Howard and Gemima

I'd like to introduce everyone to Howard and Gemima. Both hatched out on 18th November 2007 so are 15 weeks old today.

The pictures were taken with my phone and the colour balance is not always quite so accurate but they're good enough to get a fair idea.

Howard

Howard is a very cheeky wild type who is a proper performer for the camera. He loves to truffle in the sand and clamber all over his sister like a climbing frame. He has muddy brown and green colouration with yellow spots and silver patches (yellow and silver not very visible on the photos) with chocolate and yellow frills to his gills. Howard eats low oil, high protein trout pellets for breakfast and juicy worms for tea.

Gemima

Gemima is a much more camera shy leucistic. She prefers to hide in the vegetation or wedge herself under the drift wood. When she does come out for some adventure she tends to swim very gracefully using her tail. She too has very strong yellow spots running down her sides on alternate ribs. She is not so keen on trout pellets but is likely to be a finalist in any "one gulp, one swallow" worm eating competition. Her favourite colour is pink.

Can really see how cheeky Howard is from the pictures . Both looking good and healthy.

They look great. Are those weights wrapped around your plants to hold them down? Are they lead? I've got some and was wondering if they were OK to use in my tank.

Lisa said:

They look great. Are those weights wrapped around your plants to hold them down? Are they lead? I've got some and was wondering if they were OK to use in my tank.

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A lot of lead weights on plants now are actually Zinc/Magnesium metals. Although, they could be lead. I've been told the lead weights were okay. Despite that I always take them out and use rubber bands on my plants to hold them together.

I was concerned about the weights. Despite checking with the shop that they were aqua/amphibian safe, initially I removed them from the plants but then found that I just could not keep them down - they're far too buoyant. (You can see one floating even with the weights on!) I checked again with the retailer and was assured again that they were safe although I have to admit that I didn't take notice of what alloy they said it was. The plan of action at the moment is to use the weights to temporarily hold the plants down until the roots take hold and then remove the weights - which is why the metal is very visible at the moment. If that doesn't work then I'll probably use a few pebbles to hold the plants down and cover with sand. The plants I chose (Mushroom plant and Straight vallis - tiger) were very forgiving in terms of temperature, light etc. so I'm hoping they'll flourish and absorb some of the nitrate.

They are gorgeous

So cute axies