Democratic Consultation With The Fish

 
 
 

Thanks.  Ooooh - 27... wow, @Extreme_One   Looking forward to a video.
It's altogether possible that, since my original post, I have your newbies' brothers and sisters swimming in a quarantine tank about 6' away from me.    However, in the spirit of democracy, to keep my lone rasboras company, and having fallen head-over-heels for rasboras once again, I may also have rescued a couple of lone espeis I spotted in a tank of harlequins - I'll definitely add to that shoal in due course but didn't want the QT or the spare filter media overloaded for now.

Edited to add: I know feeding isn't meant to take place on Day 1 but I thought I'd put a tiny amount of Hikari First Bites in, just in case anyone was hungry. Wow - voracious appetites!  Suffice to say I'm smitten watching them. 

Edited to add again: I really must stop fantasising over the thought of a second tank ie a tank exclusively for cardinals and a tank exclusively for rasboras. Perhaps I've been inadvertently infected by Multiple Tank Syndrome overnight...

First things first - space. There's only one option - furniture is going to have to go vertically. The double bed has too large a footprint, so will have to be replaced by bunkbeds. The laundry racks will have to be replaced by a pulley.

Totally agree, Matt.

What a morning!

Everyone was alive and well when I got up. However, after my breakfast, one cardinal was breathing very fast and took to hanging around near the water surface beside the filter, despite otherwise looking in perfect form - colours, fins, etc. I spent quite a bit of time with him, pleading with him to hold on, as I had a great life planned for them in another tank which they'd move into after a month. I left him be for a while and sadly he didn't make it. 

I then wondered if the two espeis were stressing out the cardinals as they're very active and have been chasing one another up and down the wall of the tank in the filter outflow. I decided to set up a 3rd tank, using my spare equipment, with the intention of letting them swim off their initial energy in there, then hopefully all would be fine in a month's time on entry into the main tank and with the other rasboras for company - and giving the cardinals some peace in the 2nd tank before entry into the main tank and joining the others. This set-up rendered the spare room completely out-of-bounds, except a narrow area for me to get to reach the tanks. The palaver of trying to set up the 3rd filter (not yet used although I was convinced I had tested it out), divide the mature filter media across the 2nd and 3rd filters, then upturn the contents of a cupboard in an attempt to find a plug adaptor for the 3rd filter (the plug was 2-pronged rather than 3-pronged), transfer sand from the main tank into the 3rd tank (and realising I'd 'contaminated' tank equipment between quaranting and main tanks in the process), then get told off numerous times as fish-related equipment was strewn on the bed, in the corridor and living-room, and water spillages were galore due to filters being moved in and out of tanks! After all this, it has transpired that the 3rd filter, to be used in the 2nd tank while its filter has been transferred into the 3rd tank for the espeis, has completely calmed down the espeis... so now I'm contemplating dismantling the 3rd tank altogether and just putting the mature filter media from it into the 2nd tank. 

Suffice to say that this accurately reflects proceedings in our household today:
FCMF:    and
Mr FCMF:  and "I think you should just get and keep a rubber duck as a pet - it would all be so much easier and less stressful all round".

Sorry to hear about your Cardinal @fcmf it can be really stressful can't it, this hobby of ours?

Thing is, I'm sure it's not just me that gets this, even in the stressful times I'm stretching my brain, I'm thinking around the puzzle, searching for a solution, pondering the problem.

This hobby been be a really good distraction from the drudgery of everyday life.

It's all worth it in the long run. Right? 

Good news - the little Dennerle nano corner filter with its spray bar seems to have immediately and completely resolved the issue of the hyperactive espeis, so the 3rd tank has been able to be removed and the spare room is no longer out-of-bounds. These cardinals are a little different to the older ones - voracious appetites, although this may be because I have them eating Hikari First Bites and the tiny Tetra micro granules rather than the slightly larger food offered to the older ones at the outset; I've also caught two sparring which I/I've never witnessed among the older gang.

Video at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59WfWfB32c" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59WfWfB32c</a>