"New Fish Day"

This past Saturday was new fish day for me! :) Two new sets of fish were added to my aquarium.

For awhile now, my friend Paul and I have been talking about doing a "guppy swap". We both have fancy guppies. Guppies tend to have a lot of babies. But eventually they tend to get a little in-bred in the same fish tank. So we decided to swap guppies with each other, to get some new genes in each of our aquariums' gene pools.


Then last weekend, my friend Rick mentioned that he & Heather have some silver dollar fish that they wanted to get rid of, so he asked if I wanted them. But, of course! :) [I think that if it were typical to find stray fish, like other people find stray dogs or cats, I'd take them all in. Of course those stray fish would have to be hanging out in puddles or something.] I had to do a little research first to make sure that the new fish would get along with the guppies, platys and rasboras that I already have. From what I read, silver dollar fish are fairly peaceful and they're herbavores, so they should all be fine.

Rick asked me last Friday if I wanted to get their fish on Saturday, so Paul asked if we should do the guppy swap that day, too. And we did. We all met at Paul's. Fully equipped with my little styrofoam cooler to minimize temperature fluctuations for the fish, and water spillage in the car, I brought my guppies and received new guppies and silver dollars.

The guppies acclimated very well. They couldn't seem to wait to get out of the bag and play with the other guppies in the tank! They have a slightly different color than the guppies I already have, so that makes a very cool addition to the tank!

The silver dollars are very pretty and much larger than any fish I've had before. It's cool to try out a new kind of fish in the tank. However, they seem to be a lot more skittish! I was going to help them get acclimated by introducing water from my fish tank gradually into their little bowl before putting them in my fish tank. But as soon as I removed the lid from their bowl, they started flipping around like crazy!! I'm surprised none of them actually got out of the bowl. I quickly replaced the lid, and they immediately stopped their flailing. I thought maybe I could move them from the bowl to a large bag instead, so I could float the bag in my tank for awhile. But I wasn't able to do that by myself either, mostly because of their crazy flipping around every time I removed the lid. By this point these fish had sprayed water all over my shirt. :)

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to turn the bowl sideways so I could at least fit it partway down into the tank, remove the lid, and just dump them in without any water or temperature acclimation at all. I hated to shock them like that, but they just weren't making it easy for me! ;) All 3 fish immediately swam to the bottom of the tank. One laid down almost completely on his side. That didn't look too good, so I was kinda worried about him. Another one was leaning up against a rock. The other was hanging out in a plant near the filter. He kind of kept getting sucked back toward the filter, then swam away from it, and repeated that process a few times.

Within 10-15 minutes the one laying on his side got up, and all 3 of them swam around a little. But mostly they just hid out behind the plants in the darkest corner of the tank. At least they were all sitting upright and a little less jumpy.

Today they're still mostly hanging out at the bottom, and I have yet to see them eat anything. I even made a point of pushing the food down in the water so it would sink down right in front of their faces! They still didn't eat. I guess whenever they really get hungry they'll eat. Or maybe they just don't want me to watch.

There's too many guppies and that makes it hard to name them all and keep them straight. But I think I should come up with good names for the 3 silver dollar fish. Maybe then they'd feel like a more welcome addition, hehe. Maybe Huey, Dewey and Louie? Larry, Curly and Moe? Anyone have any other ideas?