Endearing Features Of Fishkeeping

I love Barquentine's wriggly dance when he sees me in the morning and wants his breakfast!

In my main tank, I like seeing the sterbai cories blinking and setting off for laps round the tank all together.
I like the way Petunia (my bristlenose plec) rushes out to hug her piece of cucumber when it's her teatime.

In my shrimpery I like watching the shrimps swimming. It reminds me of my kids when they were learning to swim, arms and legs going like the clappers!!

I know what you mean about feeding time I just have to stand near the tank and the fish are ready waiting at the surface except for the peppered cories who are going about their business as usual, oblivious to what's happening around them.

Peppered Cories:

I really enjoy watching the cories, they are not aware that they are meant to be bottom feeders as in their continuous, hopeful search for food they will forage through the plants and often find themselves at the top.  They will then just swim across to the next leaf and forage down it.

I love watching them dig in the sand, if it is a serious deep search they look like they are doing a wriggling head stand,  otherwise they are just at approximately 15 degree angle with sand spilling out of their gills as they sift it for food.

They are always moving or completely still, on a couple of occasions, when I first started this fish keeping malarkey (9 months ago) on checking the tank in a morning I'd think one was dead but no just resting.  All that foraging must be very hard work.

Amano Shrimp

When I read up about them before getting the shrimp I though they were shy, timid creatures who I wouldn't see much of.  I have 4 - 2 males and 2 females.  The females are anything but shy and retiring.  They will do battle with the cories and platies for sinking pellets.  Drag off whole algae wafers and are very curious of anything new it the tank - it might be food!

I keep finding ghost female shrimp (empty casing) in all sorts of strange places on top of moss balls and leaves, frequently at the front of the tank in full view of any predators (not that there are any in the tank) and never in the coconut cave or under the wood.  They either feel very safe or are foolhardy, then again they might just be exhibitionists!

Anne

I love feeding time. We call the Tiger Barbs the Piranhas because they're so voracious. You can hear them sucking flake from the surface as though they'd never been fed before.

Pygmy Cories (RIP) darting to the surface for a mouth-gulp of air.

Tiger Barbs fighting amongst themselves looks like dancing sometimes.

A little eco-system where I'm responsible for all the inhabitants.

When the main light goes off, leaving the moonlighting on, the Cardinal Tetras glow in the darkness.

It's fascinating watching the female Cichlid trying to keep her nest free of intruders.

Beautiful colours!

You've all covered most aspects but one thing I love is waking up in the morning to find 8 ember tetras all seemingly squizzing through the glass to see where I am ie. where their food is!   

They don't do it any other time.

Maybe it's a tetra 'thing'?   

Think bedtime is becoming one of my favourites now - all 12 shoal up together in the "clearing" where there are no plants, similar to how they shoal up together during water changes but without the stress, and it's lovely to see them in the morning, often a tetra and a harlequin side by side, as though "one of their own".

One of the two female tetras has developed the most amazing knack of covering half of the tank at feeding time, with exclusive "rights" to that side of the tank, not missing a single morsel that falls. The speed and angles she manages in order to swoop in on each morsel are in a completely different league to the others. She used to follow the pygmy cories and snap up any tiny remnants they dug up; now she seems to have an acute sense of smell, almost becomes incensed in an effort to locate the tiny morsel she senses, forages among the substrate to reach it, and spits out the sand as she eats. Very skilled!

My Panda Cories adore ripping up bloodworm, the glass cats hiding near my spone filter and the whippies by the log. They all look so cool.