I've been off-line for a while except for work-email. But the aquarium keeps progressing. My yellow tang and percula clown both died, that was sad. But yesterday I was able to add back in my tomato clown and my coral beauty angel. Both adapted quickly and well, and everyone seems to be really happy swimming around.
Two things made me wonder about fish memories. Yesterday morning I found my snowflake mandarin in my
sump. Just swimming around on the bottom of the glass, seemingly quite happy. She had gone from the tank, through the double overflow, down through the pipes and bulkheads, into the first part of the
sump, under the gap in the glass, then over the next cascade into the second part of the
sump. I netted her, put her back in the display tank with the sand and rock, she started eating and swam away happily. Now, 36 hours later, she is still swimming and eating normally in the display tank, as if her pipe adventure never happened. So how traumatic was that for her, and will she remember it enough not to do it again? Unlikely, but I can hope she won't be unlucky enough to do it again.
The second thing was also strange. My blue hippo tang and my tomato clown had been together in my previous aquarium for about 2 years. During the move, they were kept in separate aquariums at the
LFS. I put the hippo tang into the new tank a couple weeks ago, then put the tomato clown in yesterday, so they were separated for a total of 3 months. Amazing - the two fish were inseparable for the first half day in the new tank, never moving more than 3 inches apart and often touching each other!!
(and no, this was not aggression, it was definitely swimming together) It took them a good day to be more than a foot apart for more than a few seconds. Today they swim independently more but they still spend a lot of time very close to each other. Do fish make friends? Do they have memories of friends? Weird, I would never have thought that but it sure looked that way.
Here are a few photos of the fish - one of me feeding them and a few closer up. You can see I still have a big algae problem. I heard Rob mention once on a show that he thinks algae is something that needs to cycle through in a new tank, but there is no proof of that. Everyone I've worked with here takes it for granted that an algae bloom is part of cycling in the new tank, and I've been told by a variety of sources not to take it all out myself because it needs to go through a whole cycle of living and dying, and that if I take it out it will just keep living. i like that advice
Equipment list soon!
Bye for now,
Martha
