Welcome to my little underwater bubble on Blogger, a place where I talk about my freshwater fish pals and teach you about them from my own personal experience. I'm always trying to find, create or share innovative aquarium ideas, whether it's a decor setup or re-designing a typical filtration system, it's all fish and fun!
I recently received my mollies from my aquarium friend and I actually found these ones to be much prettier than I was originally expecting.
Male (left) and Female (right)
At first I was not really enjoying having these two pairs of mollies, the smallest female actually died within a few days (due to stress I believe). I had a molly jump out of my quarantine bucket I had setup several times upon being spooked. That being said I made some modifications to my aquarium lid to cover over any open areas.
Male Molly
The next issue I'm having is that these fish are much bigger than I was expecting, the biggest one is around 4 inches in length and I'm already feeling like these 3 fish need a bigger environment than my 10gal tank since I read that they can get up to 6.5 inches in length. Having only 3 of these fish they seem a bit stressed, perhaps because they are community fish and need to be kept with more mollies than this.
The behavior of these fish when I first got them I would compare to adult gold barbs. When these fish see me they dart off and hide, very shy, they'd push themselves down against the gravel even. Their is a good amount of plant area for them to hide, but I am doubtful their behavior is going to change much in these conditions. If these fish are too stressed I am worried that they may not even breed or may decide to abort which defeats the purpose of me even having them.
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Now that I've had these mollies for several weeks they have gotten a little less frightened of me, mainly because I've been trying to associate me being around them means getting fed, this method has actually been working a bit although they are still a bit timid. I have been trying to feed them twice a day, these fish love to eat although they aren't fans of cucumber it seems but they are enjoying the Petco Color Enhancing Tropical Flakes, they'll even eat some TetraVeggie Algae Wafers.
I have been traveling all around South Korea for the past two weeks and the only aquarium I found here through the internet was the Coex Aquarium. If you're interested in going it's $10 to park in the parking garage (although you can probably take a bus here for less money) and $25 for an adult ticket (the prices showing online weren't accurate) into the aquarium. I however didn't feel like spending $25 for the 40 minute tour around this aquarium, and you can see a little bit of the aquarium for free on the outside of it. So, here are a few quick photo's of the entrance to the Coex Aquarium, and in case you're wondering the inside of this aquarium is setup in rain-forest theme (my camera battery died before I could snap any photo's of it).
I have done a post on aquarium photography before, but now that I have a better camera (the Canon Rebel T3i, DSLR) I wanted to share my own personal aquarium photography experience with everyone. The photo's you're about to see (you can click on the images to enlarge them) were taken at San Diego's Living Coast Discovery Center. For the most part I just used an AF setting and flash (with the exception of the jellyfish image).
Clownfish
Defeating outside lighting glare.
When at an indoor aquarium with natural daylight or indoor lighting reflecting off the tanks you're going to do the last thing that probably comes to mind... use a flash. Using a flash seems to alter the outside glare by changing the light glare to where the glare vanishes in most cases, which then leads me to answer a more popular question...
Jellyfish
How to get rid of flash glare while using a flash.
The point of using a flash is to eliminate outer light glare however, this creates a flash glare instead. The point now is to not photograph the flash glare in the process. First you're going to want to avoid taking photos straight on, instead tilt your camera at a slight angle (just don't tilt your camera too much as to avoid distorting your photo). Doing this redirects the flash glare and helps keep it out of photos.
Steelhead Trout
Can I use a flash diffuser?
If you try to use something to diffuse the flash glare you may find that yourself and the aquarium will both end up in the image.
What if there is no outside glare but the aquarium is lighted inside?
This is usually when you can turn off the flash on your camera.
Eel
Other helpful advice.
Always ask the front desk what their photo policy is at an aquarium (Is flash photography allowed? Is there anything you can't photograph? Can you use a tripod? etc.). I can't stress this enough because the last thing you want to do is harm or stress a living creature or get in trouble for photographing something you don't have legal rights to (this was allowed at the Living Coast Discovery Center from what the front desk told me).
Bass
Helpful items you may want to bring when photographing at an aquarium.
Towels/rags, comes in handy if you need to wipe off the aquarium for a clear photograph, or in case water accidentally gets on your camera.
A flashlight or other portable light source, this may come in handy for tanks you can't visibly see into that well.
A protective lens filter/cover in case you decide to put your camera lens right against the glass to try and take pictures.
Upon finding a different local Walmart in my general area I stumbled across a new fish I have never seen them carry before. For $6.24 you can now own what Walmart refers to as a "Dragon Fish". Dragon Fish (not to be mistake with an arowana) are also known by other names such as Violet Goby (which I believe is its true name), Dragon Goby, Eel Goby, or Peruvian Goby. Often people mistake the violet goby for a bichir, eel, rope fish, or even a cigar fish.
Dragon Fish at Walmart
These fish are docile and their tiny eyes make them nearly blind. They aren't overly active fish although they tend to be more active at night which is usually when they'll eat, and although they do have tiny teeth these teeth are used mainly to scrape off algae and scavenge for other possible tid bits of food as they're detritivores. If fed well these fish won't bother smaller fish such as guppies, but goby's should be kept with friendly fish due to their poor eyesight as it could put them at risk for being bullied by aggressive fish, and if kept with another goby they can become territorial tank mates.
Violet gobies use their large mouths to shovel through substrate in search of food and spit out anything inedible, and although they have big mouths they have small throats. A diet for them consists of foods like algae, baby brine shrimp, frozen blood worms, vegetable flakes, meaty foods, and frozen tubifex worms... just be sure they get a varied diet (I've noticed a lot of people will feed them Hikari Carnivore when they're smaller and Hikari Massivore Delight when they're bigger). They are also prone to escaping their tanks so be sure to keep a lid on your aquarium. These fish can grow up to 24 inches in length and it's typically recommended to have them live on a soft substrate like sand as they're naturally accustom to a muddy substrate, but they can also do fine on gravel although aragonite is probably the most ideal for these fish and you can mix it with gravel to reduce glare. The fish are from North and South America and generally live in brackish swamp waters or streams, in captivity they'll usually only grow up to 15 inches in length. These fish like to have hiding places as they're typically temid. The water requires a salinity of 1.004 - 1.008sg, a water temp of 76F - 78F, hard water with an alkalinity of 10 - 20 dKh, and a pH of 6.5 - 8.5. These fish will possibly be more active and 'confident' in a tank that is 50 - 55 gallons, over small aquariums that are 29 gallons, and these fish seem to find things through water movement.
Walmart's info and price on Dragon Fish
These violet gobies are susceptible to illnesses like columnaris and fin rot, so be sure the fish are not in an overcrowded tank, the water has plenty of oxygen, and try to keep the bio-load to a minimum. A healthy violet goby has a blue/violet shade to it and often gold patches of coloring (unfortunately Walmarts gobies didn't have that blue/violet coloring to them, nor does the info mention how they're brackish water fish) and the fish can survive in freshwater for a short amount of time but for overall health it's not recommended to keep it in those conditions.
As the power went out in my house (for a good hour) and my aquariums shutdown, I laid in bed watching how my guppies would react to the motionless water that then lacked a light source aside from what was coming in through the windows.
I have 2 guppy tanks in my room, one 10-gal which houses male guppies and the other 10-gal which houses female guppies. The power outage really did not seem to phase the male guppies as they continued their daily mating rituals with the other males in the aquarium. The power outage in the female aquarium however, well that made a big behavioral change...
The females began to group/school together as they sank down to the bottom of the aquarium as if they were ultimately terrified. Their body movements were brief as they moved themselves inch by inch about the tank in search of what was happening. The behavior continued for about half an hour as they began to realize they were all still okay. When I got out of bed they quickly relaxed as they knew I was about to feed them and after that point they no longer seemed afraid at all (to a guppy I suppose I am its means of positive well-being and a sign of their food source).
Overall, this makes me wonder if female guppies are perhaps better suited for survival over the male species. Which wouldn't be all too surprising since females aren't as colorful as males, thus aiding them in camouflage if/when hiding from predators. For more info on that topic checkout this article.
I mentioned in my last post that I'd get up some new pictures of my fish that you've probably read so much about on this blog. I'm still trying to get the hang of my new camera so hopefully my photos start getting better overtime but, I can definitely say these pics are a major improvement over older ones you may have seen on here prior to this post. Let me know what you think or anything else you'd like to see a photo of in the future.
Male tuxedo guppy "Peppermint" and some of his fry
