It’s been a while since I talked about the fish, but over the last weeks and, actually, months, I’ve changed things up a bit, and I’m currently rather excited about my little box of water.

First, it actually is back to one box of water again. Since I “adopted” a family friend’s oddly stocked fish tank when they moved, I’d been running two tanks in my living room, and finding that two tanks weren’t necessarily working with my floor plan; the second tank was, by necessity wedged in a corner, and didn’t really get the kind of walk-by attention it deserved. A little over a year after tey moved in, the last of the elderly adoptees passed on (I did the best I could for all of them, but they were all old, and tank conditions weren’t always optimal before I got them). I’d kept the tank running, but with a small population, largely due to interia, but I wasn’t happy with the arrangement, so I hatched a plan to move the remaining inhabitants (a small school of harlequin rasboras and another of tiny panda corydoras) over to the big molly tank, to which I added a much bigger Penguin bio-wheel filter – I believe in over-filtering (in this case, filtering 30 gallons with a filter rated for 60).

That was six months or ago, and all are doing fine. The two cory packs came together happily, apparently deciding that apart from relative size and some small speckles, they’re all the same thing. The harlequins are doing the schooling thing they’re supposed to do, and they get along fine with my self-perpetuating family of mollies. It’s a big happy community tank, just as it should be.

Another interesting occurrence is the fact that I’m now running a totally natural planted tank, thanks to the addition of a cheap secondary light source. I am now plastic plant and decor free, with a fast growing population of java moss hanging on to some pretty african mopani driftwood (which creates a great haven for molly fry), and seemingly healthy crop of java ferns filling the tank out. The rest is largely self-harvested river rocks and some artfully broken terra cotta pots, which make for nice caves and hiding places.

My cheap and easy light source? a set of Dioder LED strips from IKEA, affixed to the outside edges of the back glass. They significantly update the watts per gallon on the tank, which makes the plants happy, and they are able to change and cycle colors, which makes for nice occasional mood lighting for the room, but mostly serves as a subdued blue “moon light” in the evenings, giving human spectators a decent view of nocturnal behaviors of the fish:

All this tank decoration description is really just build-up to my most recent aquatic acquisition. This weekend, as we often do, we made a stop at our local PetCo to pick up cat supplies. Of course, I usually poke my nose into the fish section – I don’t generally have good luck with Petco fish (I have occasional issues with the way they care for them in the store), but they sometimes get in some interesting things. This week I found a fish I’d always been interested in but had never seen for sale before: the bristlenose plecostomus.

Common Plecos are cheap and everywhere – they’re sold as “algae eaters” as babies, maybe two inches long. The problem is the fact that these cool suckermouth catfish grow rapidly and top out around twenty-four inches long. Anyone who’s been in the hobby for a while has run into a foot-long pleco returned to the pet store because the owners didn’t have the room. I saw one once who’d spent a bit too long in a ten gallon tank, and due to the lack of space had a severely kinked spine. I’ve never had enough tank for one, so as neat as I always thought they were, I never got one, because I couldn’t care for it responsibly.

On the various fish boards I read from time to time, I’d often heard of the bristlenose, a smaller variety that tops out around five inches, and the males develop interesting feelers on their faces as they mature. Though as much as it’s virtues were extolled, I was never able to find one, even in the few good independent fish stores I still have left in my area. I was surprised, and delighted, then, to find a tank full of one-inch juvenile albino bristlenoses at the Petco around the corner; I decided to risk it with Petco stock (mostly I worry about introducing pet store water to my habitat), and picked one up.

He or She (you can’t tell yet at this age – it’s probably only a month old) seems to be settling in fine, working the glass and plant leaves for algae, but always quick to retreat to the safety of it’s chosen haven behind the bubble stone when someone else bigger passes too close. It’s most active in the evening once I turn off the bright lights. It’s still very small, but within a couple of months, it should be the biggest critter in the tank, which should change the group dynamics a bit. I’m looking forward to watching it grow, and the youngest has already decided that it’s her catfish, and is considering naming it “Princess” (which could be awkward if it ends up being a boy).