Ramblings of a mad Fish Girl

Currently my only stem plant, the Scarlet Temples completely fell apart on me and whole plant melted into nothing. Even the roots rotted out. 

Lockdown paved the way for many of us to spend an ungodly amount of time researching something previously non-existent in and unessential to our lives. Closed eco-spheres and fancy goldfish are the gateway drugs of this story. 

I had fish growing up, but I think the tank was gone before high school. My father liked to keep all sorts of critters without any real regard for their needs or quality of life. I’m quite surprised anything I kept ever lived considering he passed on that blasé, careless style of fish keeping and animal care to young me. As a fisherman himself, and someone who frequently missed out on emotional growth opportunities and failed trials of judgement due to pharmaceutical malpractice, animal lives didn’t mean much to him. The most consistent recurring dream I have (or had, as it seems) is “remembering” after apparent weeks of having forgotten, that I have fish and a fish room. Half empty, murky tanks with fish that haven't been fed in ages. Yet they are all alive, always. I panic and clean and feed and add water and everything is back to normal, but animals go weeks without care in my dreams and I’m not sure why this is. Lingering guilt of being unable to take care of creatures while you’re too sick to care for yourself is my guess. 

Obvious and relevant psychological distress aside, I spent weeks in quarantine consuming endless fish content. A betta tank was the initial intention, just something little with frilly dragon decorations. A fully planted, naturally scaped 10 gallon tank later (with a quarantine tank in progress) I went a little off track. So here is what I’m rocking now.

Plants: -Mayaca fluviatilis which is growing SO WELL for me. 

-Marimo moss balls

-Monte Carlo that I still do not know how to plant properly, yes I know they look like weird little bushes but they pearl for me so they are at least surviving !?!

-Anubias Nana Petite that is just chillin’ in the flow because I initially tied it to the largest piece of driftwood as the white bacterial slime started engulfing it, and the slime rotted out the roots. I’ll tie it to something eventually but it’s sprouting new leaves being untethered so I’m letting little dude do its thing. 

-Java Moss newly tied to a rock that was also rotting on white slime driftwood initially. 

Red root floaters & Salvinia Cucullata suffering from too much flow and no protective barrier from it hehe. The Fogbit is doing well, though. 

The tank is stocked with corydoras pygmaeus, amano shrimp, nerite snails, and boraras brigittae. Next post I’ll go into the journey that adding fish was, and screwing up the nitrogen cycle with the shimp…