Fish...and plants...and you acting like you care!

Apologies in advance for not being able to a) hold a camera still or b) own a tripod:

Don't you want to know what is in the tank? And don't you want to see the other tank too?

As I mentioned a million years ago, I have two fish tanks. They're great. So the tank above is a 30 gallon tank that is on the first floor of the house I live in. It has mostly semi-aggressive fish:

4 Angel Fish:

This is the smallest of the 4. Another angel fish has this same pattern and the other two have a marble pattern. Most fish are (obviously) longer than they are tall, but this species gets to be about 3-4 inches long and tall (excluding fins, so you can imagine how big it is based on how big the fins are compared to the body), which is pretty big for a tropical fish. This fish is also incredibly thin. It reminds me of this old advertisement.

2 Fire Gouramis (also note the green cabomba plant in the background).

Apparently it's best to only keep 1 or 2 of these in the ank. They're pretty though, so I got 2. The blue on the dorsal fin adds really nice color. They only grow to 2-3 inches long. They actually don't have gills and breath by gulping air from the surface. Who new?!

and a red-tailed black shark (with water wisteria in the lower right):

This guy is a BAMF. And not like Marky Mark BAMF, I mean more like BAMF. Anyway, he's a huge bully actually, which is why I don't have any non aggressive fish in the tank. He doesn't chase the fish I mentioned above, but I used to have other fish in the tank whose fins he would nip after chasing them across the tank. The black on his body is very deep and looks great next to the red on his tail. Once I turned on the light in the middle of the night and he was grey-ish and the tail was pale. I think he was a little stressed out about being woken up. He's about 4-5 inches long. This fish really doesn't get along with anyone (including its own species).

I've got quite a few live plants in this tank, but I still have some fake ones. I recently got a piece of driftwood and tied some java fern to it. This type of plant doesn't grow in the gravel. Rather, it attaches itself to rocks (upcoming pictures in next tank) or driftwood:

Okay...so the back glass of the tank is painted black making it somewhat hard to see the driftwood, but you can see the plants I attached to it, eh?

I also have a 10 gallon tank in my bedroom. This one is great because there are no fake plants! And the fish are super peaceful. The aquarium enthusiast term for this tank is a "community" tank." Here's what it looks like:

Clearly, it is smaller. And much more brightly lit. Let's get into it. On the right:

is the java fern that I mentioned which attaches itself to rocks. I know what you're thinking: what are those fish in the picture?

To answer your question, that is a neon tetra. This schooling fish (schooling is really cool to watch by the way) is probably one of the most popular fish for aquariums. The other fish is:

It is called a Mickey Mouse platy because of the Mickey Mouse head close to the tail. These are live bearers, and I think this one grew up in my tank. They're supposed to have about 25 babies but I think they get eaten really easily because at most I'll only see 2 or 3 in the tank. And those tend to get eaten eventually. They're absurdly vulnerable, and you can see how small they are in this video I posted about a year ago. There is one last species in this tank:

This bottom feeding species is called a peppered cory. I have 2 of them and they spend 3/4 of the time just scouring every inch of the gravel with their sensitive barbels. It's hilarious watching them discover that they have just come upon food.

Anyway, so those are the tanks. They really don't require that much work, but it's fun to have/nourish my own ecosystems! Let me know if you want to start one!