Guilt

5/1/04
Sad to be writing again so soon, but I have to report the tang died today. Yes, my impatience did him in. He got sick with marine ich, I had no quarantine tank to put him in, I hoped that the good outcome from when the dwarf angel got sick would be repeated, but it was not, and he just got worse. (Interestingly, he never parked himself near the cleaner shrimp like the dwarf angel had done, and when he was accidentally near them, they ignored him.) I knew better than to do this, I should never have bought him until everything was ready, I feel so guilty! There is a chromis missing, too--whether jumped or died, I have no idea, but gone. Of course the tang had to lie down under all the rocks to die, so I had to take half the reef apart to retrieve his body (which would have badly polluted the tank had I not gone after it). It still amazes me, BTW, how small a space in the rock a marine fish will swim into.

On a more positive note, I moved the ailing Hawaiian featherduster to a more sheltered spot, and it came out of its tube almost at once and stayed out a long time, so I’m hopeful it will be happier in this new location.

Tonight while trying to aim some food at the little watchman goby / shrimp pair I accidentally blasted with the turkey baster a little too hard and closed the mouth of their home with a blast of sand....so much for dinner. They have since re-excavated. I’m sure they didn’t appreciate the extra labor (or lack of dinner).

Was a gorgeous weekend here. I need to have the marine tank start taking less time so I can get gardening done! I don’t know how much longer till things stabilize. Right now, the algae / citizen balance is off--not enough eaters. A tang or two would likely have solved that. But no way am I going to try a tang again without having the quarantine ready, and that tank sits stubbornly at .05 nitrite. Plus even when I get one, the quarantine period lasts weeks. So it looks like I have to keep on being a one-woman algae cleanup crew for awhile.