gizmo-and-friends

[gizmo-and-friends]

Well, I found the problem... Iron Oxide Poisoning --- Rust. When the sun finally hit the tank earlier, and I looked through it, it was frigging yellow. It was rust yellow/brown. I drained it, moved the fish to the 55, cleaned it again using just water and the Python, and made damned sure when I filled it back up that it wasn’t yellow but crystal clear. I ended up putting my boy guppies in it and they don’t seem to be having problems. I did this a few hours ago.

The question is, did they flush the hydrants in the area, was there a building fire, or was it something with the pipes in the building (Yellow water is a relatively common occurrence here so I’m not sure which it is). Ordinarily, I check my constantly running porcelain throne (it’s not severe, just turns on about every 15 to 20 minutes to fill back up - I live in an apartment and the landlord never fixed it, and if the toilet water is yellow, I don’t do my tanks. It must have turned colors while I was working on the tank).

And they say the discolored water is safe to drink... I think not if it killed off over half the fish in the tank.

I keep the water set on cold when I do the tanks, but it still sits at over 80 temperature wise during the summer.

Fish Problem... Help.

Right, I apparently have to do another water change or something… not sure what at this point. I moved an aquarium last night from one room to another. I cleaned it with a new bottle brush bought for the tanks because it was all gunked with algae (after rinsing the brush in water being drained from the tank via a Python Water Changer). I cleaned the under gravel filter’s lift tubes. I filled it, added the chems (Dechlorinator with something to remove the Chloramines; Aquarium bacteria after that had a chance to work), let the temperature regulate… properly adjusted the fish, even used the tank thermometer to make sure the temperatures were the same (this isn’t the first time this has happened so I wanted to make damned sure it wasn’t something I did, this also happens when I do water changes but normally it’s one or two I lose and I was doing that via buckets and adjusting the water before it went in for the chems and such…) Fresh filters (rinsed before insertion). I’ve had fish for a long time, and did not have any problems before moving to this complex. I also care for my mom’s fish and since she moved, we haven’t lost any except one and that was swim bladder issues.

I moved the 20 gallon aquarium last night to my bedroom, away from the living room window. I lost 8 fish overnight. All six standard neon tetras, and 2 sempre tetras.

Three of the Sempre Tetras are fine. The Four Black Neon Tetras are fine. The 2 Tiger Barbs are fine.

Now, here’s the kicker…. my tank water quality tends to be better than the water quality out of the tap. The Nitrites and Nitrates tend to be high out of my tap for some reason (Plus the chlorine is so bad it smells like a swimming pool, and the Chloramines tend to be high, in addition to the water being so hard that it leaves calcium deposits everywhere). I am wondering if it has something to do with the tap water in my area. When I was doing my mom’s tank in the building next door, she regularly lost fish when I did water changes. Now, she moved to another town with a different water company, and she has not lost a fish since during a water change.

That being said, the water in the tank does smell very off but I cannot put my finger on it. It’s not a pool like smell, not a pond smell, not a natural water way smell, not even a fishy smell, it’s not a lake smell, not a living water smell…. I don’t recognize it at all. The smell is with the tap too. Smells almost like a decay smell but not quite.

I normally only do 10 to 25 percent water changes unless I have to hit it with a hard one due to a chemical contamination (bedbugs are a problem in my building, and if one falls into the tank, it’ll poison every fish in the tank - tanks are covered and turned off completely during any sprayings and for 24 to 48 hours afterward but the sprayings are not on any recommended schedule so now I’m packing and getting rid of most of my stuff so I can move before the end of October).

My hands were washed extra well with a rinse of several minutes. Arms too.

No chemicals came in contact with the tank unless they were in the water.

I can hardly wait to move. My Standard neon tetras were my favorites so I’m a bit upset at the moment.

I do not have the money for an in depth water analysis, just the strips which don’t reveal much. Petco and PetSmart use the strips to test your water.

Any suggestions?

I have a 55gal, a 20gal, a 13gal (Quarantine tank), a 5gal Hex (Betta Tank - he’s very happy in that tank and interacts all the time! He’s such a showoff! - Running a 10 gallon Aqeuon Power Filter in it with the flow as low as possible), and a 5.6 Gallon (Quarantine Tank), and a 3gal (On loan to my mom for her Betta - and he’s quite happy and interactive! It’s running an i3 pump/filter by Tetra). I’ve been at this for a long time but cannot figure out why I lost so many fish at once unless it was water quality. They acted like they were poisoned/shocked but the water temps were the same.

The 20 gallon is equipped with a 10/20 undergravel filter because I usually keep my guppies in it but switched them due to a population explosion. The tetras and barbs were supposed to go in the 55. I did recently find somewhere to take the excess population so I should be able to switch them back soon.

[gizmo-and-friends]

Fish Problem... Help.

Right, I apparently have to do another water change or something... not sure what at this point. I moved an aquarium last night from one room to another. I cleaned it with a new bottle brush bought for the tanks because it was all gunked with algae (after rinsing the brush in water being drained from the tank via a Python Water Changer). I cleaned the under gravel filter’s lift tubes. I filled it, added the chems (Dechlorinator with something to remove the Chloramines; Aquarium bacteria after that had a chance to work), let the temperature regulate... properly adjusted the fish, even used the tank thermometer to make sure the temperatures were the same (this isn’t the first time this has happened so I wanted to make damned sure it wasn’t something I did, this also happens when I do water changes but normally it’s one or two I lose and I was doing that via buckets and adjusting the water before it went in for the chems and such...) Fresh filters (rinsed before insertion). I’ve had fish for a long time, and did not have any problems before moving to this complex. I also care for my mom’s fish and since she moved, we haven’t lost any except one and that was swim bladder issues.

I moved the 20 gallon aquarium last night to my bedroom, away from the living room window. I lost 8 fish overnight. All six standard neon tetras, and 2 sempre tetras.

Three of the Sempre Tetras are fine. The Four Black Neon Tetras are fine. The 2 Tiger Barbs are fine.

Now, here’s the kicker.... my tank water quality tends to be better than the water quality out of the tap. The Nitrites and Nitrates tend to be high out of my tap for some reason (Plus the chlorine is so bad it smells like a swimming pool, and the Chloramines tend to be high, in addition to the water being so hard that it leaves calcium deposits everywhere). I am wondering if it has something to do with the tap water in my area. When I was doing my mom’s tank in the building next door, she regularly lost fish when I did water changes. Now, she moved to another town with a different water company, and she has not lost a fish since during a water change.

That being said, the water in the tank does smell very off but I cannot put my finger on it. It’s not a pool like smell, not a pond smell, not a natural water way smell, not even a fishy smell, it’s not a lake smell, not a living water smell.... I don’t recognize it at all. The smell is with the tap too. Smells almost like a decay smell but not quite.

I normally only do 10 to 25 percent water changes unless I have to hit it with a hard one due to a chemical contamination (bedbugs are a problem in my building, and if one falls into the tank, it’ll poison every fish in the tank - tanks are covered and turned off completely during any sprayings and for 24 to 48 hours afterward but the sprayings are not on any recommended schedule so now I’m packing and getting rid of most of my stuff so I can move before the end of October).

My hands were washed extra well with a rinse of several minutes. Arms too.

No chemicals came in contact with the tank unless they were in the water.

I can hardly wait to move. My Standard neon tetras were my favorites so I’m a bit upset at the moment.

I do not have the money for an in depth water analysis, just the strips which don’t reveal much. Petco and PetSmart use the strips to test your water.

Any suggestions?

I have a 55gal, a 20gal, a 13gal (Quarantine tank), a 5gal Hex (Betta Tank - he’s very happy in that tank and interacts all the time! He’s such a showoff! - Running a 10 gallon Aqeuon Power Filter in it with the flow as low as possible), and a 5.6 Gallon (Quarantine Tank), and a 3gal (On loan to my mom for her Betta - and he’s quite happy and interactive! It’s running an i3 pump/filter by Tetra). I’ve been at this for a long time but cannot figure out why I lost so many fish at once unless it was water quality. They acted like they were poisoned/shocked but the water temps were the same.

The 20 gallon is equipped with a 10/20 undergravel filter because I usually keep my guppies in it but switched them due to a population explosion. The tetras and barbs were supposed to go in the 55. I did recently find somewhere to take the excess population so I should be able to switch them back soon.

[gizmo-and-friends]

Gizmo: A Journey in Anxiety

Gizmo is my cat, and one of my closest friends. Her first few weeks were rough in life, her mother's owner was going to drown her at just a week old. My mom rescued her from the father and daughter duo, and bottle fed her. A few years later, I moved back in state and she bonded to me immediately, almost forgetting all about my mom.

I moved out of my mom's home about a year later, and Gizmo went with me. She watched me suffer through recurrent bouts of anaphylaxis from a medication allergy that the doctor denied I was allergic to (and a year and a half to almost two years off the meds and haven't had a problem since). She watched me almost die multiple times.

I became homeless, as did my mom. Giz ended up in foster care with a rescue. She came home about a year and a half later.

Well, my mom and I got an apartment together, and my mom let her fiance's sister move in. she had a dog, and the dog continuously cornered and attacked Giz on the litter pan. The dog's owner said it was cute. I had to threaten to hurt the dog to get it to stop - my mom, when I threatened the dog, threw him and his owner out.

Unfortunately, Giz has had problems using the litter box ever since. She had anxiety before the attacks. I couldn't leave the room without her panicking. After the attacks, she developed other issues and anxieties. i have just now, after nearly 3 years of working with her, gotten her to start using the litter box while I'm in the room. If I'm not awake or not in the room, she will not use hte litter box. I have tried self cleaning litter boxes, I have tried storage totes filled with litter, I have tried hospital basins, small litter pans, medium litter pans, different litters, enclosures, attractant, different scents, unscented, different cleaners, using just hot water in the litter box to clean it, the only thing that works seems to be when I'm in the room, and she can see me, and hear me, and cuddle with me afterward. Sometimes, she takes off out of the litter pan like she's got a wild animal chasing her. I’ve moved out of my mom’s apartment in an attempt to ease my anxiety but also hers.

I suspect she has IBS, but the vet has cleared her several times. They said it was her food, namely the dyes, and I've tried several different foods that are dye free. I cannot afford anything expensive or specialty because I don't return to work until the end of June after being on worker's compensation and then having a nervous breakdown.

Giz has helped me keep my sanity, but has also caused a few issues where I cannot keep up with her accidents sometimes. i even have to clean her enclosure again and she's only been in it for about two hours after she messed all over the living room again. She has a litter pan in the enclosure.

She's tearing up my carpets, which weren't even installed properly so the carpets are in worse shape than they would be if they were installed properly. I'll likely be charged for them being replaced.... probably about 800 dollars like a friend was for about 100 dollars worth of carpet (they charge about 50-60 just to replace dry rotted, improperly installed blinds that they installed that cost about 3 dollars in the store, the rent is outrageous for the area, no repairs are ever done, and they will not exterminate the bedbugs that are throughout my building in all the units.. and that's just the tip of the iceberg).

I don't know what else to do for Giz. She's been on anxiety medication, but I cannot seem to get her to take it. If I try the traditional method, she tears me to shreds, if I try pill pockets she ignores them, liquid she wants to tear me up, paste she knocks of... if mixed in food she turns her nose up to it.

I have a neighbor upstairs who does not help matters. He bangs all night long on my ceiling, screams at the top of his lungs, etc. My neighbor downstairs has people coming and going all night which wakes me up... and its causing Giz more anxiety

Does anyone have any suggestions? I have a subsidy which is set up as a sublease, but I cannot get on section 8 or whatever because they say it's a type of subsidy that I already have and you can't subsidy hop. The subsidy will not allow me to move what so ever even though my apartment has so many code violations from the management company's lack of upkeep and shortcuts that it isn't funny. My main concern is trying to help Giz... if anyone has any suggestions, I’d appreciate it.

[gizmo-and-friends]

Animals: The Bully’s Secondary Target

As a society, we've come a long way from where we were when it comes to bullying. It is finally being recognized as a crime, and the perpitrators are finally being held responsible for the human deaths that the harassment has caused. Of course, we still have a long way to go in addressing the issues associated with bullying.

Bullies will target anything important to their victim in an effort to illicit pain. This includes not just material  possessions, but also pets. I know because I've lost pets and had pets injured by bullies, and the vet care cost my family thousands of dollars as a result.

The first victim was my grandmother's cat. It was during the '90s, a time when kids were able to play with minimal supervision outside. Of course, my grandmother's white tom cat would go outside with us, because if we were hurt, the cat instinctively rang the doorbell and took the adult - my grandmother or my mother - to us. The feline also protected us in what capacity he could and was better than a guard dog. The neighborhood dogs were afraid of this cat. Imagine an attitude that was a cross between Fat Cat from Rescue Rangers, Heathcliff, and Garfield. The cat actually earned himself the nickname Fat Cat.

The cat was victimized in an effort to hurt me. It started with them hitting him, and progressed to them shooting him with BBs. They went around bragging about it. Later, the poor thing ended up dying when his kidneys shut down - these children admitted to poisoning him even though most believe it was old age. He was 17 years old. Normally, he only went out supervised, but had slipped out unsupervised just before becoming ill before we could realize he got out.

The police did nothing, saying kids would be kids when they were shooting him with the BBs. It finally stopped when someone, I don't remember who, caught them shooting the cat and shot them with a BB gun each time they were caught. The mother was actually encouraging it because she didn't like me simply because I have a southern accent.

The second victim was my grandmother's Cocker Spaniel. They let the dog out of the yard to spite me in an effort to bully me - admitted to it and bragged about the injuries she sustained as a result. They let her out of the yard when the person who let her out turned away to answer the phone, and she got hit by a car. The car drug her for about 30 feet, breaking her hip and one of her legs, among other injuries. This, like Fat Cat's injuries, cost my family several thousand dollars - with the vet doing some discounting because he knew my grandmother and mother were on a fixed income.

They bragged about the fact that they nearly got the dog killed.

Immediately after Sasha was hit by the car, we started looking to move out of my grandmother's residence to get away from the bullying and animal abuse. During that time, we placed a cat outside because he did not have the use of his front legs for walking - but he could defend himself with them - and could not get in and out of the litter box. He was healthy, happy, etc. It was in the early days of the internet so it wasn't like we could go online and get the diapers he would have needed. We were finally able to move, and while we were moving, in a last ditch effort to inflict pain, the bullies poisoned him. The poisoning that killed him, which they admitted to, came on the heels of a court order from a judge telling the SPCA to leave the cat alone. They had boxes of records stating the cat was not injured, was born with a deformity, and even had records from their own vets, and still tried to take him to put him down claiming he was hit by a car. The person who kept calling? The mother of the bullies. The probably supplied the poison that killed him - and if I remember correctly, it may have been antifreeze in the water bowl that they had said they'd done.

Bullies will target just about anything that you hold dear, and attempt to destroy or damage it, and will attack animals in an effort to bring pain to their human victim. If you know a person actively being abused by bullies, be it mentally, physically, etc., do not just pay attention to the human - the victim's pets are also in danger of injury and or death.

[gizmo-and-friends]

Introductions

Hello, 

Let me introduce myself. People online know me by a variety of names, including KC, Scoot, and Sissy. KC is my initials, Sissy is an old childhood nickname, and Scoot I had used as a teenager for a screen name to immortalized a cat I’d had as a child. He had died while I was a young child, under the age of 10. There are reasons why I will not allow my cat outside, and I’ll tell those another time as a warning to pet owners not to let their animals outdoors without supervision and or leashes, but also as a warning as to how bad bullying can actually be.

Gizmo is my current feline companion, an Emotional Support Animal, Silver Tabby Female, Domestic Shorthair Mixed Breed, who is about 9 years old. She was born around 2008, and was a rescue. The person who had the mother cat was going to drown the kittens so my mom adopted the last two. Unfortunately, I was forced to give one of those kittens up by a previous landlord. If I hadn’t surrendered her to a rescue, she would have put her to sleep for no real reason. Gizmo was the one I kept due to her having a calmer temperament. She is also scared to death to leave the apartment, a glutton for attention, and suffers really bad separation anxiety. Overall, she’s a really good cat.

Gizmo’s friends, who she watches but has never tried to get at, are my tropical fish. I have 6 aquariums. I have a 3 gallon hawkeye aquarium on loan to my mom as a quarantine tank that I bought a i3 Tetra Filter for but I’ve had a betta in that in the past which she had been gorgeous - a female whose fins got so long and flowing she looked almost like a male (long story on what happened and why she died - it was more the landlord’s fault than mine), a 5 gallon Eclipse Hex that I need to get a replacement filter for so it’s running a hang on power filter right now, also a quarantine tank but I’d like to put a betta in it, a 5 gallon Imagitarium Freshwater Aquarium that is housing my male veil tail betta fish, a 13 gallon aquarium that has been taken down but is a quarantine tank as well. I have a 20 gallon aquarium that is housing 3 species of tetras and 1 species of barbs, and a 55 gallon aquarium that is housing a lot of guppies, a corydara, an albino algae eater, 2 platties, and a sword (It’s near capacity). 

My mom also has a blue heeler puppy, Max, that is about a year old now, and she has a 10 gallon aquarium with 2 African Water Frogs that aren’t supposed to get any bigger than a 50 cent piece, but we’ve also had them in the past where the frog got to be about a foot long when he wasn’t supposed to get anywhere near that size! She also, as stated, has my 3 gallon tank, and she has a 55 gallon aquarium as well. Hers is full of tetras, plecostomases, corydaras, algae eaters, gouramis, and guppies. She had the betta I have in my 5 gallon in the 55 gallon, but when it became apparent to me that he was depressed and I pointed it out, she gave him to me. He’s quite happy now and loves swimming around the tank whereas in my mom’s tank he was a little listless with his fins in poor shape. He has also gone from almost a black and tan to a beautiful deep purple with pink fins with hints of blue. His fins have also recovered beautifully and that was within about two weeks.

This blog will be about pet stories and pet photos, mostly about my own pets... and pets I had as a child.

Also, if anyone needs help or advice, I’d be happy to answer - I went to school for Horticulture and Environmental Sciences, and part of that was studying aquaculture so I know a little more than the average hobbyist... granted, I don’t know why fish are considered a hobby, they are as much my companions as my cat and actually do interact with me. 

I was also the only student at the Vocational School who the Horticulture and Environmental Sciences teacher trusted to manage those systems and the class guppy aquarium, and proved him wrong once or twice with those systems - those were some interesting school years (it was a 3 and a half year course). In fact, I regularly end up educating the people working at Petco, Petsmart, Walmart (Walmart is the worst, but the workers at Petco didn’t even know you are supposed to have quarantine tanks so it is what it is), etc.