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| Is that Bill the Butcher or one of my fish? |
In other words we upgraded to a 70 gallon fish tank. The nice thing about this tank is that it
is already “established”. So the bacteria colony is ready for action. No more endless
tank cycles or futile ammonia testing. It already works. However part of the deal was
we had to take the two cichlids that lived in it. Now I knew that cichlids were
fairly aggressive, but the previous owner of said fish warned me that these two
had already murdered and cannibalized their other four tank mates.
Alrighty then…
Obviously this presented a problem. Either our fish had to
go or their fish had to go; except now they were all our fish. Luckily the
angel of "fishy" death took care of 50 percent of the problem. One of the
cichlids went belly up right after arrival. Following a short ceremony we
buried him at sea… the porcelain sea. Regrettably the one that lived happened
to be the more aggressive of the two, a red zebra cichlid, commonly identified
as a bully.
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| Red Zebra |
I Patrick and I had already done plenty of research on cichlids and the conventional wisdom amongst aquatic enthusiast is that you absolutely cannot mix cichlids with anything but other cichlids. And even within the cichlid species you have to be surprisingly discriminating.
Well we always are striving for variety and thus far Patrick
and I have not exactly obeyed conventional wisdom so we put them all in the
tank together. The results were absolutely fascinating. The red zebra, aptly named “Biff” is a true,
lunch money steeling bully. But the others have learned to stay out of his way.
We’ve also added a red parrot cichlid to
balance the bully equation but that didn’t work out as planned. Mcfly, as he is
known quickly yielded dominance to Biff in classic fashion.
I promised an analysis of the societal structure at work but
I’ve decided to wait until next week since the grand melting pot is still bubbling
on full flame. So now that you guys are up-to-date and know the score, the
societal structure will make more sense next week. But unless thine eyes deceive
me, I think Biff has established a territory for himself. Interesting…
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| Biff made the Angelfish make like a tree and get out! |
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| McFly the new cichlid checking out the golden snail |
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| Angelfish and Green Glow Tetra |
We Also added a fancy shmancy goldfish to Patrick's ten gallon tank. He's got all ten gallons to himself. "Won't he get lonely?" you might ask. Remember that goldfish have a 12 second memory, so by the time he gets to the other side of the tank its like a whole new world! By the way the fish count is now 17.
