The Eviction

My daughter has had an aquarium for a year now. That has meant a year of fretting for the only person who takes care of its inhabitants: me. Just as I suspected, it has become a place of death, destruction and intermittent death.

The karked it roll of honour numbers: two snails, one sex-pest molly, two neons and a guppy. That’s 6 deaths in one year, an average of one death every two months. The total number of occupants has reached 16, so, if you choose to make this particular aquarium your home you have a 3 in 8 chance of dying. That’s nearly a 50% chance of death – how depressing.

There has been an ongoing situation between two angelfish. Some time ago the level of mild bullying stepped up a gear to outright aggression; in fact, it’s been like having a bear-baiting contest in the corner of the front room. I should have put my foot down then. I did not. Anyway, I found one of the angelfish upside down under the BAFTA mask last week and after a few days, when I considered it was a dead fish swimming (and seriously considered the final clove oil solution), it started looking like it might live. So the Bully Boy aggressor had to go. After a temporary Bank Holiday Weekend solution of partitioning the tank with a cheeseboard, the Big Bad Angelfish has been evicted and sent to Boot Camp down the road.

We now have one much happier, if slightly disabled angelfish, swimming in the tank with its few remaining friends. A happy ending? I don’t know, because we now have a Power Vacuum in the tank, which must be filled. In the meantime it has, without question, beaten the odds.

A fish in a pissed off mood

A weekend in Southend (guest blog). Part II

I felt it appropriate to fill you in on events since the last guest post.

- the event over the road involved myriad characters, fake Barnes grass, ale and room temperature food that set off my food hygiene alarm
- the gang leader has been evicted from the tank to the neighbour’s house
- the victim has dined on bloodworms in a bid to regain its strength
- the man of the house noticed and was dismayed not to have got the chance to say goodbye
- Southend air show from the garden = 3 planes spotted, about 20 heard but not seen. We’re looking forward to hearing the Red Arrows later
- a game of hunt the witch’s hat
- resourcefulness at retrieving said hat
- CJ taking breakfast orders just before bed
- a midnight-4am visit from CJ, who clambered into bed after simply telling me to ‘shush’ when I tried to protest. I can inform that she hogs more bed than a Labrador
- shopping this morning at Tesco for aformentioned breakfast, and encountering a rather interesting cross-section of Southend society
- lot one of pancake batter ending up on the floor
- dramatic holding of and staring at the blog owner’s foot, after the mixer landed on it
- complete extension of the kitchen blind to avoid the glares of the rather odd children next door (think League of Gentlemen)
- delicious breakfast in the garden (see picture) and UN-style negotiations to persuade CJ to come downstairs and join us
- more Monopoly marathon
- some dodgy piano playing and even more decidedly dodgy singing along from AMB

We shall be fleeing to the peace of Devon tomorrow morning at 5am, before the Southenders awake again and release more havoc.

A weekend in Southend: guest blog (complete with punctuation)

Thus far the weekend has consisted of:

- attempted murder in the lounge
- emergency call to the neighbour (neighbour subsequently stood down until the morning)
- breaking up the gangs with a cheeseboard
- watching the victim’s first steps on the path to recovery
- caterpillar cobwebs in the cemetery
- stonking breakfast that took an age to arrive
- a trip along the seafront to see the closed road
- Monopoly marathon with CJ ripping AMB off quite handsomely

To come:
- airshow
- a visit to the neighbour’s (after they’ve done something with someone’s ashes to which we weren’t invited)

Will keep you posted.

Trouble in Tank?

The angelfish have started lip locking and doing a rather fantastic and dynamic display of fishy acrobatics. Some people think they are kissing and having fun. I looked it up and I am going to have to break the news that, perhaps, they are fighting over space and at least one of the aggressive buggers is going to have to go…

We did have some eggs on the side of the tank though, so there is some doubt.

This is pretty much what they are doing. It all looks thoroughly exhausting and the other little fish are keeping well out of the way.

*22 days to Epiphany

Trouble In Tank

Oh yes, it’s been stressful and it’s involved Bully Boy, whose “real” name is Amazon.

But not stressful in the beating up the little fish way you might think.  No, this is the story of one greedy angelfish and some frozen bloodworms.

The books and experts say that angelfish appreciate the odd bloodworm occasionally.  Rather inconveniently they come frozen in ice cube type blocks of multiple bloodworms. 

Oh yes I said, give them half a block.  Ok said CJ and gave them a whole one.  My fault of course for not supervising the process properly. 
So when I noticed the next day that Amazon’s belly looked somewhat swollen and his/her behaviour had become uncharacteristically reclusive I wondered what was up.  Perhaps imminent spawning?  More likely constipation, from overindulgence in bloodworms. 

So whilst the silver fish skulked (probably in pain) behind the BAFTA I googled the problem.  Constipation seemed the culprit, the cure: skinned, defrosted peas.

If you had told me that I would one day spend some considerable time skinning peas for fish and then fretting over a constipated angelfish attemping to take a giant crap behind a BAFTA, I would have told you to call the men in white coats. But there’s nowt so strange as folk. 

NB: The little guppies loved the peas, for footballing purposes!  I can’t call them Li and Di now given Argentina’s early exit, but I think Podolski and Schweinsteiger would be a bit of a mouthful.

from www.3.bp.blogspot.com

A Confession

In extremis (are you reading Chris Waddle) it’s calming to look at fish. In anticipation of a sticky afternoon I yesterday whizzed up to Fishy Business and explained my position:

Please Sir, we want a community tank filled with colourful little fish but someone, who shall remain nameless, came home with two angelfish in a bag and now the big silver one is running tings in the tank and will probably eat anything small and pretty out of greed, jealousy and sheer badness.

So Mr Fishy Business said hmmm. And I hung my novice fish-keeping head in shame and pleaded that I had planned the whole thing rigorously for maximum harmony purposes and I really needed some swishy-tailed guppies to calm my nerves. So he bagged a couple up for me and agreed that he would take in Bully Boy/Girl Amazon Angelfish if it put a fin out of line.

Here they are. I like them.

They are nameless so far. I am thinking Lionel and Diego.

This is the hitherto no photos please Bully. It knows it’s on a yellow card.

*Breaking Aquarium News*

They are all still alive \o/

“They” is a different configuration from the last time I posted. We have since added to the tank:

2 x zebra snails – one of which I thought was very dead at the weekend but is revived
2 x angelfish

There is a fisherman’s tale attached to the acquiring of the angelfish that goes a bit like this.

There is a shop up the road that we bought the tank and first fish from. The man in there is a great expert and not a little bit scary. He would never, ever have sold us angelfish because they are not a beginner’s fish. Plus the tank would be a bit on the skimpy side when they grow, which they do because they are greedy bastards.

I was being a good and compliant little fish keeper, following all the rules and only considering adding fish from the yellow stickered tanks containing hardy fish for thick feckers just starting out in their tank keeping career i.e. fish it is quite hard to kill.

The Guv’nor, almost instantly bored with poor Black Skirt Tetras Mini and RaRa (he’s an inveterate thrill-seeker you know) took himself off to a different shop with a compliant child and told all sorts of fibs to procure himself two angelfish. The fattest lie of all was when he said that the tank was twice as big as it is. A fisherman thing surely.

So a pair of angelfish came back and are most interesting. Of course we should not have a pair really because they can be aggressive and we definitely have a dominant one (bully) that squares up to the smaller one when food is about. The upside is that the little fish have stopped their permanent rock-hiding-behind rota. The angelfish are friendly, they come over to say Hi when you go over to the tank. On the other hand the silver one is probably saying Give me food or you will die sucker, but you can’t have it all.

Strangely the small one is quite happy to pose for snaps. The other Bully Boy, called Amazon, persistently turns his/her back on the camera. If I turn the camera, it turns its body away again. I will keep trying. In the meantime this is the nice one.

Orinoco

NB – Fish Photography is v hard

But I will practise!