Yo-yo on temperature

Last couple of days had been nightmare, for us and for our fishes. The heat wave made us can't sleep at night, or day for that matters. The garage/shed which acts as the fish room must had heated up close to 40 degrees or more. Some casualties happened, a couple of males (and females) stopped breathing altogether, must have been because there wasn't much oxygen in the air....Putting 3 large fans didn't really help, the air was hot ! The shed is facing west, so sun exposure is worsen till late night.

This year had been worst than last couple of years. Two or three years ago, there were a day or two of summer, but back then things weren't so bad. We moved the fish to the house, turn on the aircon and all was well...This year, aircon is broken, fan was no help, the freezer did its best on producing small ice cubes !

Yes, we put the ice cubes in the tank, that helps a bit on the community tank. Breaking the ice cubes, without proper tools, for male containers is much trickier. That's when fork comes handy, but still some males were silly enough to "stick" to the ice. Perhaps they liked the taste of the ice better than the water in their containers...70 or so containers were easily moved into the house, at least it was a couple of degrees lower than the shed.

Interestingly enough though, some males made the biggest bubblenest on hot summer. What's going through their tiny heads is anyone's guess. While majority of the males didn't even bother to flare, let alone swimming around, some managed to kill the time by building their nest :)

Yesterday things getting better when the temperature dropped to manageable level. But today, it gets cooler again. While we can cope okay for such change of temperature, wonder how the fish manage this sudden change...We've noticed clamp fins and whitespot/ick on smaller fish, that's not a good sign....So today, we ended bring up the heater to the fish room. Just wanted to gradually lower the temperature till they're stable enough.

When one think about this, one would laugh on how silly sometimes we're doing *anything* just for the sake of the fish. Some of the silliest things heard about. Now, that's what's called "hobby" folks.