In an earlier post, I believe that I mentioned that the Platy fry were born(kinda) on the morning of the Lunar Eclipse/Full Moon in February. We were able to salvage 15 of them. After a week or so in the nursery cage, I put the remaining survivors into a one-gallon tank with a little box/aerator filter and a mini heater. Over the next few weeks, the survivors dwindled. I truly think that the largest survivor was munching on the smaller ones, one by one. So there is only one left from that original batch. We are naming it HanniBell until we know whether to it is female or male. If it turns out that the fish is male, we'll switch it to Lektor. The survivor has doubled in size (no surprise there) and seems fine being alone at this time.
We're still wondering if the "cycling" process is ever going to end. Yesterday, the five gallon, after 5 weeks had an ammonia level reading of 0ppm.... but there were not any detectable levels of nitrItes nor nitrAtes. Considering the water hasn't been changed in approximately 4 days, I'm not sure what that sudden drop could be attributed to. Could it have been a result of the slice of fruit that I put in?
Tuesday night, I put a thin slice of fruit (a disk) in two of the tanks for the platys and the goldfish. The goldfish totally ate the slice with nothing left within the hour. The platys were a little slower, but did finally take some healthy bites. The 10 gallon tank has been in the nitrItes stage for more than a week, so a low/no ammonia reading would not surprise me there. But since the 5 gallon tank has been consistently ranging in the .5 to .75 ppm range for the week, I was shocked when the ammonia reading was 0. I even retested, thinking I had done something wrong. But, today, the ammonia levels in the 5 gallon tank were back to .25 ppm. Would a piece of fruit really lower the ammonia? I have no idea where to check on that. I may need to do a little experiment to test this out!
Well, my silver wag platy is getting close to birthing within the next week or two. Wonder if this birth(kinda) will be on the New Moon, in about two weeks? I'll keep everyone updated as the events unfold.
We're still wondering if the "cycling" process is ever going to end. Yesterday, the five gallon, after 5 weeks had an ammonia level reading of 0ppm.... but there were not any detectable levels of nitrItes nor nitrAtes. Considering the water hasn't been changed in approximately 4 days, I'm not sure what that sudden drop could be attributed to. Could it have been a result of the slice of fruit that I put in?
Tuesday night, I put a thin slice of fruit (a disk) in two of the tanks for the platys and the goldfish. The goldfish totally ate the slice with nothing left within the hour. The platys were a little slower, but did finally take some healthy bites. The 10 gallon tank has been in the nitrItes stage for more than a week, so a low/no ammonia reading would not surprise me there. But since the 5 gallon tank has been consistently ranging in the .5 to .75 ppm range for the week, I was shocked when the ammonia reading was 0. I even retested, thinking I had done something wrong. But, today, the ammonia levels in the 5 gallon tank were back to .25 ppm. Would a piece of fruit really lower the ammonia? I have no idea where to check on that. I may need to do a little experiment to test this out!
Well, my silver wag platy is getting close to birthing within the next week or two. Wonder if this birth(kinda) will be on the New Moon, in about two weeks? I'll keep everyone updated as the events unfold.
No comments:
Post a Comment