RIP Stevie

Last Monday we lost our male barb, Stevie.  He had battled with pouch problems for as long as we had him, and finally he developed pouch emphysema around 6 weeks ago and we were no longer able to alleviate his buoyancy issues with pouch evacuations.  He started a course of antibiotics which were injected into him every other day and he actually started doing well for a while. His buoyancy issues went away and he did actually start to eat for himself.  Sadly though, he remained very weak and caught a secondary infection which which finally got the better of him.

We miss you Stevie!

Quick Update

Well, our herd of 3 dwarfs is now a herd of 5.  Sadly we did lose one of our new little girls without clear indication as to why.  I personally think that it was due to bacteria in the tank and have changed my maintenance  routine because of this.

We have added some zip ties to the tank for more hitches, and to add a little more colour to the tank.

The three new additions have now been added to the display tank following their QT.  The QT period was shorter than we would have liked but we had a problem with the QT and so had to move them into the new tank quicker than expected.

These first two pictures are of one of the new boys, he is a reddish brown colour - very pretty and likes to have his picture taken!

Here is the red boy and Coral (our adopted girl).  They made friends rather quickly!

This is the new girl.  She's very very tiny and I would suspect is probably only a month or two old.  Her size makes me nervous and so I can't wait until she is bigger.  In spite of her petiteness she is doing well.

I haven't been able  to get a good picture of the new pink boy yet, but as soon as I do, I will post a picture of him too.

Its quite funny now that there are two more males in the tank as they all seem to be fighting for Coral's affection.  Both the new pink male, and the original male have started puffing up their pouches to try and win her affection!