It was definitely cat hair - I found more stuck to the outside of the glass, and the culprit sleeping under the tank. I'll try to encourage her to hang out elsewhere, but she's pretty low key so I doubt she's been doing anything especially antagonistic to them. Still probably best that she not drink out of the filters.
The new driftwood was leaching tannins but no sap, so I chucked it in. Fingers crossed. No pics yet but I'll get some soon. It looks good and the Crime Fish were exploring it pretty actively today. I'm excited about it. It had been in a woodpile for over a year so I'm optimistic.
I have added potatoes to the HOBs - turns out lots of people use sweet potatoes because they grow as well as pothos and the plant itself is pretty, but I only had plain brown potatoes on hand, so we'll see.
I'm positive that the API kit would work well on milk, but I realized I don't want to pull 5ml off the mares every time I want to test, so they're safe from that. For now.
Anyone who's been following my posts will laugh at this - I went back to my LFS today. The kid recognized me immediately and was like, "hey, look at all these cool catfish we have in today!" I told him about my mistake in buying Crime Fish when I'd been looking for Synodontis Nigriventris. He hadn't known about Crime Fish either, so we checked his "upside down catfish" tank - today, instead of Secret Murder Fish, their "upside down catfish" were in fact Synodontis Nigriventris... so I bought them .
I also got 5 Hara Jerdoni, and put all 8 new kids in the Carrot Box. Guess I'm building my community of oddball cats after all. I wanted to get some shrimp for the Carrot Box, too, but their shrimp seemed awfully expensive for something I'll probably kill, so I refrained. They were out of pictus, so the pictus experiment will have to wait. They had a variety of other cool catfish which were all pretty tempting, but I didn't want to take home anything else I haven't already read about before taking it home - once was enough. I really wanted their featherfin squeakers (okay and all the other cool catfish), but it didn't seem like a great plan.
Also, while the Brothers in Crime were checking out their new wood piece tonight, I noticed that they've both grown a lot, but Blackie is now noticeably bigger, while before they were pretty identical. Maybe they're different sexes, maybe it's just that they're different individuals. Jamiroquai is growing a streamer on his tail fin, Blackie isn't.
Orchids will definitely rot if they're left in forever. I wait til they look like they want out, put them in the Dry Box until they're dry, and then put them back in the water. Not very scientific, but they haven't died yet *shrug.*
The new driftwood was leaching tannins but no sap, so I chucked it in. Fingers crossed. No pics yet but I'll get some soon. It looks good and the Crime Fish were exploring it pretty actively today. I'm excited about it. It had been in a woodpile for over a year so I'm optimistic.
I have added potatoes to the HOBs - turns out lots of people use sweet potatoes because they grow as well as pothos and the plant itself is pretty, but I only had plain brown potatoes on hand, so we'll see.
I'm positive that the API kit would work well on milk, but I realized I don't want to pull 5ml off the mares every time I want to test, so they're safe from that. For now.
Anyone who's been following my posts will laugh at this - I went back to my LFS today. The kid recognized me immediately and was like, "hey, look at all these cool catfish we have in today!" I told him about my mistake in buying Crime Fish when I'd been looking for Synodontis Nigriventris. He hadn't known about Crime Fish either, so we checked his "upside down catfish" tank - today, instead of Secret Murder Fish, their "upside down catfish" were in fact Synodontis Nigriventris... so I bought them .
I also got 5 Hara Jerdoni, and put all 8 new kids in the Carrot Box. Guess I'm building my community of oddball cats after all. I wanted to get some shrimp for the Carrot Box, too, but their shrimp seemed awfully expensive for something I'll probably kill, so I refrained. They were out of pictus, so the pictus experiment will have to wait. They had a variety of other cool catfish which were all pretty tempting, but I didn't want to take home anything else I haven't already read about before taking it home - once was enough. I really wanted their featherfin squeakers (okay and all the other cool catfish), but it didn't seem like a great plan.
Also, while the Brothers in Crime were checking out their new wood piece tonight, I noticed that they've both grown a lot, but Blackie is now noticeably bigger, while before they were pretty identical. Maybe they're different sexes, maybe it's just that they're different individuals. Jamiroquai is growing a streamer on his tail fin, Blackie isn't.
Orchids will definitely rot if they're left in forever. I wait til they look like they want out, put them in the Dry Box until they're dry, and then put them back in the water. Not very scientific, but they haven't died yet *shrug.*