Unfortunately, today I found it dead in the tank.  It hasn’t been behaving the same in the last few days for some reason, perhaps as a result of the water changes and the medication I’ve been putting in to get rid of the Ich I have in the tank?  Normally it would hide inside the large bell decoration I have and I would hardly see it, but in the last few days it was out and about hanging around the top part of the aquarium which I thought was really strange.

I kept an eye on it to see if perhaps it had Ich on it, but it didn’t.  I wasn’t really sure what was stressing it out so much, but it wasn’t behaving right in the last few days and today it died.  I’m very sad to see this little guy go, because he seemed like such a cool fish and I would have loved to see him grow to a full size in the tank.  I’m not sure if the store still had any of these left, but if they do I’ll pick up another one once my Ich is gone and my cycling is complete.

I ended up putting one of the Otto’s in my 20 Gallon as I’m starting to grow some algae in there so I hope he starts to clean that up a bit.  Also, my younger brother Bart gave me 3 fairly sized Pictus Catfish and a Pleco the other day.  I put the 3 Pictus Catfish in my 55 Gallon tank and the Pleco in the 20 Gallon.  He can have a feast with all the algae in there.

Here are some pics:

One of My Pictus Catfish

Another Angle of My Pictus Catfish

My Lonely Survivor Cardinal Tetra. He Needs Some Buddies.

I’ve been keeping an eye on my Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate Levels and finally in the last couple of days the Ammonia levels in my 20 Gallon have started to go down rather quickly, so it looks like my cycle in that tank is coming along nicely.  As for the 55 Gallon, the Ammonia has just started going up in the last few days and today I noticed my Nitrites have gone up so the Cycle is just beginning in that tank.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the Ammonia levels to make sure they don’t go up too high.  Also, I picked up this Filstar Zeolite Ammonia Remover Cartridge for my Rena Filstar xP3 Filter.  It’s supposed to help keep your Ammonia levels from getting too high in new Aquarium setups and from hitting sudden spikes later on.

I’ll measure my Ammonia levels over the next few days and report back how effective it is.