If you have been one of my readers you may know that my husband, John, and I have fish for pets, one tank of fresh water and one with 12 tropical fish. Fish do have personalities. Our 95-gallon tank has a dozen fish of all kinds and in beautiful colors as you can see in photos below.

They are fascinating and relaxing to watch. John is the soul caretaker of the tanks. He does a commendable job keeping them looking pristine. My part is just to enjoy them and take photos. Ha!

Let me tell you a little about them.

Once a fish becomes acclimated to a new environment you can see the personality begin to come alive. Fish are intelligent too. Did you know that?

They know when it is time to eat. They swim around in circles and actually stare at us each time we pass by the tank. If we happen to leave the room you can hear the tapping from them to get our attention. I come back to see what they are up to.

When John reaches for a piece of sea weed, one particular fish, a dark blue pink tailed trigger goes ballistic. He swims back and forth and stares out at John nearly jumping up with excitement. He is the first at the top of the tank to take a bite from John’s hand. It is entertaining to watch him in action as he tugs at the piece with the other fish. It’s like watching a tug of war. He is quite aggressive and has bitten John on one occasion. He is fearless and will make eye contact with us.

The pink tailed trigger is chomping on the sea weed below.

The fish we have are all different in colors, sizes and personalities. Above you will see a yellow and black fish with a black dot – that’s a Foxface. He has sharp spines on his back that can sting a person or even kill another fish. We had that happen with another Foxface. It was shocking to see. One minute another fish was swimming by the Foxface and the next the other fish flew up in the air and landed on the bottom of the tank dead. Foxface must have gotten startled and his spines stood straight up and pierced the other fish’s skin killing him. Foxface is shy at times and will hide but is prominently out if there is food around. He turns brown when he is frightened. John has never been stung by him or any other other Foxface we have had.

We have a green wrasse above who is sleek and beautiful. He swims effortlessly gliding along in and out of the rocks. He is cool and not at all shy. He comes right up to the glass and will make eye contact.

We have two clown fish – one a tomato clown with one white strip and the other with three stripes (like Nemo and Marlin from the movie). They get along fine now but at first they didn’t like each other. One always becomes dominant. Once that dormancy is established they can get along. They are the two fish above in the lower part of the tank.

Above are great photos of Hippo Tang (Dori from the Nemo movie), wrasse, trigger and the clown. The tang is shy and will hide away when you go near the tank. She (I really don’t know if it is a female or male) is a gorgeous blue with a yellow tail.

Above you can see our beautiful red chocolate chip starfish from the underside. He is quite large and voracious. He cleans up the tank and eats dead fish and debris. He is not shy and, though he moves slowly, gets around the tank quite well and into tight spots.

Below the topside of the red starfish! He is quite impressive, isn’t he?

At the top of the tank next to Dori is a box fish or puffer fish. He is adorable with big blue eyes. He stays at the top of the tank (see puffer at the top of all the photos) and swims back and forth all day long. He is a voracious eater and will eat all five squares of food leaving only tidbits for his fellow fish. He has spines all over his body and will blow up when he is frightened. We have yet to see that happen. But another puffer we had in the past did just that. It was funny to see. My grandkids want to see him blow up but I discourage them from tapping on the glass to frighten him or the other fish. It’s not a good thing for them. The tapping sounds like a loud cymbal to them and can harm them.

In the above photo is the flame angel, red with black strips and yellow tale. He is cautious and will hide if you go near the tank. I had to snap this photo quickly before he hid. He is hard to keep, being fragile, and can die easily if stressed. This is our fourth flame angel.

Above also is the damsel fish, brilliant blue with a yellow tail, who is the last one left. He did have a buddy for a short time but he didn’t make it. He is not afraid of being the smallest fish in the tank. Nothing bothers him.

On the right of the above tank is the gamma fish, purple and yellow, that has another buddy in the tank. They get along well with the larger fish also.

Above is the blue and yellow angel which is hopefully hardier than the flame angel. This is our first one of this type of angel. He holds his own in the tank amid larger fish.

We did have a few anemones which didn’t live more than a week. Our clown fish have actually hosted them like Nemo did in the movie. Clowns are the only fish that can live inside the anemones and not get stung. Here is a photo of our latest one. I think it may have passed and got eaten by the red starfish since we haven’t see it for a couple of days and the starfish is not around either. He is probably busy digesting it. So sad!

I hope you enjoyed learning about our fish. They are interesting and fun to have though caring for them is a heavy task – changing water, lifting buckets to refill water and measure salt, check levels of ph, salinity, ammonia, nitrogen and other chemicals to make sure they are in balance. John does all this on his own. I just enjoy and reap the benefits of a tank full of happy and healthy fish.

Our fresh water tank is below which recently housed a blue and red beta, Bubba Blue, that went missing. I mentioned this in a previous post. He was never found. We have since filled the tank with three swordtails and several neon tetras. This tank is only 6 gallons and cleaned and filtered by a Peace Lily which sits on the top of the tank making it an easy tank to care for. The lily absorbs the detritus and filters out the water. It is somewhat self-sustaining as long as we don’t ever feed the fish or put too many fish into this small tank.

Since I wrote this post all the neons (7) disappeared. I think they must have gotten sucked in by the filter and absorbed by the lily. Sigh. Now we just have three swords. They are too big to go into the filter. We hope!

Thank you for stopping by to read my post. I hope you will come back again.

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Blessings & Hugs,

Janice