oO , oO, oO, oO, stayin' alive, stayin' alive...

I seem to have weathered the storms, but, in the process, ended up under the weather, myself.

We had to tie everything down for Hurricane Gustav's arrival, and then cross our fingers and watch the news intently for Hurricane Ike's passing. Baton Rouge got some heavy winds and rain and even lost some street lights - and Ike didn't even hit us. That storm was massive. At one point, I remember hearing the reporter on the radio say that it was dropping rain as far north as Mississippi and as far south as Cancun, Mexico. That's HUGE.

Luckily, the GameVorplex didn't take any damage. We were out of power, cable and, therefore, touch for a while, but the only threat of property damage hangs in the balance in the form of a huge branch that is broken and hanging over my office. For the moment, I can't find a way to get up to the limb to remove it (30 feet up), so JRNip and I used several ropes to secure it in place, Spidey-style. Hopefully, that will catch the limb or slow it down sufficiently if I can't get someone out to take care of the limb before it falls.

We did, however, lose some fish to the storms. My beautiful blue Betta, Dudey, had a recurrence of "velvet," but due to lighting conditions, I didn't realize that it had returned until too late. I started an antibiotic treatment, but it was too late. Also among the lost was a new small blue fish that we assume Fluff ate when it actually got completely dark when the power was out (you see, he is a nocturnal predator and the other fish, well, wasn't) and our beloved lawnmower blenny, Milton, who did a great job of keeping the tanks clean for so long, but was found one day after the storm, missing his head. We're not sure if the decapitation was causal or postmortem, but we will miss him. Without electricity to keep the tanks cooled during the day, the temperature will rise in the house during the day and will raise the temp in the tanks, as well. With increased temperature comes increased aggression, in fish, just as in people. Think about that next time it's a hot summer and you're biting someone's head off.

Aquatic Calamity

I like fish. I like to watch fish go about there activities, interacting with each other and exploring their environment and so forth. I find it peaceful and relaxing.

My wife and I maintain two 55 gallon marine aquariums in our home, as well as a 90 gallon pond in the back yard. Additionally, we have a 10 gallon freshwater tank on the bar area to rehabilitate one of the pond fish who had a falling out with the others. Finally, I have a small "executive" aquarium for a blue Betta fish named "Dudey," who recently came down with velvet and I've moved him home so that I can better control his environment and properly treat him.

Which leads me to my topic. We have had the worst time with disastrous "events" with our pets this year, especially our fish, but it actually goes beyond that; one of our outside cats was attacked in our yard by a dog from down the street... and that neighbor is beyond negotiation and animal control can't do anything unless we basically gift-wrap the dog for them.

Anyway, when we came back from our Gatlinburg trip, one of our pond fish, "Lucky," who, to that point, I was sure was the luckiest fish in the world, was dead, without any obvious cause of death. I got this fish from a coworker who couldn't keep it. He had been experiencing fish loss in his small pond in his back yard. They weren't turning up dead, they were simply not there anymore. Then, one day, he sees a snake slithering away from his pond with a lump in it. He kills the snake, slits it open and out comes Lucky, none the worse for wear. That's where the legend began, but since that time he outlived his pond mates in two locations and survived a mishap in our pond where all of the water got pumped out and the bottom floated up, causing the pond to become wrinkled and malformed. One of the smaller fish that my wife loved died in that event, but Lucky lived through it, swimming in place in an area that had less than an inch of clearance around him. And he was nearly a foot, nose to tail-tip. He was an amazing fish. And I don't even know what happened to him. JRNip was watching our house for us and said he had seen him the afternoon before we got home and he was fine.

We have one porcupine puffer in each of our two 55 gallon marine tanks, and a lawnmower blenny in each to help clean the tank. Well, as far as we can determine, one of those blennies apparently went after a piece of food that the puffer was going after and got the business end of a poisoned spine. We assume that, since his mouth swelled up and wouldn't close and his head turned dark in coloration. He was unable to eat for a few days, but we took care of him to the best of our ability in a hospital tank and after about a week, he was good enough to return to the marine tank.

This same hospital tank is now occupied by my fish-away-from-home, Dudey. I'm dosing him with Maricyn 2, keeping his temperature constant and slightly elevated, and covering the tank with a black T-shirt to slow the growth of the velvet.

Additionally, my wife's porcupine puffer was acting all sick and lethargic yesterday. I was trying to determine if he was trying to look pale so he could blend in with the sand to better prey on the new little blue fish we added to the tank or if he was sad or in pain or what. (Puffers are smart... that's the problem with smart fish... they can actually get upset or even mad at you and behave strangely based on that. When we first separated the male from the female to give them each a larger tank, he pouted and pined for her for a week, until we put him in a small tank next to the female's tank for a few hours so he could see that she was still around and then moved him over the course of a couple of hours back to his tank, a few feet at a time and then 15 minutes between moves. After that, he was cheery again.)

Luckily, after a couple of hours, the male puffer seemed to be over whatever the issue was, so perhaps it was something he ate. I just wish that fish would all get better and stay that way. I suppose we've been fairly lucky up until this point; we would have the occasional emergency, but they were never stacked up on top of each other all at the same time. Hopefully they'll soon get back to a sense of normalcy. I'm hoping so, because just the maintenance on four aquariums and a pond is a lot of work and it's mostly heavy lifting, so it's pretty much up to me. I get to clean the pond filter this weekend, by the way. (yay.)