Updates on Baluku

Hello There! It’s been a couple of weeks. So its time for some updates on my pearlscale goldfish – Baluku. In case you don’t understand what Baluku means, it means a bump. And how do you use this word?

Used in a sentence: “I have a baluku on my forehead because I walked into a glass door.” – Taken from The Smart Local

So as you can see, Baluku does seems to have a bump on its head, therefore the name for it. 😂🤣

So, we brought Baluku to vet some 2 weeks ago. With the hope that it would recover from possibly swim bladder issue. I read from some articles that goldfish with swim bladder problem will last a few days, weeks, months and maybe even years. But most of them won’t survive long.

Beecroft Bird & Exotics Veterinary Clinic located at Upper East Coast
I, myself. was surprised that there is a vet for pet goldfish. So we decided to bring him down to get some advise.
This is the radiograph taken for Baluku. This is really cute.
And a sponge was attached to Baluku to aid him swim. Unfortunately, we were told that he’s got cataract on his left eye, and that means, he’s kinda blind. And worse was, it will never regain its eye sight. 😢
On the first day after the sponge was sew onto him, he could only float on top of the tank.
Then on the 3rd day onward, he was able to swim freely in the tank. Watching him swim around the tank and not on his side was a happy thing for us.
We were given antibiotics for him. And this whole vet thingy, came with a hefty price tag; $340.
Initially, we were thinking of leaving him at the clinic to receive injection, but it costs more than what we can afford – $40 per night + $50 per injection. So we decided to bring him home. And gave him water treatment with the antibiotics given.
About a week later, the sponge came off and he’s back to the original state. When we found him, he was at the corner of the tank. But now, he’s more active. But… still on his side. There are a couple of times, I saw him trying to swim normally which last for a couple of seconds. I know, he is trying his best. We are too.
A short clip on his road to recovery. We hope.

Enough of that. I saw there are many shrimps in my goldfish tank too! And I am pretty sure, they are striving pretty well. But the thing is, I think I have monster goldfish.. they were biting my plants away which means, I need to head down to local pet store to get more plants for my shrimps. Else, they do not have hiding place.

And there are new spawn in my shrimp tank! I am so excited!

Not sure if you can see, but that’s the baby shrimps on the rock.
My cherry shrimps and blue shrimp
That’s the pregnant blue shrimp.

Anddd~ that’s all for now! 😄

My Pearly

Hi there! I am going to share more updates on my goldfish, Baluku. If you have been following my previous posts, I have wrote about him having some swim bladder problem. I have started the pea treatment the moment I found him floating on top of the tank. And I am glad, he’s recovering. Not fully, but slowly. I have also reduced the food intake for them. I did not place him in a quarantine tank, because the last time I did, the other pearly I had did not survived.

This was previous Sunday I found him. I was really horrified to find it in this kind of condition. I will not forgive myself if he dies.
Now he looks better, with all the redness gone. Just swimming upside down. I spoon feed him for a couple of days to make sure that he did have some peas. After that it was quite impossible for me to do so since now he’s at the bottom of the tank again. And I was making sure, he have chances to eat the peas too.

I am kinda sad today. Because I have death in my shrimp tank. I woke up and saw at least 10 shrimps died at the bottom of the shrimp tank. I am a bit lost, and not sure what went wrong? Was the crayfish being aggressive? I am not sure. I am pretty sure the crayfish ain’t eating too. I need to go and buy new food for them. Damn atas. I think they dont wanna eat the cheap (still hikari brand) food.

Staring at the food. And not eating it.

I hope I will be able to find the cause of the shrimps death. And I guess, before my shrimp colony can grow, I will have to buy new shrimps for my shrimp tank. 😭

It’s Goldfish day!

It’s weekly water change for our goldfish tank! And this time, I managed to record a hyper lapse video. And as always, I love to caress my fishes. 😛 It took us about an hour to do water change because we have to scrub the rocks, the glass and use sponge to clear away the algae that are starting to grow. There are also some floating plants in the tank because our goldfishes loves to bite the plants as though they are still very hungry. And on the side of my main tank, we have a small tank where we kept shrimps. And currently, we have a baby fish living in that tank. The baby fish hatched from nowhere, but we suspect it was from one of the plants that we shifted from main tank to the small tank.

The baby fish that we found. And I thought it was some kind of mosquito larva because it was first time seeing this ‘thing’ in the tank. Initially, we found 3. But only 1 of them survived. 😥
Not sure if you are able to see the baby fish swimming in the tank. It was so small and I thought it was struggling to survive.
My cherry shrimps
We tried rearing some crystal shrimps. But sadly, they didn’t survive in our tank.
Looking on the bright side, my shrimp tank community is growing. With all the adorable baby shrimps. It was so hard to notice them initially because they looked like tiny little dots and I was trying very hard to locate them. And I have some snails in the tank appearing from nowhere since we didn’t purchase any. Conclusion was, it came with some of the plants that we bought for the shrimp tank. And those plants, we didn’t soak in tap water overnight, soaking for a couple of hours each time. So now we know, must soak plants overnight. If not, I think I am also building a snail community in the shrimp tank.

Maybe next time, I can share about my goldfish rearing journey. And I am glad that Laogong is with me on this journey. 🙂