I’d not mentioned anything about the fish recently, but I had a pretty good reason why.

A few weeks ago, I woke up and went about on my usual routine of getting out of bed, zombie shuffling towards the fish tank, and then feeding the fish.

Only this time, I noticed that our normally timid catfish, Miele, was sitting right at the front of the tank, in full view of all to see.

Something seemed… fishy.

Sorry, (poor) humour is my coping mechanism.

It soon became apparent that the poor fish had died in the night, with its final resting place being that spot.

😞

Naturally I was very upset, and tried to figure out what may have gone wrong.

I test the water conditions at least fortnightly, and nothing seemed off.

It was getting plenty of food.

And the other fish seemed totally normal.

I didn’t want to get a replacement fish, because it was just too sad to see another catfish in its place. But also, I just didn’t want to see another dead fish in the tank. It was rather horrifying to see my favourite (ssh, don’t tell the others) fish dead at the bottom of the tank, so I definitely didn’t want to see a repeat of it.

But as the weeks rolled over, I noticed a very obvious increase in the algae growing on the surfaces of the plants, driftwood, and rocks in the tank. It’s hard to scrub off manually without disturbing the plants and other fish, so after some contemplation…

This is Hoover.

Hoover is significantly smaller than Miele. So much so that it’s even smaller than the Danios.

But it doesn’t seem to take any shit from the Danios, so I’m hoping it’ll adjust nicely.

But we’ll obviously never forget Miele, who is buried under my beloved Ginkgo. I chose that particular spot because this way, it’ll always be a part of the family.

Categories: General

Tagged as: aquascaping fish tank hobbies

ABugsLife

A Ph. D graduate in Microbiology, residing in Victoria, Australia. Currently working in multiple locations but still in the STEM field. 👀 🦠 🧫 🧬