Letters of a Betta Addict

I’ve never had a community tank. Not really. Red my Red-tail shark has never been what I would call tank-mate friendly, and I’ve never had a tank large enough for him where I would try tank-mates. I’d need to upgrade his 32 gallon to something like a 55 before I felt comfortable doing that simply because he’s grown so large and his tank-mates would need to be so big as well.

I suppose the 20 was sort of like a community tank but really the Cory’s were little anti-social bits of adorable that fled whenever I entered the room and the WCMM just stayed in the top few inches of the tank nothing really exciting happening there. Well with the leaking of the 32 Gallon tank earlier this week I comendered the 20 Gallon for Red until I get his tank fixed and so moved the Cory’s and the WCMM into the 56 gallon with the goldies. It’s an interesting learning curve.

The 56 is a bare-bottom tank with a bit of an algae carpet thing going on. There’s river rock in the two front corners, and then various decor scattered around 3 pieces of drift wood. With the canister from the 32 currently running along with the Whisper 72 EX along with a box filter that I’m keeping cycled… you could defiantly call it over filtered at the moment.

My three Goldies (Charlie, Sin, and Sam) seem to have adapted well to their new room-mates. Charlie ignores them unless he feels like bossing them around. Sin and Sam spar with the Cory’s for the shimp pellets I slip in on the sly. The White-clouds seem much more active, swimming in more area’s of the tank now and loosely shoaling where ever they may. The bare-bottom doesn’t seem to bother the Cory’s and I see them out and about allot more now, the loner Cory even stays with them more as they wiggle along in search of their next meal.  Overall I have to say that no-body is to un-content with the new set-up.  Well, no-body other then me anyway.

I’m happy with the stocking. I’d have loved to add a goldie or two more but I’ll have to try to resist that temptation. No what bothers me are two other aspects of the tank. 1 the lack of live plants and the lighting. Both of these are fairly easy to rectify but will have to wait until I move into the new place. The other is an aspect of a community tank that I knew of, had heard of, but didn’t really understand. The concept of have 3 different species needing 3 different diets. I suppose I could teach each group to spot feed but that’s almost too much hassle. I’ve been soaking the Goldies pellets in garlic guard to help soften them out so that Sin and Sam could have a better chance at getting some. The WCMM seem to end up getting whatever kind of flake I have so I’ve moved them from a Tropical Flake over onto a crumbled up Goldfish Flake now. That way it doesn’t matter if the Goldies decide to eat that. The Cory’s are getting a shrimp pellet dropped in the far corner from where the others get there stuff. This way once the Cory’s find it they have a chance to have some before the Goldies wander by and try for a share.

Until Later,

A Betta Addict