Diarrhea, here I go again, la la...

I totally forgot to include Bandit's sick story below. While I was fiddling with the fish last night, Marc let the dog out and then back in, and as the dog passed me in the living room, I got a whiff of something AWFUL. He proceeded to sit down next to me, at which point I was holding my nose and gesturing wildly at Marc and pointing at the dog going, "ohmigod, ohmigod, THE DOG!"

I looked at Bandit's feet, and saw what looked like crap smeared on them. Groaning, I grabbed him and pulled him into the kitchen to get him off the carpet. I started wiping down his paws with some wet paper towels, but the smell was not getting any better. Marc walked over and saw a small spot of diarrhea on the carpet from where the dog had sat down. Gross. Then I looked at his tail. He shit on his tail. It was just all mushed there in the fur. I started to try to get it off, but all I could do was gag (and I'm usually pretty resilient when it comes to this stuff). Marc was like, no help at all. I was begging him to try. He stepped back and said, "no way." So I was like, "well this isn't going to work, I'm gonna hurl, we're just gonna have to bathe him."

One wet dog and a poopy smear on the kitchen floor cleaned up later, and all was back to normal again. No idea what he ate, but whatever it was obviously didn't agree with him.

I also forgot to mention that we took Stubby with us to Target. Why, I don't know, I think it was Marc's idea. We just plopped him in the back seat and started driving. He jumped into the trunk and proceeded to meow the most painful sounding meow the whole trip. You'd think we'd put him into a car full of water or something, the way he was going on. So on the way back, I sat in the back seat, and he did a lot better in the comfort of my lap. Scaredy cat!

Ugh, ich

Last night we got home from work to find that the ich had gotten worse. The puffer was completely covered in spots, both on his body and his fins. The angel had a number of spots as well. Sigh. Since the in-tank medication I had used clearly didn't work, I was going to have to go all out and quarantine the fish. ALL the fish. To totally get rid of the ich, it requires removing all the fish from the tank for 4 weeks and leaving the main tank fishless. The parasites in the main tank will die off without a fish host. In the meantime, I can treat the quarantine tank without harming the snails and other invertebrates (which are sensitive to the stronger medications).

Since our 10-gallon quarantine tank is too small to house all 4 fish, Marc and I went to Target to pick up a 23-gallon Rubbermaid container. We filled it with water, hooked up the filter, heater, and powerhead. Getting the puffer out was easy, since he comes up to me whenever I go near the tank. The angel proved impossible to catch. To catch it was going to require the use of a fish trap. Behold my homemade fish trap!

All it is is a 1-liter water bottle with the top cut off and placed into the bottom backwards. The idea is to put food in there, and the fish will swim in to get the food, but won't be able to find its way out. The fish were already settled in for the night by the time we got back from Target, so it will have to wait until Marc gets home tonight to try it out (I'll be stuck in class). I hope it works!

So we put the puffer into our makeshift quarantine "tank" first, and I realized I'd forgotten to put the filter screen on the powerhead. I went into the bathroom (where we're keeping it), and saw a mass of yellow stuck to the bottom of the powerhead intake. Yikes! I quickly grabbed the powerhead and freed the puffer from it, who, in the meantime, had puffed up into a big ball. He seems not too much worse for wear, although he looks a little red from the powerhead suction, and his spines are a bit wacky looking. I snagged some pics.

Hopefully the puffer will pull through okay, he's been through a lot of stress. He's a tough little guy, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.