I literally sat in front of the new fish tank this evening for an hour and watching fish doing what they do best: swim. It was VERY relaxing and I can totally understand why people say having fish can lower a person’s blood pressure. My resting heartrate while watching those fish was 68 bpm (I know this because I’ve worn my handy dandy heart rate monitor every waking moment since opening that present on Christmas day). Denis and CootieGirl walked in an hour later, sat on the bed and began talking and horsing around. My bpm promptly went up to the mid-80s and hovered there until CG got bored and left, while Denis fell asleep. It went back down to 70 bpm when I was able to focus on the fish again.
I picked up three new platys (the new ones are more yellow than orange) and another peppered cory. The peppered corys are very happy to be a threesome and followed each other around all afternoon and evening. YAY! So all in all, I have 7 platys, 3 corys, and 1 dwarf gourami in a 15+ gallon tank (the tank measures 16.45 gallons, but you figure it’s not full all the way to the top). Some might say that’s a bit of an overstock, but we’ll see how it works out. Worse comes to worst, I’ll buy a small 5 gallon tank and separate a few of the platys out.
Also, I went onto Craigslist just to see if anyone had aquarium stands for cheap prices, and found two that were about $50. I contacted both sellers to see if the stands were still available and if they are I’ll try to arrange a viewing to determine if one will work (both tanks are located in my town so seeing them should be easy enough).
This new fish venture is much more satisfying than the betta fish we had in Jersey. The bettas just don’t DO anything. They sit in the water and stare at you. This big tank with multiple kinds of fish is so much more enjoyable to watch because there’s always something happening. Tonight two of the corys were playing a game to see who could reach the top of the waterline. For a good 10-15 minutes they’d both swim near the top then dive back down. Over and over, pushing themselves a little higher each time. Finally, after 15 minutes, one of them made it all the way to the top and broke the surface and came back down to the bottom. And just like that the game was over. I’m not even kidding. Once that one fish did it, it was like they both said, “Okay, you win. What do you want to do next?” and went off to find something else to do! And goofy me, I actually cheered when he made it to the top (I’m sure Denis thought I was insane when I cried out, “He did it! YAY!” in the middle of a conversation we were having).
If I remember correctly, the rule of thumb is “one inch of fish per gallon of water,” excluding the cleaners (cat fish and algae eaters). Keep an eye on the gourmi, they can be a little aggressive, although they are considered community friendly. I had a couple who destroyed my angel fish by nipping at their fins (maybe because they were the slowest moving fish in the tank?).
Mami Gourami has been pretty good – just swimming around the tank. He hasn’t been chasing any of the platys, which is good. The platys are at 14 inches, and the gourami is 2.5 – so I’m just slightly over the 1″ per gallon rule. But it should be okay.