# Theta's General Journal



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

To include updates on all of my pets and general stuff. I figured I should keep track of everything, so I'll start off with this.


Sorority:
Fish fingers -red tailed CT
Strawberry -red tailed CT
Halloween -mustard gas CT
Hella -blue plakat

4 petco baby bettas- so far unnamed (one may be male)
1 adult possibly male 'female betta' (also has a really awkward long body and blows bubbles)

Many, many girls who have passed. SIP,
Custard, Chilli, Mini, Queen, Prince, Nippy, Nom, Red, Marbles, and Juniper.


Boys:
Shota-chan -pinkish marble delta
Google -purple half moon double tail
Blueberry -pale purple/blue EE
Spike -black and blue CT

Other fish:
3 lonely neon tetras (they need some friends soon)

Other pets:
5 indoor cats
5 rescue outdoor/stray cats
1 baby corn snake
2 Madagascar hissing roaches
76392028447389102 bladder snails (in their own tank fortunately, none in my aquariums)


Some species fail to thrive in my tanks. This is especially obvious in livebearers such as swords and guppies. I've never had a guppy or sword stay alive in my super soft water here.
I did have otos, however my tanks were infected with columnaris, and due to the cycle suddenly crashing after my fish got sick, my otos did not survive.

The bladder snails came on some plants, and as I'm interested in all animals , I salvaged several snails (I only found three), and all the eggs I could find (three clutches) before I put my plants in pottassium permegeat (sp?) for the night. This was only last week. I now have at least a hundred baby bladder snails, and many more clutches.

My roaches live in one of those small critter keepers from petco, and they've thrived in my warm and humid room. Hoping to see their life cycle soon. 

The snake is a recent addition. I have a 45 gallons tank for him/her when it gets big enough, but currently it's in a ten gallon aquarium. It's difficult to sex snakes, so I don't know the gender yet.

Also I have some button quail eggs on the way, ready to be hatched in my incubator. I order a dozen hatching eggs for twelve dollars, and they will arrive around the 5th or 6th.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

I'm actually going to post the first event now. I'll copy and paste from my post in the rant thread.


I'm really disappointed at the moment. My filter strainer is loose on my tetra (whisper?) ex30 that's in my sorority, and it fell off while I was gone. I come back to find six of my poor girls inside the media storage box. Three were dead (all medium sized girls), one was bady injured (my largest girl), and two were petco baby bettas that were still small. Fortunately the babies are doing good, and I think my big girl can recover, but honestly, the strainer has always been loose and it has fallen off before but didn't cause any harm. One girl is also missing, I took apart the filter and checked under decorations, but I can't find her. I hope she's not down in the filter where I can't get her. I'm sure she's dead if she got sucked up. She was medium sized too.

Currently the injured girls are separated and have some triple sulfa in with them due to some scales having been torn off. 

It just pisses me off that my filter failed to keep my fish safe. It's now got a nylon stocking around it and rubber banded up above the removal part, so hopefully it doesn't happen again. But still. It's upsetting. It was lacking the usual snap mechanism like my smaller tetra filters too. Talk about major design flaw.

I'll post an update tomorrow if I can remember. Also doing PWC hopefully.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Good news, all my injured girls are interested in food. Two of them ate micro pellets for breakfast, and one of them is only taking frozen bloodworms. I may culture some brine shrimp to pique her interest.

I'll post pics once I'm on my computer and not my ipod.

I only hope that they didn't sustain any fatal internal damage. I'll be keeping an eye out for pineconing, bloat, floatiness, and feeding issues, but considering they've made it this far, I'm hoping for the best.


In other news, my newest cat, the rescue Zephyrus, will not leave my lap. The others are in the kitchen begging to go outside (weird, because no one is actually in the kitchen except the cats. It's like they're asking the door to open itself.) and the snake is probably getting hungry. Definite drop in activity in the last couple days, despite having a properly set up enclosure and no temp changes. He had been home for five days and it's time to feed him. I'm not sure of the last time he ate.

Button quail eggs will ship on the 1st or 2nd, from Brackenridge Ranch. Hopefully they'll arrive undamaged for the most part.


----------



## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

You've got quite the menagerie there! I hope your girls recover. It's always sad to lose any sort of animal. Very interested in seeing pictures of your pets!


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

I'll show kitty pics first. After all, I have tons of pics of them.


Here's Hecate. She's a tortie. She's probably about three or four now.





This is Hades, Hecate's brother. We adopted them from the same people. He was a very light buff color when we first got him, but he's darkened up a bit. He is the sweetest kitty, but both him and his sister flail their paws when they're picked up.





This is the newest cat, Zephyrus. He was rescued from the streets about eight months ago. We got him neutered and he lives almost exclusively indoors now.





This is Persephone. She's a moody one, but very pretty. Too bad she doesn't like to be picked up. We just look, and respect her boundaries. She's about five or six.





This girl is Eris. She's the oldest cat we have. She's about seven or eight. She loves attention and her meow is always completely silent.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Fed the snake just a few minutes ago. I put him in a large tupperware and fed him a thawed pinky mouse (it was kinda gross). They come in three packs at the PetCo, in the freezer by the frozen fish food and live crickets/mealworms. I used the tupperware so he wouldn't associate food with me opening the tank he's in.

I put him back in the tank after feeding. He's already disappeared under his paper towel bedding. When he's a bit less nervous around me, I'll take some pictures of him.


I'll be leaving Tacoma and heading north to Bothell to do some work for my family today, I'll update as anything interesting occurs, and leave my mom to care for my fish. She's great at it fortunately, and I have written instructions for the three injured girls, bladder snails, the snake, and roaches. I won't return home until the 3rd probably.

Taking the bus this evening, and meeting my dad at Centurylink Stadium where he works. There's a private event going on or something, so I'll have to stick around while he finishes working.

Maybe I'll take some pics of the control room and post them.


----------



## BettaLover1313 (Apr 15, 2013)

Wow! You have a lovely bunch of cats, they're all so pretty!


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Well, the bus is quite crowded because apperently there's a baseball game tonight.
I'll have plenty of pictures in the next few days, but not of my fish.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Here's some pics of my roaches I took earlier today. My mom named them Sick and Wrong. One is female, and the other is male.

The male:



The female:


----------



## Fenghuang (Dec 28, 2012)

I am sorry about your sorority and hope all the survivors make a full recovery.

You have gorgeous cats. And, um, roaches too. I love all their names. Will you be documenting the development of the quail eggs (and hopefully future quail chicks)?


----------



## DaytonBetta (Feb 4, 2014)

Haha, the roach names are so funny!

I look forward to hearing about the quail. I would like to have fancy chickens some day.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Also, my 7346918754871601 bladder snails... Here are some eggs in the critter keeper they live in.




I'll try to find some pics of the girls that died in the incident soon.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

I'm really excited about the quail eggs too, and will definitely keep you all updated on them.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Ok, so I've been pretty busy. I start my work tomorrow, 20$ a day for 7-10 days. My sister has been thinking of getting a bird, but I don't think she understands the responsibility a parrot would take. They live a long time after all, and can be difficult. They belong in the wild, really. They're certainly beautiful though.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

My pretty baby Spike died a couple nights ago. He was rather old, and he wasn't acting sick, but he died one night. My mom texted me and told me, since I'm out of town. She takes really good care of my fish, and never messes up, but I thought'd I'd share.
He had a good life, better than if he was living in a bowl. 

Here's some pictures. 
He's the blue CT on the right in this pic.





You can really see his colors in this one.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

I've had Spike for six months, and I'm confident that he lived a rather luxurious life.
He's been in the 2.5 minibow for a couple months now, because I can't trust him with gravel. In the above pictures, he still had his eye, but later he lost it because he poked it out with gravel while I was cleaning his coffee cup. The boys all had swollen eyes the next day, but Spike is the only one who lost his. His got an infection which I had treated with Triple Sufla, and he healed right up, despite looking like he would die any minute.

He's lived since then with only one eye.

Anyway, my mom sent me this pic after she took him out of the minibow.



Anybody know why he's bent like that?


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

I accidentally siphoned my girl Halloween out the window, fortunately I found her, but she has a ton of scales missing. Good thing is, she ate a couple hours later and during the night she started swimming normally again.

My poor baby double tail, the only other girl in the hospital tank still (from the filter incident. The others recovered and are back in the tank) got beat up by her during the night too. So Halloween is in solitary in a cup with holes.

Hopefully my petco baby will be okay. She's lost a lot of color, but I think she's been getting beat up the whole time she was in there. By the other girls too. I don't think she had much tearing in her fins at first, but now she definitely does.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Halloween is doing fine, though she did look bald for a while. Fish-fingers passed away, probably due to internal damage from the filter incident. Also, one of my blue girls (or boy we had thought for a while), turned grey and died. I don't know if it was graphite disease or what, but it hasn't affected anyone else. I really hope it's not columnaris again.
Most of my bladder snails died out, but I salvaged a few egg clutchesand three of four young snails. After a water change, they're back in their kritter keeper and doing good. I picked opfour new roaches from petco, as they were about to die (no one gives them water), and I also have four mice now. Companion mice- not snake food.
I found a ton of micro (macro) fauna in my gravel, and that my baby bettas have been eating it. Mostly it seemed to be nematodes, and some planaria. My fish rather keep them in check though, so I'm not worried.
Today I bought guppiesagain. Poor choice, but they were donations to PetCo and were already in very tannic water. Hopefully they'll be able to adapt to my softwater tanks.

Most exciting though, is the button quail eggs! They arrived about a week ago, and will hatch around the 20th-22nd. I'll post some pics soon, hopefully. So excited to see them.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

It doesn't really look like graphite to me... 



There was also a gel-like fungus or something around his upper body. I believe he was dead for 24 hrs before I found him. He was stuck to the filter when I did.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

In happier news, though, the button quail eggs!



I did candle them, and found one completely clear. I cracked it open and it wasn't fertile. I gave it to the cats- way too small for a person to eat.
Unfortunately, the humidity dropped at some point last night (to around 35% compared to the 50% I had been keeping them) and the temp rose several degrees above 100. I am not too worried about this, really, but I hope the chicks are alright. Lock down begins in two days, and three days after that they'll start to hatch, give or take a couple days. 

During lockdown I'll increase the humidity to around 60% and try to keep from opening the bator until the chick I need to remove is mostly dry.

The new guppies are doing great (considering my track record with livebearers x.x), and all are still alive in my soft water. They came with tannic water, and I assume they had been born in it. All my petstore guppies died within (usually) two days, or started shimmying a lot. These ones were donated by someone and still in a ziplock bag that was floating in a tank. I love livebearers, and hopefully someday I can get a softwater livebearer, like a halfbeak. For now, my guppies (2 adult females and 4 large fry) are in quarantine, and I hope they survive. I will separate any males and females due to the fact that some of them have bent spines, and I don't want to breed them. My male bettas don't bother guppies at all, so I'll put any males I get in with them. I'll keep an eye on them though.

The cornsnake (still unnamed), is doing good on his diet of frozen pinky mice, and his eyes have just gone milky, meaning he's going to shed in the next few days. I may feed early quitter button quail, or chicks that don't make it, to him, but I don't really know yet.

I think I will breed my mice (NOT for snake food x.x), as companion mice. I don't think I could raise something and then feed it to the snake. He'll be getting frozen food- probably forever. Anyway, baby mice are adorable, and I felt a little guilty feeding my snake the frozen ones, so I wanted to raise a few.

As I stated before, most of my snails died, and it was the morning after I fed them some alfalfa pellets (from the mouse food). I think I added too much and polluted the water. I'm sticking to flakes and fresh vegetables for the snails from now on.

The roaches, though, LOVE the mouse food. It's the only thing they eat now.


----------



## ThetaSigma (Jan 18, 2014)

Oh my gosh! The button quail eggs were rocking today! It's pretty intermittent, and small, but I'm thinking they'll hatch tomorrow! I'll post pics as soon as they do!

Originally I had fifteen eggs (I had ordered twelve but they always send extras). On day 12 I found three that were definitely clear. Cracked me open and they were infertile. Just yolk and white inside. I had tossed another clear several days before. So four were tossed so far in all. I currently have 10 eggs that for sure have developed chicks, and one egg that looks like it quit halfway. I'm waiting to take it out, as it's not smelly or oozing anything. Today was the official hatch date, and I think since my temps are low, I'll be seeing pips tomorrow.

I tried to hear chirping, but I can't over the sounds of all my aquarium filters.


----------

