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Sherlock and Watson |
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Friday, August 3, 2007
There was something weird going on with Watson last night. When I went to the tank to feed them (around midnight), Watson was hardly moving, his belly was to the side or up. I watched him for about 20 minutes, and on and off for about 5 minutes, he was actually belly up on the surface. I thought he was dead or dying and was going to take him out of the water then. But I thought I would leave him in and wait until the next morning. Well, this morning, he's flapping his flippers and swimming around just fine. Weird.
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This is Sherlock and Watson�s tank, right after the monthly cleaning, I hadn�t put any water back in it yet when I took the picture. Virginia had them for 2-3 years I think, after going through several sets until we learned how to keep them alive for more than 3 months. Now we know not to feed him too much, and to change water partially (keep 1/3 from the previous tank) once a month only. I got the fishes in March, along with Oscar. The first time I cleaned their tank in April, I spent about 2 hours doing it, even though it�s a small tank (3 gallons). I scrubbed each of the glass rocks on the bottom with toothbrush (over 100 pieces and took me over an hour), but when I tried to scrub the silk plant, it broke apart. So the next day, I went to Hobby Lobby and got a bag of river stones for 99 cents, and then a plastic plant from Walmart that looks more durable than the silk one. I wanted to get a cave for the fishes too, but all of them look like the paint�s going to peel off (not good quality decorations), so I didn�t get one. Besides, the tank is probably too small for it. It took the fishes about three days to adjust to the new decorations (I scrubbed and soaked them in hot water, then soaked them in filtered water, which is the kind of water we use to fill the tank). However, they love to swim around and through it now. Sometimes they hide in it too. During the May cleaning, I took out all the tubing from the tank and cleaned the algae off them too. It�s a very small tabletop tank, so it does not have a filtering system installed. Besides, I bought the tank originally as a set for fake fishes for Oscar to enjoy. Oscar quickly figured out the fishes were fake, that�s how Virginia started keeping live ones. One day I would like to get a bigger and nicer tank. |
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Friday, August 11, 2007
Watson died earlier this week. At first I had no idea why he died, but I came across this discussion on the guinea pig forum, and what happened to Watson sounded very much like what they were discussing. I think there was a chemical unbalance with Watson�s swim/air bladder, and that�s why he kept flopping up his belly for several days. They said that most fish die from this condition without treatment. One person said that he found that by putting frozen peas in the water increases the chance of the fish surviving (something about the pea releasing a chemical that the fish needs to restore swim bladder condition). I wish I had known about this a week ago�
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Saturday, August 4, 2007
Watson did it again this morning! He was acting like he was drunk or something, if that�s a good word to describe a fish. So I decided to relocate the tank from in front of the kitchen counter (on the livingroom ledge) to the front of the big table, where there is more light (but no direct sunlight). This is just too weird.
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Sherlock now all alone in the tank. |
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Since I don�t have a place to bury Watson, and I don�t want to spend $60 to cremate a goldfish, right now I�m keeping his body in my freezer. |
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Thursday, January 31, 2008
Virginia got me a new digital camera for Christmas! So now it�s much easier to photograph Sherlock in his take. Here are some picture of Sherlock enjoying one of his meals. I feed him every other day now, and change water once every 1.5 months.
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