Well yesterday was a long day. As I mentioned, the cap was an impulse buy so whilst I had tanks ready for the others I wanted to put the cap(/piraiba) in with the similar sized Tigrinum in a 6 x2x2. Dripped him to stabilize for 30 min and doubled his water volume. Took him out and put him in the tank. 40 yrs in and still making stupid errors.
He started death spirals straight away! Took him straight back out and he recovered a bit. Checked the ph and found that the tig tank with sand and fast growing koi as clean up crew was ph 5.5, not what I expected. There is crushed coral in there but obviously nothing like a enough to stabilize the ph at 7 in that volume of water obviously. So cap had to go in bolt tank, nope!!!!! He didn't like that- too many rocks and wood spooking his whiskers, and he was flying round the tank smashing into the glass. He spent the next hour in an 18x12x12 just to keep him alive whilst I converted a huge pond filter box into a floating tank in the main pond with its own cycled filtration, airation and of course crushed coral. Now he's in there, plenty of space for those whiskers whilst I sort his mid term grow on accommodation.
That was a long stressful day, and of course a sleepless night with hourly visits to him
let's see how it goes!
But if anyone ever needs a reminder, we don't keep fish - we keep water! Ok, more of it than most fish keepers, but nothing changes with the size of the fish, keeping good water and knowing your numbers is still #1.
