The Albinos!

My albino pleco pair has arrived, and since I got one of my 2 breeder boxes running, I got to take some pictures first before I release them into their respective tanks (they are related so they can't be an actual pair in my book). I don't have names for them yet, but the female will be going into the bachelor tank with Glen and Stu and the male will be going in to give Manny a break in that tank. Yay! Plecos!

Plecos!

Just thought I would share a few horrible pictures of the plecos (babies and adults.) There seem to be more and more babies every couple of weeks. Glen is starting to hang out by Manny's cave, so I am waiting for some weird stand off, Manny would easily win, Glen is so small still. Still no pictures of the little new Marble plecos, I have 2 hang one half gallon breeder boxes though so hopefully there will be pictures very soon!

Enjoy! (sorry they are out of focus and full of reflections as usual. I promise once I get the fish tanks all moved and new lighting rigs plus the DSLR from my dad they should be at least 89% better)

Glen cleaning one of the sponge filters I am seasoning for the outdoor grow out tank!

Remember the pleco who was stuck? This is him! twice as big and full of bristles.  We decided to name him Stu.

A random baby and a smaller baby and some snails. I like that you can see the white tips on their fins. All the brown babies have them.

Another action shot of Glen. He is getting so feisty. I need to move him down to the other bachelor tank with Stu.

The marbles have arrived!!

The marbles arrived this afternoon and I could not be more thrilled. I some how even was lucky enough to receive a long fin one even though the listing was for short fin! They are all fairly well marked, although I am sure it will change as they grow.

I am excited to see how they will look when they are fully grown. I am guessing they are about 2 weeks older then my first batch, so around this time next year they should be the perfect age to pair with some of my albinos.

I have been lead to believe that albino x marble crosses will throw 100% marbles, so I am interested to see if that is true.

I'll post pictures as soon as I can get a couple good ones. They are in my cory tank for right now so the lighting is extremely dim. I'll see what I can accomplish tomorrow!

Aquatic Bliss.

Hey Everybody!

Happy Monday! (Or as happy as I Monday can be!) I haven't quite started my day yet. I most likely will after the blog post is finished and I have killed at least one cup of coffee (yeah the green tea thin still can't get me going like coffee can.)  At any rate, I can't believe that its already the middle of the month. This year is flying by and not in the good way. I suppose I am getting stuff accomplished but, just not enough as I had hoped. Enough blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm a failure at life talk. I am happy today for a couple reasons.

1. I some how won an auction for 6 red marble bristle nose plecos (for a song I might add!)
2. My dad is getting a new DSLR so he is handing down his older one to me! (I am pleased as punch to have any camera at this point that I can manually focus!)

Also, my summer tubs are coming along smashingly and should be ready by June 1st as I intended!  I have been taking photos a long the entire process, so when it is completed I will write up a big post about it. It has been a lot of work, leveling, shimming, building up and skimming off, but after a ton of top soil and 2 tons of rocks, I am almost ready to finally order all the working parts for the tubs (Kensfish.com here I come!) and the plants that will need to take up residence first! The stock tank has provided some unique challenges as I was unaware they could leach zinc into the water, thank goodness for careful research. The plan is to grow out a bunch of fish to send out in fall not commit mass fish genocide. Back to the new red marble plecos, I am hoping they are the highly contrasty ones, BUT I can make due if they are not. As always I am very interested in genetics and after reading about the topic further, it is even more fascinating to me.

I will be raising these little guys up until they are old enough to separate by sex and then keeping one male and one female and the rest will be resold to out people who want them, so I can get unrelated mates for them (line breeding is a big no, no in my book unless I am really trying to preserve a selected trait and I only have one individual with priorly mentioned trait to work with.) I am also deciding that I will most likely be getting an albino female for Glen and Stu to pal around with.  It seems that that white seams of fins may suggest that fish carries an allele for albinism (even more fascinating is there seems to be 2 or 3 different alleles that dictate albinism in bristle noses) As both Kiara and Manny have white fin tips and approximately 15 to 25 percent of their offspring is type 1 albinos (I think, definitely albino, type is a little bit difficult  to tell at an inch long).  One of two things could happen if an albino mother was brought into the mix (Kiara, Stu and Glen are all siblings) 1. Her already flawed genetics could increase the incidence of albinism or 2. The genetics of her more dominant parent could take over and I could possibly get no albinos at all. It seems the only way to find out is to find a pretty little lady. Now the question is do I search for a type 1 or a type 2 lady?

So fascinating. I truly like everything about my fish, although, the genetics are not as easy as with rodents. there are so many things that seems to contribute and change.

Back to the fish tubs (Sorry for all the skipping back and forth) the stock tank is going to house the growing number of plecos I have around here, Kiara and Manny, the peppered and the julii cories, and all the red wag and spotty wag platies. I am hoping maybe the cories will spawn better if outdoors. I know they do, but there are never any offspring and I am thinking there is just never enough food for the hatchlings (maybe?) The extra space should also help the baby plecos grow out better, although they are growing like weeds now, so if I'm not careful they will all be Godzilla by september. The other tubs will be:
Red tailed calico platies, Stu, Glen, and unnamed albino lady.
Snow whites, panda, and milk in ink platies, marble gourami (if I can't find a home for him)
Bleeding heart platies, red belly platies, tiger platies, other marble gourami (If I can't find a home for him) and zippy the yoyo loach.

My ultimate goal with these outdoor tubs is to make enough money back to pay for all my dry fish food for next year, pay myself back for all the tubs and equipment (which I need any way to set up the new fish room in the basement later this fall) and to possibly have enough to buy 3 ten gallon quarantine tanks for incoming/ outgoing fish. We will see how it all goes. If nothing else it will be a fantastic experiment.

I had better go and actually accomplish at least a couple of the things I set out to do today!

Little Guppies, Big dreams.

My female guppy finally had her babies, and I have learned baby guppies have no survival instinct whats so ever. They there all float right out in the open, looking at the bigger fish with absolutely no fear at all, when they could be hiding in the naja grass or the tons of willow moss.

My aquarium lights haven't come on yet, but I will be surprised if there are any left when I go to check later today. They are cute though, strange little sets of eyes with a spine just floating about in the highest current part of the tank.

In other news, the second round of baby plecos is doing just as great as the first, and it looks like my smaller female "Gwen" is actually just a super late bloomer and will have to be called "Glen" now, as his bristles are starting to show up.

I bought 3 of the 6 tubs to make my fish tubs out of, This coming weekend I plan on cleaning up the corner of the yard next to the garage so I can build my little scaffolding for them there (too many raccoons to just hope free standing and uncovered at night will work) so I can get the air pump hooked up and get some plants at least growing in there.

I am thinking, I would like to have parrot feather, water hyacinth and maybe pond primrose for top plants.  The nice thing about he buckets is that even though I will still check on them every day, the fish will have constant natural food and if they get green the fish never mind. Algae control is such a human concept. Although I doubt with 50 baby plecos there will be any problem at all with algae *laugh*

I am also planning on selling some of my fish when I am sorting out for buckets. I only want to keep the best to raise up the next generation. Which I suppose is normal.  I really want to get into fancier guppies and different strains of bn plecos. I will always love my platies too, but I like too much, which is why I always want more, more, more.

I still am stuck on the idea of color coded tanks (as silly as that is) so it will be fun trying to accomplish those.  I know there will be some that wont work out but I'll try. I also think I am going to move my tanks to the basement so I have more room and have to worry less about spilling on the floor. Also in the basement I can store shipping supplies and have a bagging station, which will be a tremendous help. I can also set up a couple quarantine tanks, for new fish coming in or for fish getting ready to go out.

Enough about my fishy friends. Nothing else is really going on here. still waiting for some thing to fall into place. I can't get my tanks moved tot eh basement until I get the fish out in their tubs, so that I am stuck. I am drawing out room designs and trying to decide what I need in my room and what I need to get rid of.  I have so much stuff.

My ebay auctions are not doing so well. In fact, not one person has looked at them even. *laugh* I'm not getting discouraged, I just think I need to maybe find a better way to sell stuff.

I was thinking about my perfect jobs, my top 5 are:

1. Pet photographer
2. Dog walker
3. Plant nursery/ Pond maintenance
4. Fish Monger
5. Dog Sitter

All of which seem so attainable,  I already sell fish, I think though once I get my camera, I might try the pet photography thing and the maybe the dog walking thing.  I don't know.  I am not sure Clinton, IA is the best place to start a dog walking business. I guess I'll never know unless I try though.

Right now I make $200 a week, (that is a good week by the way.) So it would just have to make equal to that. Which I would much rather make out side with insanely happy walkin' puppies then toiling away inside a dingy video store that I am not appreciated at. So I just need to get my but in gear I guess. Ok enough babbling, time to take my happy doggies for their walk and to do water changes and clean my room as much as I can!

Well your a fish monger... or well I am, actually.

I thought tonight I would post some pictures, although, they are horrible quality because my camera still hates me and my lights are too high above the tanks and make horrible refections because they are not focuses enough on just the tanks... HOWEVER, they say it is the thought that counts, so I am trying to count, or wait *laughs* or something.

Any way please keep in my there are 5000 things wrong with these images but I just thought I would try to show my fishes, because honestly the most people look at the post about my panda centric aquarium, which sadly still isn't a reality but it is getting closer to being a reality.

What you lookin' at fool? Prometheus in his normal cranky stance... er ,um, float.

Baby bushy nose plecos nomming some summer squash (which even after blanched still floats, thus the clamp)

King Diamond being inquisitive.

Albino bushy nose long fin baby... and a dried water drip, the water hear is liquid limestone :/

A couple ink in milk ladies and a dalmatian tuxedo investigating wearily.

More pleco babies nomming.

A flurry of activity, fish move far too much.

Monkey Face, hopefully the part of my foundation to my black velvet or monkey face platies.

A panda and a snow white girl floating about.

Cherry shrimp and MTS. 

Another cherry cleaning a moss ball.

Very dusty tank outside, bit a month old pleco baby on the left and a week old baby on the right. 

A blue and a pink ramshorn snail conversing over dinner maybe?

Male panda guppy (who I think I was swindled on, I am guessing he is a half black) ink in milk platies, snow white platies, and a couple tuxedo platies.

Actual in focus ink in milk platy!

2 snow white platies and a couple panda platies.

King diamond throwing his weight around... gosh he is fat. Ill be happy to get my betta only condo set up this fall!

Little monkey again being all adorable.

High fin red wag, bleeding heart, and wag bleeding heart platies eating algae wafers.

Fatty bleeding heart and a juvenile white tailed red calico platy again attacking algae wafers.

Assassin snails assassinating some earthworm sticks.

Prometheus generally being fat and lazy.

Zippy my only remaining yoyo loach checking out he camera from a safe distance.

"Who Me?"

High fin and bleeding heart and the wafers again.

Mama Kiara and a baby. 

Kingo swimming about.

Ink in milk, tuxedo, and panda platies.

Again I apologize for the horrible quality of these photos. Until I get a better camera and better aquarium lighting it is the best I can do.

Hope you all enjoyed them and any questions can be sent to my email as always.

List of Fish!

I know this is sort of moot with out pictures, however I thought I would post what I have right now in fish and inverts incase any one is looking. I am very passive right now on selling fish, I will start being more active in May/ June.

What I currently have:

Panda Guppies

Bleeding Heart Platies

Tiger Twinbar Platies

Red Wag (standard and hi fin) Platies

Gold Wag (standard and hi fin) Platies

Red Tailed White Calico Platies

Spotty Wags (Gold, Red, Orange bodies with black wag fins and black dalmatian spots)

Dalmatian Platies (Some blue some white)

Ink in Milk Platies

Panda Platies

Red Tuxedo Platies

Gold Tuxedo Platies

Calico and White Seam, Long and Short Fin Bristle Nose Plecos

Cherry Shrimp

Assassin Snails

Blue Ramshorn Snails

Pink Ramshorn Snails.

What I am working on:

Black Velvet Platies (think black molly but in a platy)

Snow White Platies (totally white with blue eyes and rosy "cheeks")

Creamsicle Platies (orange and white in some capacity)

I also am looking to add more, I enjoy separating tanks by color (weird I know) so I am constantly looking for new live bearers and shrimp/ snails to add. I am really looking forward to doing fish tubs this summer also, It will be much easier to over haul all my tanks if they are empty!!

Depression- Case of the missing Manny.

I have been meaning to blog for a few days now, but I am depressed and I tend to not want to write when I am depressed because i don't think the world needs any more negativity in it. Nor do I think it appropriate to wander around bemoaning my life not being fair when there are people who can't ever have enough food to eat. However I do feel like my life is unfair and I am stuck right now, and it is not a happy feeling at all.

Also my favorite pleco "Manny" has gone missing and I am baffled as to where he could be. I looked behind the aquarium fearing the worst, not there, I looked IN both filters, not there, I looked in every cave (maybe is is guarding more eggs) nope, not there. So then I thought maybe I moved him to another aquarium to give him a break from his daddy duties, but I can not find him anywhere. Which actually adds to my depression. I know he is just a fish but he was my favorite fish, all adorable and stout and bristle nosed. Speaking of plecos, the babies are doing fabulously and are growing every day. I am aiming to get my fish tubs up and going by the middle of may.

I am so behind on everything, and the depression is just making it worse. My garden in non-existant, my fish tubs still are MIA, the house is a disaster, ick. If i had health insurance this would be the point in time where I go in and get anti depressants to help me get through this slump. I don't though, so I will just keep muddling on.

I took some pictures of the fish (or tried) my camera still is not working well at all, so I am rather disappointed with the quality of them (I HATE THINGS OUT OF FOCUS.) I need a new camera with manual focus, yes need is the absolute correct word.

I want to be well on my way to a career by 30, I want to not have to struggle so much, have my own place, enjoy my life, just easy things like that. What I really would like to do is be a pet photographer, and there can be money in that field, but there can be money in any field. I make money off my fish, but it wont keep me fed. I have two friends who are photographers who say go for it, but they have not seen my photographs *laughs* I think even doing image retouching would make me fairly happy if I had some one to teach me. Point being I need a career where I can still have the freedom to make my own schedule.

Being how I am some days I need 12 hours of sleep (ug. does that make me sound lazy, I swear to you I am not!) and other days I can work for 15 hours straight, it just depends on... I'm not sure what, but on something I obviously can't control. Working with animals is exhausting, but I love it. I didn't really love working at the dog daycare, I worked at, I loved the daycare aspect of it, especially walking dogs, that was the best therapy I could have ever asked for, but I hated the part where I needed to clean with horrible chemicals and bust my butt to try to keep up because I was old.

I think in general I want to work with animals, I would happily be a dog walker, pet photographer, pet sitter, dog groomer. I would be open to the idea of training too, but not in a class setting, it would have to be one on one unless the doggy parents were there.  The doggie daycare really opened my eyes and it was a fantastic business BUT trying to keep 25 dogs all in control at once is too much to handle for me.

Sorry about the lack luster post, better then nothing at all I suppose. Have a great Thursday!

Ick.

Or rather Ich, short for Ichthyophthirius multifiliis (also known as white spot disease); It’s a parasite that lives on the slime coat of fish and all fish keepers dread the appearance of those little white dots. Today while trying to take pictures of my new tanks I noticed my betta “Promeitius” had 3 white spots and I basically freaked, not only for his health but also for the health of all the other fish in that tank.  I treat ich as naturally as possible, I am not a believer of dosing up my fish with antibiotics or other medicines, so my usual coarse of action is cranking the temp in the tank to a balmy 86 degrees and adding aquarium salt. (ich can’t live in high water temperatures nor can the freshwater variety tolerate salt).  

Speaking of fish and fish related things, I will be closing my “Miss Ellyse’s Aquatics” blog and just posting the content here instead. I think snouts heart sprouts might be easier to remember for most people, even though most fish don’t have snouts.   So in the coming weeks there will far more fish and aquatics related posts then before.  If there are ever any topics you would like for me to blog about please don’t be shy. I love suggestions; they make my life a lot easier!!

What else is going on in my life currently? I am battling a horrible infection, so I am really weak and I am not being able to get done ever 1/16^th of what I should be getting accomplished however, I am going to dig through my storage unit to find my box of bags so I can have a few ebay auctions to try to raise enough money for that Epiphanie Clover Camera Purse I posted about in one of my previous posts. It seems silly being as I do not have enough money for the $800 dollar camera I plan on getting, HOWEVER, I will have a better paying job soon and I WILL have a new camera that I can manually focus.  I did manage to get my little point and shoot digital camera fixed, however trying to take photos of anything fast moving (ie fish, shrimp, cats, dogs) is not exactly a piece of cake. I manage to get it done, but for each picture that I manage to get in focus there are 25 that I do not, which believe me wastes a lot of my time (something I have hardly any of.) Focus and fast movement issues aside, my little camera is working pretty well again. It will work great for taking pictures of who knows what. Most likely food, as I have been stalking several blogs lately especially “Delighted Mama” which have tons of amazing alternative recipes which use natural and nontraditional sweeteners and healthful ingredients. This whole infection thing is getting me to try to take better care of my self again, which I sometimes forget about when I am running around like mad and trying to be super woman.

I look forward to feeling better so I can get some spring cleaning under way as well as planting my little garden and getting my outdoor fish tubs set up. I am glad I had been forcing myself to wait because the past 4 nights have been well below freezing again, which would have been detrimental to my little fishy friends. 

Vegetables and New Tanks!

I want vegetables, more over I want vegetarian sushi or fancy onigiri. I have a craving and I think I may have to make it a reality tomorrow. I need to go grocery shopping any way. I have all these vegetarian/ vegan food recipes I want to make up and try, but between my bad tooth and the severe lack of time I have accomplished absolutely nothing. I wish I had some one to just cook me delicious healthy food. Oh it would be so yummy. I think tomorrow morning before I have to work I will go get groceries and make up kale chips, cauliflower poppers, veggie sushi and beef stew... maybe some stir fry.  Can you all tell I'm hungry?

Speaking of sushi and fish, I have one of the new tanks all set up. I need to drag the other one in and get it and the stand set up some place so my other tank can spread out a bit, all the baby plecos, guppies and platies need growing space. I am still very excited to get my outdoor tubs  up and going, but I am trying to not jump the gun and I have made a promise to myself to wait until the first of May to take any one outside.  I will be selling off quite a few fish too hopefully before I move the perfect specimens out to the tubs. I am really excited about getting the spotty wags, snow whites, and black velvets to all breed true. Also very excited about baby plecos growing up and being happy and chubby. I need more holding tanks.

Other then that nothing is really new. I have a broken tooth that is killing me, the cats all have spring fever, I need to spring clean like crazy, need to sort through storage unit and try to sell some stuff on ebay and craigslist.  Also have to get the 3 bloggers I have reworked and all fancy. See ya all later!

Something fishy is going on!

I am beyond excited! Some of the baby bristlenoses are albinos, how I am not sure but they are Totally adorable and once they are a bit bigger I will be moving them into my snow white tank... Speaking of tanks, I have 2 for sure maybe 3 new ones I am going to pick up monday! How exciting?! Going to go now *laughing* I'm sorry. I was just over taken with joy for a couple minutes. I promise a real post monday night!

Panda-monium.

Today I am super happy, which is a rarity with out certain factors, however today I am and I have decided that once money allows it I will be setting up another aquarium that will all be "panda-centric".

It will include:
Panda Platies
Panda Corydoras
Panda Guppies
Tiger Shrimp (either natural, blue or black or maybe all 3?!)
and of course a wealth of plants!

I am beyond excited about this idea even though it may take years before it comes to fruition!

Ill include some pics below of the various critters :) (None of these pics belong to me in any way by the way! They are all the property of their respective owners and are for reference only!!)