Dead Molly

On the weekend one of my Molly's died. I don't know exactly why this time and have no clues other then it looked very lethargic after I did a water change on Saturday. So far I have lost one Plady and one Molly. The first one I lost because it died of carbon dioxide poisoning when it got stuck under my Co2 ladder. I can see losing one fish accidentally but two very similar fish is a bit odd. Both fish were female live bearers. The only thing that I can think of that would have killed it was that there was a slight build up of blue green algae on the back glass of the tank but that doesn't make any sense because if there was rebuild of toxins from it the Plady fry would be affected first and they appear to be fine. Luckily I found the Molly before it started to breakdown and release too much ammonia so that the other fish seem to be fine. 

Starting The New Tank

I have been talking about starting a new tank for a while now, and I have now started things rolling. I already had  an old six gallon tank sitting around and I went for a trip to Big Al's to pick up some beige gravel, a heater and a sponge filter. The Gravel slopes off to the left back corner while the filter and heater are on the right. I was originally going to cycle the tank with Zebra Danios but realized that I would have to throw the tank up in a matter of minutes or release them into my main tank were they might harass my neon's or my young Plady's. So i decided to go with fish less cycling using fish food. Right now I have no plans for the tank but i do have a few ideas.

A Shrimp and Moss Tank
The small size of the tank means there is not a lot of room for equipment like Co2 and not a lot of room for fish either. Moss however is not fussy and will provide a nice food source and hiding place for shrimp.

Fry Tank
I may end up using this tank to raise up my young Plady's. In my current tank they only get to eat plants because they are scared of the bigger fish but in a tank to themselves i could actually feed them and then with the extra protein I am sure they would grow much faster.

Hopefully I will get pictures later but at the moment the Computer does not have enough memory to install the camera software. When I install it I will load up all the pictures I have taken over the last few months. 

The Problem with DIY Co2

When I originally chose to go with DIY Fermentation Co2 I chose it because it was cheap costing less then a tenth then pressurized Co2 and it didn't need a trip into town every three months to get the tank refilled. So I built two reactors with separators which worked well for a couple months. Then my ceramic diffuser plugged and put a ton of pressure on the seals. This must have damaged them because a few months later they My diffuser didn't have a single bubble go through it for several weeks. After resiliconing the seals I could get bubbles by closing the valve, shaking the bottle and then opening the valve in the line just the tiniest bit. After doing this over five times I somehow got a consistent flow. This is the problem with DIY Co2, it's too finicky for the consistency needed in the aquarium to keep plants growing and pH stable. That and the fact that most people only have one bottle so that there is two, three day downtime between taking off the old batch and the new one getting up to speed means that unless your willing to go through the trouble of timing your batches so they over lap, building multiple reactors and constant tweaking and fiddling you may be better off with the consistency and reliability of Pressurized Co2.