I thought that I had no snails in my aquarium. That myth was dispelled over the weekend as I started seeing baby snails clinging to the glass. I’ve removed about 30 of them from the tank so far!

Hopefully I’ve got most of them at this stage, but I’ll have to watch the tank for the next week or so to make sure that nono of them slip through and make it to maturity.

I picked up the last batch of fish to go in my aquarium, a pair of Pearl Gouramis. Now I can sit back, relax and watch them swim around. I also got a bit of Java Moss which will hopefully attach itself to the driftwood and start growing. Lastly, I discovered that the Platies have given birth, and there’s 4 or 5 tiny (3mm long) fish somewhere in the tank. I had asked for 6 male fish to avoid having spry, so it appears that there’s one female in there after all.

The aquarium has finally finished cycling (cycling is the process of building up a beneficial bacteria colony) so I was at last able to add more fish. I had three Platies, two males and one female. The problem is twofold:
a) I should have 2 females for each male to keep everyone happy, and
b) they breed quite quickly.

As I want to fill my tank close to capcacity with a range of fish, I can’t afford to have them breeding all over the place, so I decided to give the female to the LFS (local fish shop) and get 4 more males. I dropped them in yesterday and they’re all settled in now and seem to be happy enough.

I now have to wait for the tank to go through another mini-cycle as the bacteria colony grows to handle the larger fish load before I can add any more fish. It’s a very gradual process.

The cycling of my aquarium looks like it will be finished soon. My test kits arrived yesterday so I finally got to see what the water chemistry is doing. Ammonia is zero, but Nitrites are still up, so once they hit zero I can start adding more fish (or fush for you Kiwis).

That didn’t take long. I’ve just had my first fish die on me. I had noticed she was looking a little lethargic, sticking to the bottom and the sides of the tank. I decided to do a partial water change to clean up the bottom of the tank which went OK, though it stirred up a little silt. Maybe that’s what tipped her over the edge. The remaining three look to be in good health, though as I’m new to this I wouldn’t really know.

Well I’ve finally got my aquarium up and running. I got it for Christmas from Jacqui, then a few weeks later I got around to buying the rest of the bits and pieces I need. Another couple of weeks to get around to setting it up and filling it with water, then at the weekend I finally got my first fish!

On the right we have the first couple of fish. They’re Platies, 2 male and 2 female. They’ve settled into the tank quite nicely, so we’ll see how things progress from here. I have to leave them alone for a couple of weeks to let the beneficial bacteria grow in the filter and then I can start gradually adding more fish. I’ll also have to start getting a few decorations and plants organised too.