We had another fish fatality this week in the CootieTank. One of our peppered corys (catfish) lost a fin in a freak fight with Mami Gourami, the lone dwarf gourami in the tank (despite the word “dwarf” in it’s name, it’s easily 3x the size of the other fish in the tank). The cory did its best for a few days within the fin, but finally gave up because it just couldn’t move around in the water anymore.
So that’s one platy lost to something (not sure what), and one cory lost due to aggravated assault. There is another platy that has started acting strange, so I plan on heading to the fish shop to pick up some fungus eliminator on the off chance it’s an internal disease (because externally he looks perfectly fine).
In other news, my pregnant platy apparently gave birth sometime overnight. She was big and fat last night when I went to bed, but is nice and skinny this morning. This can only mean one thing: BABY FRY ARE IN MY TANK AGAIN. Thank goodness I vacuumed the rocks yesterday when I did a 25% water change, because it means that any surviving fry won’t have to worry about me vacuuming the rocks for another 4-5 days. And now that I know what to look for, I’ll be more careful when vacuuming the rocks.
The one fry living in the breeding basket is doing VERY well and now looks like an actual fish instead of an alien. He has grown a lot since I initially found him – I don’t have to hunt around the basket to find him anymore, whereas before he was nearly impossible to find. If he continues growing at this rate of speed, I should be able to release him into the general population in another 2-3 weeks. Which will be around the time I’ll need the breeding basket for whatever fry I manage to discover and not kill when cleaning the tank.