Tropical Fish Central

I own a very small and not often visited tropical fish forum.  I thought the name was clever, etc.  At some point, someone posted a question asking if goldfish are edible.  Disturbingly, this have become the #1 reason people come to the site – referred to the site by searching to find out if they can eat their goldfish.  Here is a snapshot of the awstats search keyphrase list:

Again, this isn’t a huge forum, but 4 of the top 7 search terms are about eating pet fish.  Looking at the longer list, there are 7 more phrases about eating goldfish.

Can someone please tell me why do so many people ponder whether it’s OK to eat their goldfish?  This is not a rhetorical question.  I really want to know.

I posted before about converting a 55G tank to African Cichlids.  All is going well, but I happened upon a few concerning articles, specifically this one about keeping Mbuna cichlids for beginners.  As it turns out, I managed to buy two of the three fish that the author strongly cautions against.  I have a bumblebee and two Kenyi (male and female) in a tank with apparently far less aggressive cichlids – Acei, zebras, rusty and others.

A forum member pointed me to a very good resource for getting into African cichlids.  The “Cookie-cutter setup for 55G” recommends a configuration for the tank and some solid options for stocking with fish.  I wish I had found that about 3 weeks ago.

Hopefully this will help someone else avoid the apparent mistake I have.

So, what to do with my bumblebee and kenyi???  I don’t know yet.  I am planning a very large African tank for my basement, and possibly they will end up there.  Otherwise, I will take my own advice on what to do with unwanted fish and put them on Craigslist as free to a good home.

I had a chance to visit the Tellus Museum in Georgia this weekend with my oldest son for cub scouts.  There were a number of very interesting fossil displays.  Including on named “The Terrible Fish”, pictured here:

It’s hard to get a perspective of how big this thing is, so I took a short video:

Next, I saw the jaw of a Megalodon:

For perspective, I am 6 feet tall, and could have walked through the mouth without needing to duck my head.  Simply massive.

And then there is the thing nightmares are made of…

The Xiphanctinus:

This thing looks truly terrifying in person.  The tag for this guy says that some fossils of Xiphanctinus are found with intact, large fish in it’s stomach.  I took a video of him and his display mate, the super turtle Protostega:

As I mentioned in my 55G disaster post, I decided to convert the aquarium in my family room from a community tank to African cichlids.  The ph of my water is somewhat low (~6), and African cichlids like higher ph, in the 7 to 8 range.  A good way to do this is with argonite sand.  The problem is switching from the gravel that was in the tank to sand.  Because I am impatient, I had already bought a few assorted African cichlids, so emptying the tank was not an option.

I thought for a while about the best way to do this.  It seemed to me that a hose siphoning into a bucket would be the most effective – simply vacuuming up the gravel, leaving a bare bottom and sucking up any nasty chemicals that may have built up along with it.  After thinking about it more, that seemed like a lot of work.  So, here’s what I did instead:

Phase 1: Removing the gravel

I got my handy 5G Home Depot bucket and my largest fish net (about 6 inches across).  I started at one end of the tank and scooped up as much gravel as I could, dumping it in the bucket as I went.  This was pretty fast and effective, but there was quite a bit of gravel left in the tank that I simply could not get with the net.

Phase 2: Cleaning up the mess

I took my “Python no-spill” water changer and removed the gravel vacuum head (the clear plastic tub part) by unscrewing it behind the valve.  I attached the python to my sink, and took my large net and placed it directly under the python’s discharge, to catch gravel that came through, so it would not go down my drain.  I turned the water on high to get the most suction.

At the tank, I used the bare of of the python hose like a vacuum, sucking up every last bit of gravel and waste left, leaving a very clean tank bottom.  All of the gravel I vacuumed up ended up in the net in the bottom of my sink.  I simply dumped the net into the bucket and had cleanly transferred all of the gravel from the tank to the bucket.

Phase 3: Rinsing the Sand

I rinsed 2 20 pound bags of argonite sand very well to remove the fine sediment that would could the water using a bucket in my kitchen sink.  This took a looong time.

Phase 4: Sand in the tank

I scooped the sand into a cup, and then lowered the cup into the tank, until I had transferred all of the sand.  Much to my dismay, the water was still turned milky-white, despite my rinsing efforts.

Phase 5: Water changes

I reconnected my python’s gravel vac and performed 3 75% back-to-back water changes to get rid of the cloudiness.  This was pretty effective.

Phase 6: Finishing touches

I had some drift wood in the tank previously, and arranged it to provide a bunch of hiding spots.  I also bought a few pieces of rock, and used some stones to create a few other hiding areas.

Here is the result:

I worked from home this past Wednesday, following my normal routine – get up early, go to the gym, come home and get on a conference by 8am.  Somewhere between calls, I make the rounds to turn on my aquarium lights and feed the tanks.  When I walked into my family room and turned on the light, I saw a horrific sight…  Nearly all of my fish were laying dead on the bottom of the tank.  That was heartbreaking.  My prized 4 year old angelfish, named “Tailfin” was among the dead.

There was no indication of what happened – the fish were fine when I had turned the lights out the night before.  3 young angels and a pleco survived, so whatever happened could not have been totally devastating.

I perform 50% or larger water changes weekly, and have for years.  I vacuum the gravel thoroughly each time.  It had been 3 days since the last water change.

Here is my theory on what happened:

The day before, we lost power in our house for about 20 minutes.  Not terribly long.  I have battery powered air pumps that turn on when the power goes out.  All of them came on, except one – the one in the 55G tank where the fish died.  I replaced the batteries, but it didn’t work.  I noticed that if I took the hose off, it would very slowly work.  I hooked the hose up again and had to go take a phone call for work.  In the mean time, the power came back on.  When I finished the call an hour later, I walked into my family room and the battery powered air pump was pumping normally – because I had forced it on whilest trying to get it to work earlier.  I turned the pump off and didn’t think about it until the next morning, when I found all of the dead fish.

Upon inspecting the air pump, there is a think tar/oil like liquid that appears to be oozing out of the air outlet.  My suspicion is that water from the tank had somehow siphoned through the air line back into the pump where it sat for many months.  The reason the pump didn’t work at first was that it was gummed up with this likely concoction of water, oil, rust, etc.  Eventually, the pump pushed the goo out and up the air hose and into the tank.

What I can’t reconcile is why the fish did not start having trouble the night before – 9 hours after the pump was turned off, and presumably after the goo was put into the tank.

So, that was extraordinarily sad for me, and I will try to learn a lesson from it.  I have decided to re-populate the tank with African cichlids, using the opportunity to try something new and challenging.

I will post pictures as I can.