Additions

 I bit the bullet today.

And decided to attempt to add more fish back into my giant fish tank.

As it's been stable for like a week now.

And it was looking soooo empty.

But it's like....stressful. To buy fish. Especially after a death pandemic where you lose over half your fish. *exhales* Because like...the thought is constantly in the back of my mind of "will they make it or did I just waste money."

Like I can be semi-confident that I'm not 'wasting money' since I was trying to be more careful to not add a bunch of fish. Keeping my selections on the smaller size so that the addition of them should hopefully not upset the tank.

Not like the customer earlier today who decided they wanted 4 of each glodanio color. Which with 5 colors meant that they wanted TWENTY fish. 

20 fish to place in their 50 gallon tank. 

Which in theory since the danios only get 2 inches each and would need 2 gallons per tank. They were only at 40 gallons adding in those 20.

But the customer, after I'd fished out the 20 fish, was like "Oh wait get me 2 more of each color" aka 6 of each color.

*exhales*

I had to explain to them why that wasn't a good idea. Because yes the tank can hold that manyish fish. But its not something you want to add all at once. Honestly I would have suggested adding closer to maybe 10? But the customer was from a couple of hours away.

And those customers are always more difficult to convince to 'add a few a time' because they don't want to have to drive all the way up to my store more than once.

In any case. I convinced that customer to just stick with the 20 glodanios I'd already fished out. 

Though honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they lose around half of them. *shakes head*

But at like $7 each...the customer literally just dropped like $140 before tax on their fish. Like O_o I couldn't imagine spending that much money on fish all at once.

I mean...I could...but I would never do that.

In any case.

I do get the desire of "add them all now!" because I had to fight that desire myself lol.

Mostly because this month we have our glotetras and our mollies and platys on sale. 

Where if you buy 3 or more you can get 15% off the fish. 

Which is one of those frustrating sales...because customers want to take advantage of the 'deal' but sometimes their tank just isn't big enough to add a lot of fish at once. 

So we often end up with a higher dead fish return because customers try to get as much fish as they can for as little as possible.

In any case. Since the sale only lasts a month...and me trying to be somewhat careful at how many fish I add at once...that only gives me like 4 weeks to add in fish before the sale is done for. (Buying fish once a week for a month. aka 4 times to buy fish) 

And that's only IF the fish in the first batch do well and I don't retrigger another die off. *exhales* 

In any case.

After spending my entire shift deliberating just which fish I wanted to get.

I decided that I would be adding in 4 glotetras. An orange, a red, and 2 greens to go with my remaining red, orange and 2 purples. 

Which hopefully, if it goes well, I will also add in 2 blues and 2 pinks next week to complete the 'collection' 

Though I am debating about whether or not I should try to have 3 of each color instead of 2. But for now I'm sticking with 2s. 

And then...Platys and Mollies....they can be rather tricky in my tank. I want to try them again. And since it's a less aggressive tank....

I went with 3 painted platys. 1 male and 2 females. Just to see how they would do.

Ergo I had planned to only add like 7 fish today.

And maybe if I hadn't been so distracted catching fish for 3 hours straight at the fish wall I would have just taken advantage of that and stuck with it.

But I also discovered an 'odd' fish in our feeder goldfish tanks...which judging by shape and color...might be one of those rosy minnows I've heard about but my store doesn't carry....

So I fished that one out to take home.

And then in our Zebra Danio tank I discovered that some of our zebras that had come in were actually leopard danios instead. So I fished those out.

And then there were 3 actual zebra danios that a customer had brought into the store to donate that I said I could take home since our store doesn't accept donated fish.

Which meant....I ended up with an extra 8 fish I hadn't planned to take home that I took home. 

So I added in like 15 fish instead of my planned 6ish.

So I'm kinda....trying to not stress about it.

After all, all the fish are on the smaller size. So like total I'm adding maybe 20 inches of fish to my tank? Which means 20 gallons which is a fraction of my 125 gallon tank.

So it should be fine.

And overall the fish are looking good. The danios are schooling with my 2 surviving ones from the die off. The minnow is hanging with them, my glotetras found their buddies in the tank and are having a grand old time.

It's just the platys that I'm uncertain of. They seem to be taking a minute to adjust to their new much bigger set up. So *fingers crossed* That they do well. 

But if they don't I'll know that it's probably not a good idea to add in platys and mollies to my tank if this batch doesn't do well. And I can focus on just the glotetras for the rest of the month until I see what March's sale is. 

Though if the platys do do well I'm hoping to add in some red wags as well. And perhaps some balloon belly mollies and some gold panda mollies. 

So we'll see how the fish do this week. And plan from there what I'll get next weekend.

But in typical fashion....whenever I seem to get some new fish...I end up with causualties somewhere.

And unfortunately....it's looking like it's gonna be the black moor.

*exhales*

Like luckily said fish is in a different tank from all the new fish so there's no fear of the goldfish getting the others sick. As I had decided to give it a couple of days before adding the moor back into my big tank...and it was a good thing I waited because the day after the 'ick' had vanished I came home from work yesterday to discover the goldfish had ick spots again on its body. So I started the ick treatment in that tank.

And today....today the moor isn't looking good.

Like he was semi-perky when I got home from work.

But the past couple of hours he's just been....kinda laying on the bottom of the tank doing the death breathing sort of movements. Y_Y and its looking like the 'fin rot' has attacked the fish's tail...which if the fin rot strikes....that's not a good sign...

So yah. Gonna probably lose the goldfish tonight. 

Which would leave my 10 gallon tank with just snails in it. 

Which is fine as I was hoping to take down that tank anyways....I just need to figure out what I need to do with the snails....As I don't want to move them to yet another tank and have them bring disease to that tank.

So since I've already started the ick treatment....I'll probably finish that out and let the tank run with just the snails in it for another week or so before moving the snails into my big tank and taking down the 10.

But we'll see.

Plans could change.

But at least. For now. My 125's new additions seem to be going well.

Hopefully it stays that way.

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi