Without Dark You Cannot Have Light

Sooo Taj started his new job with the Census today. He popped in during lunch, and we spent a nice lunch together and poked at his new little computer and nifty things. He says training is dreadfully boring but he is still very much looking forward to the job. Over the weekend with my mom's help we'd picked him up an amazing new wardrobe for his business self and he looks delicious!

My back/hip are roughly the same. I attempted to go off the percocet myself last week. Bad idea. I almost landed in the hospital and an emergency call to my doctor after hours put Taj at Schnucks picking up opiates the doc wanted me back on immediately. I do think a little more clearly with these new ones, so I'm not quite as prone to wanting to stop them immediately.. but I still hate being drugged, and I still can't sleep on them.

Our Bumblebee Cichlid died this morning. We have no idea why. Everyone else looks healthy and 100% perfect. We did a massive water change, gravel vacuum , and cleaned out one of the two filters. Temp is fine, Ph is fine, not sure what happened. He has acted "weird" for weeks now though. He went from being outgoing and playful to shy and hiding 90% of the time. So something was "off." We'll miss the little guy he was amazingly cool with his chameleon colors.

We are getting a 55 gallon for the fishies though! My parents are downgrading from their 55 gallon into my old 44 gallon Hex tank (it will be beautiful in their living room.) Once their new carpet is put in (Thanks to no payment or interest for a year) in apx 3 weeks, they will be switch tanks and are giving us the 55 gallon. So.. we'll be moving our little guys into their new big home. We've already talked with our "Cichlid Guy" and he's advised us to get a few new guys during the move so we're going to. I had been afraid to, but these guys really need a few more now that we've lost 3 over time.

So our little piece of a rift lake is now complete. Yesterday my parents came over to grill steaks, fix the apple tree (A tornado had blown it nearly over, play games, and purchase us the last of our fishies. We spent a couple hours at two local fish stores picking just the right fish. We ended up getting 6 instead of 4 due the cichlid guy at our favorite store being very sweet :) We've managed by pure luck to choose all cichlids from Lake Malawi. The ones we got yesterday were one of each

kenyi (female, blue)

yellow tail acei (sex unknown but suspected female)

snow white socolofi/albino socolofi (sex unknown monomorphic)

Labidochromis caeruleus "electric yellow" or "yellow lab" (sex unknown males are more vivid and often bluish at breeding, ours is brilliantly colored but won't be breeding so we don't know if it would develop the blue)

melanochromis auratus (female for now, known for changing their sex rapidly females are vivid yellow with horizontal black striping males are black with blue striping)

Pseudotropheus crabro "bumblebee cichlid" (male, females keep the cutesy bumblebee striped pattern while males take on wild almost entirely black patterns with yellow patches. Our guy looks like he has a mohawk and looks much like a shark.)


We'll have to keep a watch on the auratus and the bumblebee, I was stupid and bought them from petco simply because they were amazingly cool. I know better than to do this as my local cichlid guy knows every cichlid in the pet trade and can enlighten me on ones I haven't seen or researched. These two evidently are aggressive even for mbunas (the type of cichlid we have fall into a group called mbuna and are relatively aggressive) and often kill off tankmates. So we need to keep a close watch on these two and make sure they don't cause problems. huff.

So I know I haven't posted but.... its because I've A) been lazy B) been tired C) been busy and D) been so annoyed at other people's posts in their LJs that I just didn't trust myself to be friendly. Anyhoo....

Our rift tank is coming along very nicely. As a refresher when we were moving my long time much loved demon fish (My mated pair of Oscars) stressed out on the long drive and we stopped at the local fish store and with my sitting in the car sobbing, Taj ran them in and begged them to just save our fish no matter what. The pet store did and after much debate and much "I don't want more fish" Taj and my mom talked me into starting an African Rift tank. For those of you (Paulie) who probably don't know off hand what an African Rift tank is... the cichlid fish that come from the African lakes (Lake Malawi specifically for us) are as close to saltwater as you can get without being saltwater. People who don't know cichlids would swear these guys are saltwater due to their brilliant colors. These guys come in neon blues, greens, yellows, oranges... pretty much every color imaginable. They also do well with "living" rock and sand specifically aimed at African Cichlids... and require a much higher PH than tropical fish as well.. very similar to salt water without the fuss of a marine tank.

Anyway lol. The point is our tank is coming along very well. The Africans require LOTS of rockwork they are territorial cave dwellers and need a tank filled with large rocks set up to form tons of caves. We checked into holey limestone, slate and a zillion rocks we don't even know the names of. THEN we stumbled on lava rock which is gorgeous in various shades of red and brown from very light to almost black... and the best part? ALL of these decorative rocks are sold by the pound and lava rock is many times lighter than the other rock types. We bought 14 pounds of lava rock (14 bucks) and it filled the back of the tank and is probably 50 pounds or more worth of any other type of rock its amazing. The water clarity is perfect, the PH is holding perfect, the first 6 fish we got are doing great.. we'll be getting the remaining 4-5 tomorrow... its gorgeous and I'll post pics when it is fully stocked.. I won't say finished because I doubt it will ever be finished but.. stocked works lol.

So yea... more to come... going to play some CoH and get my VEAT to 24 so I can be a crab.. aptly named Time-Bandit (As in the F/v Time Bandit) hahaha