawn to come look she said, "I don't know, it looks more cottony to me." And indeed it did. It's probably fin rot again, which I probably accidentally passed on to them by using the same hose for cleaning that I did in the infected tank downstairs.
Unfortunately, I can't do much about my mistake now. For one, I'm a mile away from home somewhat stranded without a car, but more importantly I have to leave the ick medicine alone for 24 hours at least. My biggest mistake when dealing with sick fish is a tendency to want to see immediate results, and when I don't... to continue to fuss with them. Which is a bad idea, because then I over medicate or over-stress them and they die.
Tomorrow the plan is to change the water per the medicine instructions (25% change), and then add a fungal tab to try to kill the rot.
I may have overstocked this tank. Ten tentra may be too many. I may just have to let nature take its course and see how many come out of this alive and leave that number in the tank. The sad thing is that everything was pretty stable in this tank until a few days ago. Smaller tanks like this one (5 gallon) can be very tricky, because, when you think about it, it doesn't take much to upset a carefully maintained balance. A larger tank has a lot more cushion, if you will.
I'll keep you posted, if only to calm my own nerves.
In other news, we had a pretty good weekend. Shawn and I spent much of it discussing the car situation. As many of you know (or could, perhaps guess,) our car is used. We've always been what we call "end users" of cars, and that means I tend to spend a lot of time at coffee shops waiting for my car to be repaired. We're getting to the point with this one, which is a Ford Taurus (99?) where we're starting to wonder... is it time to give up on this one and consider purchasing a new one? Technically, since we get our cars so cheap, this one will be nearly totaled by this repair (or would have completely been, if we'd chosen to do all of it in one shot.)
But I HATE looking for new cars. Also Shawn usually enlists the help of her brothers, and we're still not speaking to one of them, which makes that whole prospect even uglier.
We finally decided to fix this car enough to keep it safe. We're going to try to plan ahead for the next set of repairs, maybe six months out or so. In the meantime, we're going to keep our eyes open for cheap cars.
Bleah.
I could use a little cheering up. Anyone got a funny story or something?
I'm sure many of you are sick of hearing about the fishy woes, but if I don't vent here, my family has to hear me moaning day in and day out... and I've been told that gets old fast. In fact, while driving Shawn in this morning we had a conversation like this:
Me: "I think I gave the fish the wrong medicine."
Shawn: "Hmmm. When you talk to the car people, be sure to ask them if the front struts need to be done before we go to Indiana."
Me: "What? Oh, sure. I hope my fish are okay."
...and then Shawn goes on about the car again, and I point out to her that neither of us is obsessing on the same thing. I'm obsessed on fish and she's worried about the car (and for good reason, we found out on Friday that it needs a bunch of $$$ work done. So I delivered it to Ben's this morning, and am once again camped out at a coffee shop awaiting news.)
So, here's what's up with the tetra. This morning, when I turned on their light I noticed they had white spots on their fins. Whenever I see white spots I think "Ick!" (Not just the "oh gross," but the actual disease called "ick.") So I ran downstairs to the fishy medicine cabniet and frantically read the instructions for the ick medicine. After taking out the filter I popped half the tablet in, per instructions. Then, when I got Shawn to come look she said, "I don't know, it looks more cottony to me." And indeed it did. It's probably fin rot again, which I probably accidentally passed on to them by using the same hose for cleaning that I did in the infected tank downstairs.
Unfortunately, I can't do much about my mistake now. For one, I'm a mile away from home somewhat stranded without a car, but more importantly I have to leave the ick medicine alone for 24 hours at least. My biggest mistake when dealing with sick fish is a tendency to want to see immediate results, and when I don't... to continue to fuss with them. Which is a bad idea, because then I over medicate or over-stress them and they die.
Tomorrow the plan is to change the water per the medicine instructions (25% change), and then add a fungal tab to try to kill the rot.
I may have overstocked this tank. Ten tentra may be too many. I may just have to let nature take its course and see how many come out of this alive and leave that number in the tank. The sad thing is that everything was pretty stable in this tank until a few days ago. Smaller tanks like this one (5 gallon) can be very tricky, because, when you think about it, it doesn't take much to upset a carefully maintained balance. A larger tank has a lot more cushion, if you will.
I'll keep you posted, if only to calm my own nerves.
In other news, we had a pretty good weekend. Shawn and I spent much of it discussing the car situation. As many of you know (or could, perhaps guess,) our car is used. We've always been what we call "end users" of cars, and that means I tend to spend a lot of time at coffee shops waiting for my car to be repaired. We're getting to the point with this one, which is a Ford Taurus (99?) where we're starting to wonder... is it time to give up on this one and consider purchasing a new one? Technically, since we get our cars so cheap, this one will be nearly totaled by this repair (or would have completely been, if we'd chosen to do all of it in one shot.)
But I HATE looking for new cars. Also Shawn usually enlists the help of her brothers, and we're still not speaking to one of them, which makes that whole prospect even uglier.
We finally decided to fix this car enough to keep it safe. We're going to try to plan ahead for the next set of repairs, maybe six months out or so. In the meantime, we're going to keep our eyes open for cheap cars.
Bleah.
I could use a little cheering up. Anyone got a funny story or something?
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A cursed Monday
Date: 2009-04-20 03:59 pm (UTC)Back to the fishes. Today is Sham El Nessim, a holiday that goes back to Pharaonic times. People go out and have picnics with very smelly and very salty fish (to my uninterested senses they seem similar to smoked mackerel).
Wish I had a funny story to cheer you up.
Re: A cursed Monday
Date: 2009-04-21 06:01 pm (UTC)I lost one tetra (now there are 9), but things seem to be stablizing.
And a lot of my car troubles also involve me running over curbs. I seem to always have to replace struts... perhaps if I stopped missing the curb when I park, eh?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 01:09 am (UTC)It is here (http://video.yahoo.com/network/100000089?v=4816051&l=100022574).
no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-23 03:48 am (UTC)