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Since sadd3j will soon be posting more about his puppy, I figured I should accompany him by posting stuff about my fish.
This is pretty much the 3rd generation of my tank now. My first generation of gold white clouds and neon tetras did quite well and died off after 2.5 years (fair amount of time). The second generation of rainbows and dwarf gouramis were more unfortunate – they pretty much all died during my extended stay in Toronto last year for the weddings (I had someone feeding the tank, but they still died). Hence now my third generation of swordtails, which I intend to breed – they are livebearers (the eggs mature inside the mom’s body, so the babies are born “live”) so they should be easier to breed.

Those are the swordtails – named cuz of the “sword” in their tail, which only happens in males, which is the easiest way to tell the sexes apart. The male in front is one of the very first swordtails I got, but unfortunately doesn’t seem to grow at all – its buddies have grown like double their sizes since I bought them, except for this one for some strange reason.

This is one of the original female swordtails I bought. Of the “females” I originally bought, one died, and 2 of them ended up being males when they grew up :S. And so I went and bought a few more females to balance the male:female ratio (or the males may become aggressive)

I think this one may be one of the second batch of females I bought. They tend to be quite shy! You can see it has a plumper belly, and when the eggs are fertilized and the fish is close to labour, apparently the belly will turn dark and you can barely make out the eyes of the baby fishies inside.

This is one of the few ghost shrimps I bought along with the swordtails. They are aptly named since they are quite transparent, and are super hard to find… I thought my amano shrimps (see below) were hard to find at first! Ghost shrimps are easier to breed as their babies can possibly survive in fresh water (normally shrimps breed in rivers, their eyes get washed out to the sea (saltwater) where they grow up and then swim back to rivers (freshwater)), but so far I’m not making an effort to breed them – and yet one of the females is pregnant already :S.

Compare against this amano shrimp, which is from my first generation – i.e. this little guy has been with me since I bought the tank! Actually, I’m not sure if I have 1 or 2 amano shrimps still, they are hard to find – but I’m sure the female amanos have died already (after delivering many batches of shrimp eggs which end up being food for everyone). Amano shrimps are slightly darker than the ghost shrimps and are supposingly better algae eaters, but they are more expensive than the ghost shrimps.

This is the one ghost shrimp that I’m worried about – I found out it turned white one day during feeding, and it has been white for 2 weeks or so now. At first I thought it was molting, but it turns out not to be the case (they don’t molt that long), so I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. Forums online say that’s usually a bad sign and signals end of life for the shrimp. Some even say the white is due to parasites inside the shrimp, such as worms :|.

Another ghost shrimp. The OOF white object in the front is the white shrimp above – you can compare the colours. I like how the swordtail is peeking out from the background.

Last but not least, I figured since my shrimps algae cleaning abilities are not as powerful as I wish them to be, I’d get an algae eater. At first I was planning on getting a Chinese Algae Eater, but they actually grow to be quite big and aggressive as they get older. I need something small for a community tank, so I picked up an otocinclus, which I’ve named Otto. Otto is the only named fish in the tank (I try not to name my fish so I don’t grow too attached). I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of catfish, particular algae cleaners, since they normally suction themselves to the side of the tank, which looks somewhat scary to me. But, after having Otto for a while, I think he grows on you, and I find him quite cute – the tiny size definitely helps.

That’s all for now! Hopefully I’ll be able to successfully breed the swordtails. I suspect most of them are not sexually mature for breeding yet, so when they grow up more hopefully I’ll have more luck!