Terrific Tuesday!

Today was a great day! Spring is officially here! Smokey and Sunny have been having fun chasing toys and looking at the birds that are outside the windows. Smokey has decided that my mushroom chair is HERS and has taken to relaxing in it lately. I am trying to get Sunny to gain some weight because she is slightly underweight. On a side note, I am about to switch them BOTH from Purina ONE Healthy Kitten Formula to Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul. Fiona has enjoyed the nice weather (warm weather). Lewis and Clark are quite hyper most of the time now and are not sleeping much. Gex has come out of the winter sleeping that she goes into and is now active (for her) more often. The 47 gallon tank is now cycled and ready for more fish. It is getting some good algae growth. The 20 gallon tank is doing well and has gotten beautiful lately. The nano-reef is GREAT and has gotten lots of coralline algae growth, scroll algae growth, and lots of apstasia anemones. I went to a local wildlife refuge on Saturday and got some good pictures! What a GREAT few days...

Adding New Fish to a Tank (a dangerous thing)

If you are a fish keeper you MUST at some point add fish to an aquarium. But how do you go about it without harming your already existing critters? Well, you MUST quarantine new fish for at least a week (longer if possible) and look for signs of disease. Most fish keepers KNOW this but few do it. I never did until after ONE addition. A few years ago when I had a ten gallon aquarium that was already stocked with neon tetras, cardinal tetras, serpae tetras, platys, guppies, and danios, I had an older cleanup fish die. I wanted to replace it with another because they are great fish to have and I like them. So I went to Petco and got a seemingly healthy fish from a seemingly healthy tank. I thought, "This fish is fine; I don't need to quarantine," so I didn't. Well, a few days later, I was feeding the fish and noticed one or two white spots on a couple of the tetras. At this point I KNEW I had made a mistake and started treating the WHOLE tank for ick. In the end I lost all six neon tetras, all three cardinal tetras, all the platys, all the guppies, all the danios, the new cleanup fish, and one of the serpae tetras (one is still alive to this day!). Since then, I have quarantined all new fish and intend to keep doing it. A few weeks ago I got some black skirt tetras that looked healthy, but they developed ick and died a few days later. If I had put them into my main tank, I would have not only lost them but also my danios. So, if you are buying fish, PLEASE quarantine!

Gerbils!

Yesterday was a GREAT day, except ONE thing that happened. I was downstairs cooking when I was called by my sister who said "I think I have a gerbil in my room but it might be a mouse so please see if your gerbils are both in their cage.". So I looked and sure enough, Clark was out. I immediately saw how Clark got out and secured it so that Lewis would not get out too. I went to my sister's room and blocked the bottom of the door with a pillow (to keep the gerbil in her room because he obviously got in under the door!) and started trying to get Clark. Well, HE thought it was a game and would come out, run around, let me ALMOST get him, and dart back under the bed. This went on for about five minutes before I decided that I would have to trick him. I got out of sight and got my sister to run him out and then I grabbed him. Back into his cage he went. He (and I) were VERY lucky because I have two cats (Smokey and Sunny) and, thank goodness, they were both downstairs asleep. I added more room to their cage today and plan to get some more toys for them too! Hopefully this will NOT happen again!