In between all the other stuff to do when there’s a fussy baby about, I took a few minutes to snap a few photos of the fish tank, to document its new arrangement and try to get some shots of its new inhabitants.

They, of course, didn’t always cooperate. Cherry barbs apparently never slow down when they’re busy flirting with each other.

disclaimer: I am no photographer, but I live with a woman who is exceptionally good at tweaking the settings on her camera that she makes taking decent pictures really easy for me.

In any case, here are four photos (as always, click to embiggen), with commentary:

Here’s a wide shot of the tank, as newly arranged, mostly for a good cleaning, to re-route some hoses, and to get a better balance of plants across the tank (and to remove the last of the plastic ones). It doesn’t look that different than before, but I think it’s got less haphazard look. The plants are mostly java fern (that shorter, leafy stuff in the foreground), half a dozen cryptocoryne wendtii (short, leafy, with a reddish tint), a couple of tall aponogentons in the background, one amazon sword, and a couple of clumps of java moss (which the inhabitants tend to re-arrange as they see fit). The red blurs are, allegedly, fish.

This is the one inhabitant of the tank who likes to sit still now and then; the tiny little otocinclus catfish. He spends a good deal of his day resting on plant leaves or the glass, rasping algae wherever he (? – I call him he – I have no idea, really) happens to be, keeping everything clean. He’s about an inch long, and probably won’t get much bigger. For a sense of scale, in the lower left, there’s a standard-sized glass marble behind that white rock.

This is another shot of the oto, as well as the biggest fish in the tank (about three inches), one of my corydoras aneaus catfish – the bronze cory. I have two of these fellows, as well as three corydoras melanistus (who look the same, but with some spots and a black mask and saddle), who are very shy, until the lights go out. The whole group of five school around together at night picking up bits of food from the bottom.

And finally, the newest residents of the tank, the red blurs cherry barbs. There are five of them in the tank, two males (bright red) and three females (not as bright a red, with pretty black stripes). This shot, if I’m reading it right, is of a female (left) and male (right). I’ve been watching a lot of what looks like preliminary courting behavior, they may start spawning soon. In any case, these guys are also about an inch long, and my pick up another half-inch before they’re full grown.

Oh well, that’s it. I just wanted to share my photos. Now I’m off to figure out how to be off of work for two whole weeks.