Aquarium Madness

Hmm, what should I put back there? I don’t want just a standard “looks like the ocean, yo” type of background. I don’t want to mimic a lush underwater plant backdrop. I don’t want standard blue, that looked like crap after a while.

I’m thinking of going with some unique looking posters or something. I do have some weird posters out in my garage from past days of decorating dorm rooms and bedrooms during college and stuff. I don’t think any of those would be that fun.

I think I need to do something like find some unique artwork that is printed onto some posters. The artwork should be abstract and look good even with a little bit of algae that needs to be scraped off the glass right in front of it. I probably don’t want any solid colors. I need a busy background, once again to mask some of the stuff that gets on the glass every now and then.

I have a Monty Python ministry of silly walks poster, for example. Something like that would look funny as a backdrop on an aquarium. Plus I like the idea of black/white with no colors for the aquarium backdrop, that could be kinda fun.

I gotta think about this one a bit more, and then probably just stop out somewhere where a bunch of funky looking posters can be purchased. I wouldn’t mind changing my fish tank background on a frequent basis just to keep it fresh. Fun stuff.

I’ve been a fan of keeping hermit crabs in my fish tanks. I’ve never had problems with them and they clean up a lot of stuff that falls to the rocks. They like to eat pretty much anything they can get their grubby little hermit crab claws on.

Because they get to eat a lot, they molt a lot. They disappear for a few days and then all of the sudden they are back to crawling all over inside of the aquarium. Each time one of the hermit crabs disappears, I still kinda wonder if maybe it died, but it always shows up within a few days again.

The current AWOL hermit crabs are the Electric Blue Hermit Crab and Halloween Hermit Crab.

These two guys seem to be on the same molting cycle right now. Just the other day they were all over the tank, and now I haven’t seen either for 3-4 days.

Soon enough both of these hermit crabs will be back running around in my tank. I’m just kinda curious as to which day they will pick to re-appear. Maybe the Electric Blue Hermit Crab will swap shells again too. He likes to swap out his shell quite often for a different one, mainly just for “hermit crab entertainment value” by the looks of it and by how often he actually swaps shells.

Well, it’s probably not so much a “Brigade”. My clownfish brigade consists of 2 very hardy clownfish. These guys (maybe guy/girl, not really sure), are hardy as hell. They’ve lived through the worst in my tank experiences, and are still healthy.

Just recently, over the last few days, one of my 2 clownfish started to look like it was probably going to die of old age.

There was really nothing wrong with it, other than the fact that it had a hard time swimming and was starting to just sink and lay on the rocks. This particular clownfish looked like it was on it’s last leg. I mentally prepared myself for it’s death.

I have some mixed feelings about these 2 particular clownfish that I own

I adopted them from a Petco, meaning somebody else had brought them in. I got them for free.

Speaking of Petco, I’m not necessarily fond of getting fish from Petco. That’s one of the few places where you can go and look at the showcase of poor quality fish and I always hear horror stories about buying fish from Petco.

But, I digress. Back to my mixed feelings about these two clownfish. I like them, but they are aggressive and have been responsible for some chaos in my 75 gallon saltwater tank.

I saw the Clownfish both attack and kill a cleaner shrimp

They chase my firefish and keep it from venturing too far from it’s cave. They made a foxface jump out of the tank because they stressed it out and chased it around often. I’m also pretty sure they attacked and killed my Angelfish, when I found it dead it looked like it had been attacked and tore up a bit. Pretty hardcore.

They don’t go after the blue tang, the tang fights back and has their respect.

Now that the chaos has settled, the tank seems balanced

But after all that, I though the cause of the chaos was going to suddenly die of natural causes, leaving me to wonder whether putting up with all the chaos was worth it. But, the clownfish didn’t die. The clownfish that looked like it was on it’s deathbed is now once again swimming around in the tank looking all healthy. These two clownfish will probably last forever, they are the most resilient fish I have ever owned.

Now I have to figure out what to do about getting the 2 clownfish into a different tank environment. I think they need to pretty much have a tank to themselves, the territorial little bastards that they are. Fun stuff.

I began to grow quite annoyed at the dark blue background sheet that was taped on to the back of my 75 gallon tank. It was kinda ugly, getting worn out and not looking very nice anymore.

These background sheets they sell for tanks are interesting, with their goofy seaweed backdrops and other pattern landscapes. They sometimes can help improve the look of a tank. My low-quality backdrop could have possibly lasted longer. I didn’t want just a plain blue background on my tank anymore, though.

I am probably going to hang some random posters from the back of my aquarium to give it an interesting mixed up look. I can then swap out posters as I see fit to change up the background in my fish tank. Yeah, this will be interesting.

The new aquarium look, without the blue backdrop:

Anyways, compared to the above image of the ugly blue background in my aquarium, doesn’t this new version of the tank look better? At least for now?