hi my name is Irene with girl talks fish and in my last vlog i re-homed and sold a bunch of fish
the dork chain loaches and the 20 gallon tank my apistogramma agassizii breeding trio as well as
21 platy fry now that means we have extra space to get more fish
well the plan was originally to give the 10 gallon breeding tank to my kids to design
but then i made the mistake of going to a fish store and i saw my next breeding project
so that meant having to talk to gamer boy and convincing him that maybe glow tetras
wouldn't be the best idea for the 10 gallon tank and was there another fish that he was
interested in and he said kuhli loaches he was actually really sad when i re-homed those back
in the day so i was like alright deal dude i will go look for kuhli loaches but in the meanwhile
mom is gonna go get some pygmy corys now the real reason why i went to that fish store is because
they had an assortment of dwarf gouramis and i was thinking of getting a centerpiece fish for
the 20 gallon tank after sonic didn't do so well but dwarf gouramis it's also 50 50 whether they'll
be bullies in the community tank so i figured you know what i'm gonna give the male powder
blue dwarf gourami a shot and if it doesn't work out then i will go ahead and order a female online
however while i was there i noticed a tank of pygmy corydoras first of all if you see
my previous videos you know that i love corys and pygmies are like the smallest cutest ones
and i thought it'd be so fun to try to breed them so they had a tank
full of them and they were all swimming together and mid water looked absolutely
adorable i know they're not the most colorful looking fish but i don't know something about
their cute little black eyes and their behavior just stole my heart so i had to have them.
– so we got our fish from the store and we're gonna bring it home and they're called something.
– pygmy corydoras – and they're called pygmy "quarters"
now i don't know about you but i never have heard anything special about the dwarf corydoras in
general like they just seemed like their care requirements were pretty similar to normal
corydoras so i didn't think anything of it i just took them home put them in the quarantine tub that
the platies had been in as well as with the powder blue dwarf gourami and then within 24 hours i saw
one dead cory i'm like okay well you know one out of ten maybe something was just wrong with that
one and then a couple hours later another one and then two more and it they were just dropping like
flies and they would have no symptoms they were all kind of swimming together fine active and then
all of a sudden they would just start floating belly up near the surface and then quickly die
within the course of an hour going from nothing's wrong with me to i'm dead and i was absolutely
devastated now typically when you see fish dying very rapidly like that it's a problem with the
water quality or the water parameters in some ways so i dragged out every single water test kit i had
um there was zero ppm chlorine which i definitely checked for because that's happened to me before
it was zero ammonia zero nitrite maybe five ppm nitrate but you know this was a kind of
established quarantine tub that i had running before that was holding 21 platy fry so it was
used to having a heavy bio load and on top of that the dwarf gourami was doing fine
like he was swimming around eating great it was just an issue with the pygmy corydoras
i ended up ordering a bunch of dewormers to see maybe like that they have a problem with parasites
but that didn't stop none of the medications stopped any of the dying so finally i ended up
calling the uh fish store and i figured maybe they just got a bad batch in and if i find out that
their pygmies are doing badly then i know it's not necessarily my fault so i contact them and they're
like no we've had these pygmies for like several weeks and they're doing great what when i mention
the symptoms and the problems that i'm having they then decide to tell me that they were actually
heavily buffering their water um they were using Seachem Discus Buffer to lower the ph to 6.4
and i was just astonished because my ph is 7.8 to 8.0 and i was like wow okay and it turns
out number two the reason why they're doing this is because the fish were wild caught now
i understand that you know wild caught fish they're going to be more sensitive to parameters
and so probably from their experience they realize that if they don't significantly lower their ph
those new pygmies that they get aren't going to do well i just wish they had written it on the tank
that they were changing the parameters in that tank because i've never ever had a problem with
any of the other fish that i've purchased from this fish store before i think you know normally
you go to a local fish store to buy fish because you trust that their water is pretty similar
in ph gh kh to your local water as well and in this case i was just caught by surprise for sure
i don't want to throw anybody under the bus so i'm not going to mention this fish store
and in fact the store manager was very very helpful in giving me some tips and tricks
on how i could lower the peach in my water but in the end despite me getting distilled water
and discus buffer and trying to match their ph at home i was not able to keep these corydoras
alive if you were a member of my channel at the time you got to see more a little
closer to my raw emotions at the time but let's just say i was absolutely devastated
maybe you know just having to pick up dead bodies every single morning was just soul crushing
and it didn't really want make me want to play with my aquariums in my free time they
definitely got a little more neglected and you know i fed the fish of course but it just
fish keeping was not fun honestly you should be prepared right when you get new fish
you're gonna have deaths no matter how experienced you are it's just part of the hobby but
it's just i feel like it's something that other hobbies don't have to really deal with
you know the loss of life so yeah that's all i'm going to say about that so then i had an important
decision to make did i want to try again with the pygmy corys or just chalk it up as a loss
i'm never going to be able to keep them in my water you know just give up on the dream but
by this point uh they had really captured my heart and i just i wanted to give it another chance so
i ended up googling online for tank raised pygmy corydoras hopefully they'll be hardier and more
used to my water parameters and i found aquatic life farm so frank the breeder is really cool
he's been bringing lots of not necessarily rare fish it's fish that you would commonly find in the
local fish store but these are all personally bred by him and in my opinion a lot heartier is the
basically the why i'm willing to pay three times the amount for a tank raised pygmy cory versus
the store purchased one this was actually my first time ever ordering a fish online and let
me tell you what it was quite the adventure like frank you know everything on his side of things
the communication was great the payment was great that's fine he sent me the tracking number it was
gonna actually arrive a day early and you know as soon as i got the notification that usps had
delivered the package he also emailed me as well so i immediately start running for the post you
know the box where the all the mail is delivered and i open the box and it's a target package i'm
like what's going on i know the fish are here and i look at it and it's my neighbor's package
i was like oh no i'm like frantically texting my neighbor i'm like oh my goodness i think you
have my package it's got live fish in there it's like kind of hot you know maybe like high 80s and
she didn't respond so i ended up calling the post office and it's kind of hit or miss whether you're
gonna get someone she said the person i talked to at the post office said they couldn't get a
hold of the mail carrier and it was like this big huge mess finally they ended up sending another um
mail carrier to the box to unlock all of them and look for my life fish and i waited at the
the next to the box in the heat for her and yes my live fish were finally delivered to me all
was good after unboxing them following frank's acclimation process to the letter i put them in
the quarantine tub and it was probably the most stressful few weeks i ever had when it comes to
quarantining fish because i was just expecting to find dead ones you know every single time i looked
at that quarantine tub which thankfully didn't happen but it was still nerve-wracking because
i'm not used to having pygmy corydoras so i'm not familiar with all their quirks and behavior
differences so it would freak me out when i saw that like they weren't really swimming they were
just kind of laying around and not doing anything at one point some of them decided they wanted to
lay on this fake plant i had i'm like is that normal are they running out of oxygen so i added
a second air stone to that tub some of them they would like go to sleep and they would lay on their
sides like a clown loach would and i didn't know pygmy corys could do that and it freaked me out
but as soon as i tried to pick up the dead body with my net they would just swim away so i guess
that's a thing i had no idea i'm happy to report though after going through the quarantine med trio
and then some extra deworming uh all nine of the pygmy corys survived so now it's time to play
a little bit of musical chairs so what i'm gonna do is move two no three adult platies
out of this 20 gallon tank because they've produced a lot of babies i'm kind of worried
about the bile load so i'm going to give them to my local fish store exotic aquatics then i'm
going to move my powder blue dwarf gourami who i've named Unicron because he kind of looks like
the same colors as that transformer and then Unicron was also like a giant planet-eating size
transformer and so he's going to be like the tank boss of the 20 gallon he had been temporarily
living in the 10 gallon while the new pygmies were in quarantine so i moved him from the 10 gallon
to the 20 gallon then i moved the pygmies from the quarantine tub to the 10 gallon breeding
tank where hopefully they'll be a little more outgoing because that tank has it's more heavily
planted there's more cover and so hopefully they'll feel more comfortable to come out
that also means that the quarantine tub is finally free again and so two months after
telling gamer boy that he could pick fish now is my chance to get kuhli loaches from them and so
actually yeah two months ago i had gone to exotic aquatics and they had just gotten a shipment
of baby kuhli loaches at least they look like babies meat and these were like tiny tiny things
and then recently when i went back they're big and plumper and they've definitely
been obviously feeding them well so i got a few of them and they are in quarantine now
and they're super active and i'm not worried about them as i was with the pygmy corydoras
okay let's talk lessons learned what did i get out of this experience because
the reason why it took me so long to make this video is i really wanted to process
kind of what went wrong and what can i do differently next time and i would say
if you go to a local fish store there's kind of like two kinds of customers
it's like a range right so on one end end of the scale you've got the customer that comes in and
like just takes up all the employees time they're just like asking about every single fish like
what's this fish how do you take care of that one what about this fish how do you take care of that
one what do they eat you know all this stuff like how long do they live blah blah blah right and on
the other end of the scale you've got like the quiet customers that kind of do their research
beforehand and they already know what fish they want and they just kind of go in quietly get their
order and they leave without really interacting with the staff that much because i had worked in
customer support previously i always prided myself in being that ladder customer you know i was like
yeah i'm kind of a veteran in the fish keeping hobby i know what i'm doing i do my research
i'm gonna get in get out and i'm not gonna have to bother them or waste that much of their time
however after this experience i've realized i need to go a little more that way on the scale and be
more annoying and what i mean is i need to do my due diligence of asking
questions to the fish store employees because just because i learned something on the internet
is not necessarily exactly how they are keeping the fish right and so i think some definitely
important questions i need to ask is how long have you had the fish and are they doing well
you know the longer they've had them the more likely they're going to do well in my tank my
second question is going to be are they wild caught or tank raised and definitely if they're
wild caught i need to be nitpicky asking like what's the ph are keeping them the gh the kh
the temperature and then finally what kind of foods are you feeding them i want to be
successful in feeding them exactly the same kind of food that you are so that hopefully they'll
eat well at my home and kind of build up gain some nutrients and build up their immune system
in fact when i contacted frank at aquatic life farm i basically did just that you know i was
emailing him like hey here's my ph and my water parameters i had this kind of experience with
a fish store that had captive bread what are your water parameters and do you think your tank raised
pygmy corydoras are going to be successful in my water and he was so good about being you
know answering all my questions and being very responsive and he was right the pygmy corys have
been successful in my home and i'm just so glad that i took the time and he took the time to kind
of meet in the middle and share that information so that i can be more successful with my fish
so i guess my main takeaway is i need to be less shy less quiet i need to speak up basically and
just be bolder and ask those questions and get the information i need so that the fish
that come into my house are going to be happy and healthy i can do everything possible to be
successful with them if you missed part one of this vlog make sure to check it out over here
otherwise take time to enjoy your aquariums and i'll see in the next video yay bubble tea time