Re: i'd like to be under the sea
> Hehehehe. That's sweet. You almost wanna hug the little guy - except you
> know you'd live to regret it. Only problem with your puffer-ambitions is
> that they're saltwater - and that means mega-high maintenance, and you do
> really need to know what you're doing.
Hmm. Maybe someday I'll just hire somebody to set it up for me. I need a porcupine puffer in my life, dammit!!!
>I've never gone there because
> saltwater stuff's soooo expensive. You need special filters that replicate
> tidal/wave flows, etc. And you need a really big tank, and you can't have
> many fish in it because saltwater fish need a lot more oxygen than
> freshwater ones.
Do you have several tanks? Someone I know has this room with like ten aquariums. He's addicted to em.
In my fantasy house - the one I'd show on Cribs - I'd have a whole f***ing wall aquarium, with like sharks and eels and shit in it. A tank so big I could f***ing put on scuba gear and join em!
Hmm, but then i'd have to feed the sharks other fish, huh?
HMMM. A big tank with something nicer than sharks I guess. But a shark sure would look cool.
> I do actually have a puffer fish myself, but it's stuffed. Literally, I
> mean. Her name's Ethel. I was going to take her to my Sales Conference and
> threaten to throw her at people when they became unruly, but was
> over-ruled on that one. Those spikes are sharper than you could possibly
> imagine!
I don't mind the spikes. Me and my puffer would just kiss each other through the glass.
>Amen to that. And as for people that actually buy them to fight and gamble >with - you should all be locked up in a maximum security ward with rapists and >psycopaths and we'll place bets on you!
And pet shop owners should be put into a container an inch bigger than their bodies and see how they like it!
> I haven't seen it, but it sure can happen. Fish are basically all
> a'swimmin' round in their own crap and piss. The algae in your tank and
> filter will convert all these nasties into friendly oxygen, but if the
> ammonia/phosphate levels get too high it'll quickly kill your algae, and
> then your fish will follow very rapidly. People get obsessed with cleaning
> algae out of tanks, and that's really wrong. It might look unsightly, but
> a lot of algae is actually the sign of a healthy tank. Water should be
> tested regularly. Of course the other cause could be the heater
> malfunctioning, but I assume your friend checked that.
It could've been the heater. My brother had a heater that he had lots of problems with. Sometimes it wouldn't go on and off and the water would get REALLY hot. But I don't think that's what killed em.
It was something with the water.
> Oh and WTF!!!!! A banana in the tank???? What the hell inspired that?
> Admit it - you were stoned, weren't you? Isn't there a Cure song called
> "Bananafishbones"?
No! I was just a kid. I was eating a banana and thought the fish might like a banana too. My brother tried to blame all the fish dying on me putting stuff like that in there. He was very upset about the mass deaths.
> Tiger barbs are the worst. They look great and they're pretty hardy, but
> they're little bastards.
I liked how they swarmed around when eating.
> Clown loaches are my favourite fish - but they're at the more difficult
> end of the spectrum. I had one once called "Ken" (geddit?).
> Ideally they should be fed live food once a week (they dig worms - frozen
> ones will do), and they're way shy bottom-feeders. You should drop some
> special pellets for bottom-feeders (that sounds really wrong, doesn't it?)
> in the tank before you switch out the light at night, and then your loach
> will come out and happily munch. You'd be able to tell when Ken came out
> 'cos he'd make these cute ickle sucking noises when he was chewing on the
> pellets that were seriously audible metres away. Again, with bottom
> feeders, it's best to have an under-gravel filter which will suck other
> fishies turds all the way to the bottom of the gravel - otherwise your
> loach spends its life rolling round in everyone else's shit.
Do you have a web cam? You should post a pic of your fishies!!
