Jazzing it up

On Sunday we bought three new fish. Here's a quick introduction, and I promise to fill you in on all the technical details soon (just not tonight!).

From left to right, here is Ian, the Orangespotted Shrimp Goby EDIT - Actually he is a Blenny! It look us a good month or so to correct this as the fish shop told us he was a Goby... tut!, Jazmine, the African Flameback Angelfish, and Killer, the Sixline Wrasse.

The Big Clean-Up

I've been keeping a secret from you all... I suppose I was kind of hoping I would get away without having to tell you that we have a wee problem in the Nano tank, but now I can't really hide it anymore.

We have a plague. A plague of flatworms. They are tiny red and orange flatworms and don't seem to do any harm. It's just that our Nano tank is now full of them and they are not too easy to get rid of. Since Goldie and Harvey have moved to the main tank the flatworms have taken over and are all over the rocks, side of the tank and in the sand. Their natural predators are the fish, especially Wrasse like Goldie. We are not really wanting to get another fish at the moment so were looking for other options to eradicate them. We tried ordering a treatment called Flatworm Exit from the US but it is not available. We could abandon the tank, freshwater dip all the rocks and kill everything on them and get new sand and start again, but that all sounds a bit extreme!

So we have gone for another option in the meanwhile; The Cleaner Shrimps.

Today we got two Cleaner Shrimps or Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimps (Lysmata amboinensis) to be precise. They are meant to be really handy as they will actively clean the fish from parasites. We are hoping they have a taste for flatworms! They seem to love the Nano tank as it is currently full of wee white crawlie things. They have been chasing them all over the back wall and grabbing at them with their pincers which is lovely to see!

We've not named the Shrimps. So far it's just the fish that have names (Starting with letter A - Z). Do you think we should name them?

Impossible Photography?!

I wanted to show you a photo of our main tank now it has all the fish in it. I'm afraid this is the best shot of all/ most of the fish! Harvey is clear at the front, then Comet, Boomerang is further back behind Harvey, Darty is always up the far end but is not looking at the camera and Goldie has just missed the shot as he swims off the bottom of the photo!

 

 

 

Even just trying to capture one fish is not easy. Boomerang has developed some beautiful colouring and looks very grown up. If only we could get a good photo to show you! This is one of the best we have in the album (yes we have a fish album!).