jonclark96
Past CCA President
Does it ever end?
A few months ago, I lost my female amatitlania siquia from Grenada, Nicaragua. The male has been living a lonely bachelor's life since then in his own 10 tank. Luckily, Matt (who has way more brown and tan and grey fish than I do) also had a breeding pair and had grown up a lovely lady that I picked up from him on Saturday. She went in a net breeder Saturday evening so I could set up a divider on Sunday.
All was going as planned. I had a spare 10 in my garage that I used to test fit the egg crate divider I made. I know the 10 isn't a long term solution, but it was going to have to do until she put some size on her and I could move them to another tank. I took the divider upstairs to my spare bedroom turned fish room and put it in the tank. This particular tank is situated on end under my 55. You really can't see much of the tank without contorting yourself on the ground. In any case, I put the divider in the tank and it seemed a bit tighter than the test fit in the garage, but it stayed in place. I dropped the female in the tank and all seemed well. This was about 10 AM. The family was coming over for Easter so I cleaned up and headed downstairs.
Around 3 PM I went upstairs to check on the kids and popped my head in the fish room to make sure that everything was okay. From across the room, I saw that the divider had already fallen over. I'm thinking, "So much for my engineering degree"... As I bend over to open the tank, I notice that there is only about 3/4" of water in the bottom of the tank and the fish are flopping around trying to stay wet!
Turns out that wedging the egg crate in the tank put a pressure point on the glass that it could not handle. Good news was the fish were still alive, bad news is that I had 10 gallons of water soaked into the carpet on the 2nd floor guest bedroom.
I've wet vac'd and steam cleaned and wet vac'd again. Then I did it all over again, but as you can imagine, it still smells like someone dumped 10 gallons of dirty fish water into my carpet. So far, no evidence that it leaked through to the 1st floor. I've got fans running now, along with a dehumidifier and a space heater to try and dry things out.
We will see if this works or if it become the impetus my wife had been looking for to get rid of the carpet and put hard floors upstairs.
A few months ago, I lost my female amatitlania siquia from Grenada, Nicaragua. The male has been living a lonely bachelor's life since then in his own 10 tank. Luckily, Matt (who has way more brown and tan and grey fish than I do) also had a breeding pair and had grown up a lovely lady that I picked up from him on Saturday. She went in a net breeder Saturday evening so I could set up a divider on Sunday.
All was going as planned. I had a spare 10 in my garage that I used to test fit the egg crate divider I made. I know the 10 isn't a long term solution, but it was going to have to do until she put some size on her and I could move them to another tank. I took the divider upstairs to my spare bedroom turned fish room and put it in the tank. This particular tank is situated on end under my 55. You really can't see much of the tank without contorting yourself on the ground. In any case, I put the divider in the tank and it seemed a bit tighter than the test fit in the garage, but it stayed in place. I dropped the female in the tank and all seemed well. This was about 10 AM. The family was coming over for Easter so I cleaned up and headed downstairs.
Around 3 PM I went upstairs to check on the kids and popped my head in the fish room to make sure that everything was okay. From across the room, I saw that the divider had already fallen over. I'm thinking, "So much for my engineering degree"... As I bend over to open the tank, I notice that there is only about 3/4" of water in the bottom of the tank and the fish are flopping around trying to stay wet!
Turns out that wedging the egg crate in the tank put a pressure point on the glass that it could not handle. Good news was the fish were still alive, bad news is that I had 10 gallons of water soaked into the carpet on the 2nd floor guest bedroom.
I've wet vac'd and steam cleaned and wet vac'd again. Then I did it all over again, but as you can imagine, it still smells like someone dumped 10 gallons of dirty fish water into my carpet. So far, no evidence that it leaked through to the 1st floor. I've got fans running now, along with a dehumidifier and a space heater to try and dry things out.
We will see if this works or if it become the impetus my wife had been looking for to get rid of the carpet and put hard floors upstairs.
