The Tetras have arrived

We made a trip to the Pet Store tonight and picked up eight Neon Tetras. I only have a 10-gallon tank, but Tetras only grow to 1.5” or so, and they’re narrow bodied fish, which means you can put in more fish than the recommended 1” of fish per gallon of water. Plus the Tetras are schooling fish, so I wanted to get several of them. Six would have been a good number too, but I’m expecting one or two to not make it (just the way things are) so if we do lose one or two we’ll still have six of them, which is still a decent number for a small school.

I did several water changes throughout the week, changed out the filter (again) and got an A-Ok from the guy at the Pet Store who tested the water, so last night we picked up a small plant and the Tetras.

After a lengthy acclimation of over half an hour, the Tetras were finally out of their plastic bag and happy to be swimming around in the tank in a little school. Amber was extremely excited to see the tank occupied once again and we’re going to have to keep an eye on her because as soon as she’d pulled herself up next to the tank she was banging on the glass and it was extremely obvious why aquariums ask you not to do that; the Tetras were swimming around at a mile a minute, with a couple of them even hiding in the plant or under the rock decoration.

Then we noticed that one of the Tetras that we’d thought was hiding in the plant was still hiding in the plant, face down, under a leaf, not moving. The school had regrouped but this particular fish was still hiding, face down, under a leaf, not moving. Man, they’d been in the tank barely twenty minutes and we had our first casualty. I poked the net into the tank and a JE did a quick 180 from tears of grief to tears of joy as the "dead" fish shot out of the plant and rejoined the school.

The website I linked to earlier tells me the Tetras like a darker substrate/gravel in their tank, as it makes them feel a little more secure. I seem to recollect reading that a darker substrate also helps to bring out the colors in colorful fish, so I think I’ll have to pick up a bag of darker/black gravel and start mixing it in with the current substrate. As that would probably make a lot of substrate in the aquarium I think I’ll have to replace a substantial portion of the substrate, not just pour the dark gravel in on top of the current lot.

And now, here’s a picture of me and my coworkers from last Monday, when we wore our pajamas to work. Actually we didn’t wear them to work, we just wore them at work :)