Basho

I finally broke down and cleaned out my fish tank. A couple of years ago my wife, then my girlfriend, gave me a beautiful 25 gallon fish tank for Christmas. We set it up in our new home and got some fish. I've always been very partial to goldfish so we got a Ryukin and an Orange Cap Oranda. Later we got another fish from a pet store.....it didn't last long and managed to pass on Ick and anchor worms. Needless to say I never buy anything from that store (I had similiar fish probelms with them in the past). I'm pretty sure it was PetSmart, but I get that store mixed up with PetCo too often. I like one place but hate the other.....

Anyway, even though I managed to get rid of the Ick and painfully removed the anchor worms (by hand more than once, in addition to medication) I lost the fish. The tank sat empty in my living room for over a year. It was just too painful for me to go through again.

I left my job in July to find a better one and needless to say I'm still unemployed. With too much time on my hands, I decided to tackle the tank. It took a long time to clean up the gravel and rest. We went out and got some big rocks and extra plants. After treating the water I let the tank sit for a couple of days and got a beautiful little black and white Lionhead.

We named him Basho, which (roughly) is Japanese for "spot/stain". He is pure white with black tips on his fins and a small black spot just above his mouth. After a couple weeks feeding him some quality goldfish food he has already grown a noticible amount and has developed a couple of orange blotches.

My wife wants to get another goldfish, but the tank hasn't cycled yet and the ammonia levels are too high. I don't want to use any chemicals to nuetralize the ammonia (besides, they'd give me false readings on future ammonia testing) and Basho is acting just fine. When everything gets established I'll get a small gold chinese algae eater. Once the tank cycles again I'll then get one more goldfish, of my wife's choosing.