Think Fish Keepers Daily News. [2016-2019]

@Sue is there any possibility of putting the tank in the lower left of your diagram. I'm thinking there would be less sunlight here, and your Betta would always be able to "see you coming" and so be less likely to get startled...

I have updated my drawing. As you can see, that corner is under the boiler and next to the sink so it is used a lot. It's also next to the toaster and kettle, and is almost under the wall cupboard with the tea, teapot and teacups. It's also the only place for the combination microwave because it has to go diagonally across the corner to get the required amount of space behind it.
The house was built 26 years ago so compared to modern houses has few electric sockets. This limits where the appliances can go. [I have already been planning a new kitchen layout when we can afford it  ]

There are two possible places but my husband is unlikely to agree to one of them.
1 - in the top left corner next to the dining room door. Unfortunately we use this worktop for food related things so my husband will object (nasty dirty fish tank full of bacteria near food  ) This is another problem with the bottom left corner as well.
2 - at the other end of the worktop it is currently on, next to the fridge freezer. This worktop is not used for food, it is where we keep the box of tissues, the manual shredder, the box of plastic tubs to put waste food into etc. And the fish food, hidden behind the box of tissues so the betta can't see it till I'm about to feed him. This position has the advantage that it would be screened from view on two sides. The disadvantage is that I'll have to move the hook in the underside of the wall cupboard which holds the airline tubing and electric cables to make a drip loop. But with 26 year old builders kitchen units, he shouldn't complain that much to another hole.




The cupboard with a concertina door was only added at the end of 2015. The stairs are in the cut out of the kitchen, the staircase is U shaped, and the house was built with two half height cupboards going under the stairs. This meant I could keep very little in them - the ironing board was tucked down between the fridge freezer and the wall and the clothes horses were in a bedroom. My handyman son built the cupboard extension - in the place where my 50 litre tank used to be. That's why I had to close it.

We've got cupboards with concertina doors and they make quite some noise (though ours are a lot older than yours) - are yours particularly noisy? I'm wondering if the sound/vibration of them being opened and closed might be unsettling your Betta - I try not to open ours when someone's sleeping upstairs on account of the racket they make.

Not sure whether the fish or I are more stressed.

After the lights came on, I noticed that the female tetra with the healing wound had developed some fungus over where the pustules had been last week but which had burst/subsided of their own accord - it looked as though a scale was attempting to grow over the open-but-superficial wound but this was accompanied today by fluff. So, conscious that I was looking for an excuse to simultaneously treat the male tetra with the still-cloudy eye, I tried to catch them to treat them together.

It was clear after a few minutes that I needed to remove all the plants and driftwood in order to do this. While the harlequins were volunteering to enter the net and had to be released, the tetras were darting away at lightning speed. It also became clear that it was a 2-person job, especially to identify and catch the male tetra. Eventually, Mr FCMF managed to disengage himself from a film to help and eventually we caught all 3 of the male tetras and had them in the QT with the healing-wound tetra, with the intention of putting back the two healthy male tetras into the main tank. Suffice to say that this was harder than it looked and somehow the cloudy-eyed male tetra ended up back in the main tank by mistake, not helped by the fact that there were only 1.5 people working on this as the other 0.5 was distracted by the film, while it was as though the cloudy-eyed tetra disguised his cloudy eye just before capture in the QT (perhaps a self-defence mechanism).

Currently, we have the fluffy-wounded female tetra in the QT, everyone else back in the main tank with plants and wood reinstated, while I've had another couple of unsuccessful attempts on my own at capture with the plants and wood in situ - the leaf debris is certainly escalating while the water is becoming cloudier and cloudier from disturbed root tabs! Ideally, I'd like to treat the two fish together, so will probably make another attempt later - but, for now, I'm giving everyone a break from the stress, myself included!

Awww he's a cute one 

I've always fancied one of those kits... which one did you get?

I have a pair of long handled scissors and tweezers. The latter are invaluable for planting, but it always takes me a few attempts to get my technique right. I'm always worried about squishing or snipping a fish, because mine are SOooo nosey.

Both now also have alternative uses. We have a "tree stump" coffee table with a hole in it. The tweezers' other job is "small toy retriever". And now the scissors are being used to cut the grass in a fairy garden.

On a semi-whim, I've spent the past couple of hours decanting the remainder of my plants out of their pots! Eventually, I managed to get each of them to stay "put" in the substrate, thanks to the numerous ceramic/terracotta rings which come with the plant pots and some JBL plant pins/pegs. Not quite sure that it could be called an aquascape by any stretch of the definition but at least it ought to look more natural, give the fish more scope to swim around the base of the plants rather than navigating their way round plastic pots (neat though they were) and enable the plant roots to spread out.

With all the piling up of sand around the bases, plus some moving of plant location, there has been an enormous amount of disintegrated root tab debris around the tank, so much so that it's difficult to see the fish and how the tank actual looks, and one of the filters stopped working. I did a 20% water change and squeezed out the sponges on both filters - wow, how much debris had gathered even since the water change two days ago. The tank is still very cloudy with debris, so I reckon I'll have to do another water change and filter sponge squeeze-out in a while from now. In the meantime, I'm hiding in another room as I couldn't bear to look at the cloudy tank and distressed fish; Mr FCMF will be alerting me if the filter ceases function again due to another clog-up or once he thinks it's ready for me to return.

I'm a bit embarrassed about how it looks / will look (once I can actually see it) as it's a bit haphazard - would probably cause you expert plant-keepers to recoil in horror like so - so not sure that I can commit to taking a photo once it eventually clears... but I'll think about it...

In all honesty, I can't tell if the already-decanted plants are surviving better or if the decay rate has slowed down; I'd say it's much the same but probably too early to tell. Some decanted last week died quickly with the leaves detaching from the roots/stalks, presumably as a consequence of mishandling / inadvertently destroying the roots when removing the rockwool.

[Edited to add: ok, despite grimacing, I've plucked up the courage and decided I might as well post - if anything, it ought to make fellow fishkeepers void of plant-keeping/aquascaping skills and potential feel better about their own efforts! Separate thread might be best for this.]

This is getting ridiculous.

I need to do a water change in my 180 litre tank. It was Wednesday 11 days ago that I did the last one. I should have done one on Wednesday this week, but I spent the afternoon in hospital visiting my mother. On Thursday afternoon I was at another hospital at my eye clinic. On Friday my mother was discharged from hospital but we had to wait for an ambulance so i couldn't risk starting a water change (she finally arrived at 6 pm). Yesterday my mother fell out of bed in the care home and had to go to A&E. Today, I managed to do a water change on the betta's tank before lunch but then it started snowing on the back of the house and my husband refused to let me open the door to empty the old tank water down the drain. He has just announced he wants us to go out after lunch tomorrow 

The tank light comes on at 11.30 so I can't start a water change till 12.30 - and that's in the middle of getting lunch. The tank light goes off at 7.30 so I can't do one in the evening.


And to cap it all, I have to have cataract operations on both eyes and I won't be allowed to lift buckets of water for 4 weeks after each one. My husband refuses to carry the buckets because he plays the viola and can't risk straining his arm or shoulder muscles. My son has agreed to help me - but I'll have to pay him as I can't ask him to lose an afternoon's work just to help me. The consultant has agreed to let me lift the jug of water I use to refill the tank!


Sorry, rant over