Well, it is almost complete. The fish have almost all arrived, and the tanks are more or less set up.

Those of you that know us well, have no doubt met or at least heard tales of our beloved little pets. Making a move “with fish” has been a strange experience. But as with anything that you love, and feel you have some responsibility to care for, it becomes a process that must be endured.

We are now approaching the end stage of that process. Both of the NY tanks are set up (more or less). There’s still some arranging of the cables to tidy things up, but otherwise they’re set. There is also one more shipment of some salt-water fish remaining. But their tank ready and has about half of its denizens (and all of its rock).

This requires several things... One is having fish tanks in two locations since the process of physically moving everything at once was orders of magnitude beyond what was possible. That also requires someone to care for the fish in the other location. In short, we moved our smaller tanks that were empty and then set them up once we got to NY. I was surprised, but just by keeping some of the rocks and wood from the old tanks, even after a week of being “dry” was still able to quickly “cycle” the tank with bacteria. For the salt-water tank we just purchased a bag of sand and 5kg of live rock locally.

Once we were satisfied things were stable here, we had out contact in IL begin shipping the fish. This also is no easy task. But he is well compensated. The fish are feed little to no food for a few days prior to shipping, then caught and bagged. The bags are filled with O2, the temperature lowered just a little, and packed in styrofoam containers. Less than a day later they arrive after a short plane trip and some waiting. I’ve been rather surprised by how well this has worked (even for some fish I feared would not make such an ordeal easily).

I suppose it really isn’t that far fetched. It’s a similar process by which fish are distributed to aquarium stores. Probably the hardest part is finding a person that is legally allowed to ship cargo with oxygen.

Another aspect that was surprising was the cost. While it’s not cheap or inexpensive, it has been much less than just buying things here. This is particularly true for the salt-water rock. Comparing what we could sell it for in one place and then buy replacement rock here was much more expensive than shipping it.

Having a little “capital” to spend on this was also key. While we do get some of the money back from selling things in one location, it has been necessary to absorb a significant cost, only some of it which will come back to us. It could be possible to recoup a little more, but we’re just not able to do that ourselves right now. And again, having pets requires expenditures other than just food. Chalk this up to “vet bills” or something similar.

We are down to 2 large tanks (which is more than plenty). 1 for our loaches and 1 for our salt-water fish.

Anyhow, the process continues, but is almost done. I should post pictures before too long.

This morning I heard Kerri say, “Come down here and tell me how many anemones do we have?” For a long time we’ve had 2 in our large tank. Our old pair of maroon clownfish adopted both long ago and make frequent visitations to both. The boss (female) occupies the first one each night, forcing the smaller male to seek shelter in our second anemone, a large rose red colored bubble tip. We had not planned on adding a second anemone despite the large tank size just due to the occasional difficulty in keeping them. But we came across this one a while ago that was a captive grown. The second anemone in particular has thrived in our tank. It’s disc usually reaches 12-14 inches in diameter each day with the tentacles extending much further.

At least it was last night... But Kerri was indeed correct, something had happened.



There are clearly two anemones. Just to be clear, this used to be a single large creature and in the space of a single night it has split itself in two (the first anemone, that the female claims each night, is not visible). Reproduction via cloning is not actually that uncommon. It can occur for a variety of reasons, not all of them positive. In this case everything seems to have gone quite well. The smaller of the two has moved a few inches off since the lights came on, but by tonight it has settled down and seems content in its current position. Above the male clown is in the “daughter” clone, buffeting his newest ward.

You can actually get an idea of the total size of the original from the rock they are sitting on. You’ll notice a good deal of purple calciferous algae on the rocks (and glass) of the tank, yet that rock has a relatively little purple. That’s due to the anemone being open and more or less shading the rock beneath it (or perhaps also stinging anything that tries to grown under it?).

Anyhow, if both survive, or in particular if this continues favorably, then we’ll be happy to help propagate these for other fish enthusiasts. Not only does such a thing reduce them being taken from the wild, but it will be making exact genetic copies of an anemone that is known to do well in an aquarium.

Our Mbuna cichlids continue to be a favorite. They’re animated, colorful, and very robust. Plus they have a lively time as they establish and reinforce their social structure in the tank and try to breed.



Probably the hardest thing about keeping them was convincing myself that all the rocks in the tank were really worth getting. But at this point it seems like a requirement for these little fish. They really do love having caves and places to hide. The other big hurdle was accepting the total lack of plants. I don’t think there are any plants we’ve tried that have lasted more than a few days. Even “tough” floating plants get torn to shreds. All they will tolerate is ivy roots that I have suspended in the water. And even then I’ve caught them trying to pull the rather large, mature ivy vines into the tank.

We’ve had wonderful news this evening! We have new bouncing baby fishes! In fact we have two different broods, one of Rusty Cichlids (Iodotropheus sprengerae, Lavender mBuna) and a Red-Empress Hap (Protomelas taeniolatus) brood.

A few weeks ago we noticed one our rusty cichlids was holding eggs. They are mouth brooders, so after a pair spawns, the female collects the fertilized eggs and holds them in her mouth for several weeks. For this entire time, the female will not eat. The rusty cichlids are particularly important for a couple of reasons. They are a threatened species in the wild and we got them intentionally with the idea of breeding them. We started with 1 male (let him get old enough to really be a male) and then slowly added other rusty cichlids from different sources. He’s the biggest by far and as such is the only one that gets to breed. While we’ve been told he is F1 (first generation captive breed, meaning his parents are wild), there’s no real way to verify that statement and I don’t trust everyone anyways. Such as it is, we got him and subsequently several more in a way to make certain we had fish that while all the same species are not related.

And so we found one of the little females holding a few weeks ago. We waited a few days to do anything just to see if she would swallow the eggs (hey sometimes it takes practice. You try not eating for a month). During that time we noticed that a female red empress hap in the tank was also holding (and her male was being very ornery). We decided to move both females to a small breeding tank. For the past 3 weeks they’ve been holding the eggs, coming out to see us, but refusing any food. However, this evening Kerri found the Rusty had released her fry! We removed her, feed her in isolation for a bit and then returned her to her normal tank. At the same time we decided to got ahead and nab the other female to see if we could strip the eggs from her. To my surprise she then also released free swimming fry.

At this point both females are recovering and we’ve got around 35 fry in the breeding tank.




These are surprisingly difficult to photograph. The picture above shows mostly red-empress fry. Since they are younger, the yolk sac is still visible and large on some of them. They look as thought they’ve got giant bellies. There’s maybe one rusty in that picture too.




Here there is more variety (more Rusties), but it’s not quite as focused. Anyhow, the little Rusty cichlids look just like miniature adults. They’re already fully orange brown and are quite active. Kerri even saw a couple of them facing off and locking jaws. We’ll be starting them on a diet of tiny brine shrimp and crushed flakes soon. Hopefully the two sets of fry can be raised together (similar conditions, diet, etc).

For some reason the little fish seem to like one corner in particular of the tank despite there being several rocks and some fake plants in the tank.

We’ll try our best to raise both broods and then bring them to a couple of the local fish shops. Again, while it’s nice that the Red-Empress spawned, we’re most excited about the Rusty cichlids. Aside from being just a beautiful fish (and relatively mild tempered for an African cichlid), they are threatened in the wild. They are only found in very limited areas in Lake Malawi. As such, we’ve very happy to have a diverse breeding colony of them.

It’s a rare event when any picture I take of our fish tanks comes out nicely.



Above is a little “Cobalt Zebra” or Metriaclima Callainos. This happens to be a she in our mixed Mbuna tank. Even though she is a she, notice how incredibly bright her color is. This is true for lots of cichlid species.



We also got a picture of our little Melanochromis Auratus. This is a very androgynous fish in our case. Above she looks like a she. But at times she’ll turn brown and eventually black. While black (male) “he” will behave like a male and chase. But eventually the black fades to brown and we’re back to a little she.

Today we brought home a new tropical fish, a Clown Loach that is roughly 8-9inches in length. She is the SUPER LOACH. She is the new queen of the tank. She’s also somewhat mesmerizing to watch, kind of like the “hypno-toad.”

We’ve added her to our loach tank with 14 smaller clowns roughly 2-5 inches in length and they seem very happy to have the giant among them. Nightly we observe a “loach jam” where most all the loaches in the tank choose to cram and stuff themselves around their new queen, regardless of where she chooses to stay the night. It’s really quite amusing to look at the tank with a flashlight after the lights are out and see loach heads and loach tails all sticking out from a single place.

I’ll try to get a picture of her posted eventually.

I only recently found out about the CARES fish preservation program. The basic idea is that it’s a group interested in getting responsible fishie-people to help ensure the survival of certain fish species.

I mentioned this to a friend at work who seemed skeptical. “Wouldn’t it just be better if people left them alone in the wild?” Well, yes and no, depending upon the circumstances. The easiest example to take is that of the African rift lake cichlids. These fish are found often only within a single lake in the wild.

In the case of Lake Victoria, one of the 3 lakes, many of the fish are either very endangered or already extinct. This is not due to people taking fish from the wild for the aquarium hobby. Instead it is due to the introduction of non-native fish species into the lake, the Nile Perch. The non-native species did not have much effect for about 20-30 years, but sometime in the late 20th century the non-native species began to dramatically out compete many of the native fish. Since these fish are only found within a single lake (albiet a very large one), that’s all it took. If I’m recalling correctly, the loss of various fish species from Lake Victoria is around 250-300 distinct species during the past 3 decades. That’s about half of all the fish species in that lake. However, some of the species managed to find suitable new homes in aquariums throughout the world. It’s because of this that some people in the aquarium hobby now have fish that are in fact extinct in nature. There are many other species that are critically endangered in the lake and, sadly, will probably only be found in captivity soon.

Because the entire ecosystem of the lake has changed, it is not a matter of simply putting these fish back into the lake. In fact, I’m not really aware of any great solution that will work in the long run. However, at least for now aquariums, zoos, and even hobbiests can help to keep the species alive.

As such we’ve decided to keep a couple of fish colonies that will be dedicated to endangered fish. We have 2 different groups in 2 of our tanks. 1 group is from Lake Victoria itself and is the Haplochromis obliquidens. So far we only have 4 of them, 1 male a 3 females. However, the male is very colorful and bossy. We expect a female to be holding soon. We’ve also go a tank setup around Tropheus duboisi Maswa with 19 of the little guys in it. Right now they’re all too young to really breed. But we’ve obtained them from 3 different sources to help keep them diverse and are optimistic.

I should try to post pictures soon.

We have fish and 3 cats. You’d think that it would be non-stop entertainment (or torture) for the cats. Instead they could care less 99.9% of the time. Except for Bella who loves to eat any fish food that happens to fall on the floor.

Except for one day that I caught Buckley looking at the cichlids...

This is our new boss, at least the new boss of our mbuna cichlid tank.

He is a Hongi fish, more specifically a “Super Red Top Zebra Hongi.” Whatever his name, he is the king of our buna.

One of Kerri’s Christmas presents was the promise of an aquarium. I actually had a small aquarium as a child for a number of years, but I don’t remember very much from it in terms of details. I believe the most important thing for the functioning of my childhood aquarium was my mother. However, since she’s in Texas I cannot count on her to take care of these.

We went today and purchased a 55 gallon (sigh, english units) tank, along with everything needed for it except for fish. We found a very nice little ``local fish shop” called Tropiquatics out in the western suburbs. They were very helpful and we left with everything we needed (including instructions on what to do). We’re planning on putting community tropical freshwater fish in the tank. Nothing very fancy to start.

A few things struck me as interesting about this process. First, I had assumed that a larger tank meant a more difficult tank to maintain. Instead it seems (according to our local experts) that a larger tank is easier to maintain and keep healthy. The reasoning here is that in a larger tank, there is more time to notice any problems developing in the tank or water chemistry. For a very small volume of water, the chemistry can become toxic quite quickly. For a large tank (that isn’t overstocked) things change more slowly. This makes sense, but we’ll see.

The other interesting thing is something I was unaware of from my youth. We must “cycle” the tank. This means that we need a few small, hardy fish to create waste, and then give the tank time to develop the correct bacteria to process the waste. Fish make ammonia. So we need bacteria to eat ammonia. However, while ammonia itself is toxic to fish, the bacteria that eat it, release nitrite. Nitrite is also toxic to fish. However, there are also bacteria that eat nitrite and make nitrate. The nitrate isn’t nearly as bad for fish as the other two. So, eventually we as fish keepers must change the water occasionally to get rid of some of the nitrate. But to start you wait and cultivate your own bacteria for the tank.

I’m actually a little sad that it was so hard to find this place. Looking through various internet searches basically reveals PetCo, Petland, PetSmart, and Walmart with very few independent stores. I suspect they may be a dying breed, instead being replaced by the super-store versions. Having worked at a similar super-store directly as a teen for books and music, I know how little knowledge it takes to be in charge of such a store. Hoping on good advice is really not something to be expected.