Photojournal: Second-hand Fish

I took apart my 20 gallon tank a while back, since I had just thrown whatever I had lying around in it to house my stickleback and gourami. Winter break will be over next week so now's the best time to finally set it up as a natural, planted tank.

Here's what I have so far.

1 stickleback, acquired locally.


1 gourami, acquired from Kaosu, who got it for free in a group of fish.


1 betta female, also from Kaosu, who grew her out from her breeding bettas a couple of years ago.


1 tiny sprig of frogbit. Guess who it's from! The leaves that were on it when I got it are melting, but it is still putting out new leaves, and I think it may have divided as well.


1 anubis plant, once again from Kaosu, doing decidedly better than the frogbit. Right now it is jammed into a lava rock that came from Hawaii with a lily planted on it. I guess it is growing oddly, but it makes no difference to me. When I got it a couple of months ago, it only had a few leaves on it.


All are currently co-habitating in a 3 (5 maybe) gallon hex tank. They are getting along a lot better than I thought they would in such small quarters.

They are actually related to pipefish. I don't know a ton about them. They are native to my area.

They're small (mine is only about an inch) but they have super awesome personalities. Almost cichlid-like.

All I could do for you is a Google search, which you could do yourself.

Sand Issues

A little over a week ago I went and harvested some sand from a local creek. Of course, because I'm an idiot, I decided to go get sand during flood season, when the sand would be extra muddy and probably full of cow crap.

However, I was smart enough to take the 1.5 gallons of sand I got and boil it for a while in our spaghetti pot before handling it or even thinking of using it in a tank. I knew I would have to wash it well, so I did the best I could in a Tupperware bin in the kitchen sink.

Apparently, that wasn't nearly good enough, because the first time I put it into my 20 gallon it looked like this:



Obviously, that's not my fish tank, but I am not exaggerating about the color of the water. I thought, "maybe it will settle out," so I decided to drop in a filter from Kaosu (my usual filter is on the temp tank) and give it overnight.

The filter doesn't work now.

The water looked the same the next morning. I was rather dismayed and thought I would have to just dump it all out and go with store-bought sand, which I hate because all I can find is colored or bright yellow play sand. After mulling it over for a day or two, I finally had time to siphon all the sand back out, and put it in a 5 gallon cucumber bucket so I would have plenty of room for washing.

I found that it was most effective to just take a garden hose to it, filling the bucket up while using the hose to stir the sand and get all the silt waterborne so it could be flushed out. After several floods, dumps, and refills, I got the sand clean enough for my standards. This is what it looked like after the major wash, and it's improved with a couple of water changes.



I also discovered that my tank is chipped in the corner.



Once the water was clear enough to actually see the sand, and all of the silt was washed out, it became apparent to me that the substrate was rockier than I wanted.



After another couple of days of indecision, I got out a collander from the kitchen and started sifting.



Now the water is clear, and the bottom is rock-free. But I think I want to add more sand. I'm either going to go harvest more, or buy a small bag of black from the store and mix it in to make the sand darker.



Once I decide what to do, I have a few pieces of driftwood to put in to get started.





I'm going to go get more natural sand either way, because I want fresh sand in case I don't like having the black mixed in.

Cerianthus said:

Although had numerous s/w strains but never f/w strains.

If only 1" long. still young.
Lost all of mine which were locally caught last summer due to 1 sneaky small grouper juvie which outgrew/hid w/i LR.

How long did you have it?
What r you feeding? Mine loved mysis thrown in mainly for seahorses/pipefish.

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From what I have been told, sticklebacks are one of the most universal fish. They like fresh, brackish, or salt, cold (like around here) to warm temps, and will eat almost anything. I've had it since Sept or so. It's at least doubled in size in that time. Mine eats tropical color vitamin crisps (I like crisps because I can leave them whole or crumble as I feed) and frozen bloodworms. Once in a while I throw in some frozen veggies (peas, corn, carrots) for vitamins and digestion. I can't wait to get some more, because it eats bloodworms like a piranha.