I have a small hexagonal tank in my bedroom with:
1 neon tetra
1 x-ray tetra
1 plococtomus (i dont know how to spell it), or just a sucker fish
In my old 3 foot by 2 ft by 1 ft tank I had:
2 clown loaches (or tiger botia's)
1 silver shark
10 neon tetras
4 x-ray tetras
4 platy's
the sucker fish
Some other fish
When I moved house I ditched the old tank, gave away the silver shark and the biggest clown loach to the old next-door neighbours, and bought a nice new hexagonal tank! I had sand in the bottom, and what I thought was enough bottom feeders to rid the sand of any crap.
My light bulb fused out because of condensation, and the fish just relied on a constant stream of sunlight from my north facing window. Little did I know that 9 of my neon tetras had died and had got sucked into the filter. Bits of dead fish were floating about (I couldn't see them) and eventually all my fish died except the two tetras, a platy, and the plococtumus. I almost cried when I found my clown loach floating
because it's been through hell.
In my old tank, after some live food (NEVER BUY THAT CRAP) I had an infestation of parasites, then gill flukes, then white spot, then pop-eye (where the eyes swell up), and surprisingly only a couple of fish passed away. The medicine that fights white spot is unfriendly to loaches, so my clown loaches suffered even more
. My clown loaches survived that, but my baby clown loach had been scratching against the pebbles and had deep gashes in his side where he'd been scratching. He survived.
Then we moved house (about 3 months ago) and then the sandy problem happened! I was devastated. My mum told me that I wasn't allowed back on my PC until I'd 'sorted out that **** bath in my room!' I promptly visited the garden centre and sorted it all out!
So there we have it, from a relatively large population of fish, I now have a meager 3!
Oh well. At least now the deceased fish are now swimming with the big fish in the sky!
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Estupidud Rex
http://www.cardamine.net/ - should be up and running after Christmas!