Fish Herding

Ok, you all know that I am one of those crazy fish people, right? We have actually adopted another 55-gallon aquarium temporarily for the summer. So, we have plenty of fish in our house right now.

Anyway, here is an interesting story [cleveland.com] about a student who won a scholarship and a laptop computer with her project of teaching a fish to swim through a maze. She was also able to show that the fish could show another fish how to get through the maze.

The link also contains a video of the aquarium.

This kind of makes me wonder what I could be teaching my fish. Imagine how great a YouTube video would be of my fish "begging", or slapping me high-five with one of their tiny fins.

Pet Videos

Heather Armstrong recently posted a hilarious movie [dooce.com] of her dogs. Basically, she put their food dishes in front of them, but had them wait for the ok signal to start eating. One dog patiently sits there and waits for the ok signal, while the other dog keep alternating between looking at the food and looking at the owner. You can almost hear the gears turning in the dog's head.

Heimlich and I keep noticing these hilarious things that our fish do. And I have thought about trying to record video of these kinds of events happening (a la one of our fish imprisoning another one of our fish), but I always assume that everyone will find it boring to watch.

But whenever I see videos of other people's pets doing interesting things, I'm always interested in seeing them, so I don't know why I would assume that people wouldn't want to see movies of our fish.

Rainbow Fish vs. Red-Finned Shark

Heimlich has posted more videos of our fish to YouTube. You know, because we're those crazy fish people that treat their pets like surrogate children... We are those people you would expect to act like stereotypical Star Trek fans - showing up to fish keeping conventions dressed in costumes to look like their fish...

ANYWAY, we have noticed some new weird behaviors with our fish. We have had a rainbowfish and a red-finned shark (named Rudolph) in our aquarium for about 7 years or so. The red-finned shark (which is actually a kind of catfish) goes around and bullies all of the other fish all of the time. You know, he steals their lunch money and stuffs them into their lockers before gym class, etc. No, seriously, he does what many other red-finned shark owners complain about, in that he chases the other fish around, and nips at them. It's not something that I have ever really worried about, though.

Recently, our rainbowfish has decided that he's just not going to take it anymore. So, after 7 years of bullying, that little, awkward, pimply kid on the playground is taking the fight to the bully. He now constantly hangs around the mouth to Rudolph's cave, and makes sure that he can't come out. And whenever Rudolph does stick his head out, the rainbowfish nips him. It's hilarious.

In the video, the rainbowfish is the open water swimmer, and Rudolph is the bigger fish that won't be let out of his cave:

Fish Eating

Ok, you know those crazy people who are constantly shoving their cell phones in your face to show you pictures of their pets? Yeah, we're turning into those people. Heimlich recently convinced me to take video of our fish eating. And then she took one of them and posted it to YouTube:



By the way, our panda cory cats (which are most of the fish in that video) are still having babies, so we're still giving them away to good homes.

Also in the video is our red-finned shark (which is actually a kind of catfish), which is a total ham. Let me tell you, whenever he sees a video camera, he's got to ham it up and totally hog the lens.

Yes, I realize that we are insane...

Pictures of Pet Fish

It seems like wherever we go these days, people are whipping out their cell phones to show us pictures of their dogs. It's unbelievable.

Heimlich and I have decided that we're going to try to take pictures of our fish on our cell phones to show them whenever people do that.


It'll be funny, just for the weird reactions that I'm sure we're going to get. I mean, it's almost exactly the same thing - people pushing pictures of their pets in your face. But somehow, I don't think anyone else will see it that way.

In other news, I have been slowly transitioning over to new gravel over the past 2 months:


The old gravel is on the far left. The new gravel is reddish-brown. I think that it looks a lot more natural. The darker color should also bring out more color in the fish. They seem to like it so far.

Baby Cory Cats

As I have mentioned before, I have a pretty large aquarium. One of the kinds of fish that we have are Corydoras Catfish (Cory Cats, for short). We have two kinds of Cory Cats -- Spotted and Panda. Our Panda Cory Cats reached adulthood a few months ago, and they have been having babies non-stop ever since. One of the babies is in the below picture (links to larger versions on Flickr):


There are probably about 10 baby Cory Cats in our aquarium now, and it is clear that we need to start moving them out. If we don't, they'll end up totally overrunning our tank. It's not that the fish get large -- they don't. They stay relatively small (the adults are around 2-3" long). It's just that they are breeding so quickly that we are going to end up having tons of them.

Here's another picture of one of the babies:


To get a sense of scale, I caught the same baby fish in a wider shot:


In the above picture, the baby fish is outlined in a yellow box. There is also an adult Rainbowfish swimming on the left. The tank is a 55-gallon aquarium, and the water level is lower than normal because I was in the middle of a water change at the time.

Anyway, we would like to give them to good homes. We love this type of fish, because they are always active (and therefore fun to watch), and they are constantly sweeping the bottom for food. They do best in groups. We'd like to give them to people who have established tanks and know how to take care of fish. If you would like some, let me know.

Baby Fish

Almost every weekend, I perform a 15% water change in my 55 gallon aquarium (which is part of any normal maintenance cycle). To perform a good water change, you would typically move the tank decorations around so that you can clean the gravel.

A few weekends ago when I was moving all of the crap around, I thought that I saw a baby fish in the tank. But I only saw it for an instant, so it could have easily been something else (parasites?) or a figment of my imagination. There are a lot of large rocks and clay pots in my aquarium, so that the fish have places to hide (which allows them to feel safer, and reduces their stress level). As a result, there really was no way to determine if I saw anything, or what it was that I saw.

Over the past two weeks, Heimlich and I have spotted the baby fish multiple times. We've discovered that I was right (it was a baby fish), and that there are more than one. In that time, they have steadily grown larger, and we have been able to determine that the babies are "panda cory cats" [aquahobby.com], which are one of the kinds of catfish that I have in my aquarium. One of the larger ones actually paused out in the open long enough for me to get a picture of it:


It's resting up against the side of the aquarium, which is why there is a reflection on the left side. I know that it's really hard to see, but I was lucky to get any pictures of it at all. It's less than 1 cm long, and you can kind of get an indication of its size by comparing it to the gravel. Here's a picture of one of the larger fish (~12cm long) in my aquarium, for comparison:


I know that it would have been better if I could have gotten a picture of one of the adult cory cats, but they hide every time I get near the tank. And when they do come out, they are constantly in motion; getting a good picture of one without using a flash is impossible.

Anyway, the good news is that the conditions in my aquarium are so good that my fish are breeding. The bad news is that the smaller babies are almost impossible to spot, so I have to be much more careful when performing mainentance.