Today my boss Gary let me borrow his black light from his “wild and crazy college days”. I killed all the lights, removed the lighting rig from the tank and set up the black light. Thanks to the reinforced lip the tank has the light balanced on top without additional work. Here are the pictures I got. Shooting under just the black light proved rather challenging. The low level of light forced me to use my tripod and manually focus. Between my poor focusing skills and the long exposure times they still came out a bit blurry. I even had to take off the white t-shirt I was wearing as it fluoresced too much in the light and was reflecting into the tank! I’ll try for more pics again later this week.

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Unfortunately today Trillian, my six-line wrasse, died. I caught her this morning (one handed no less) and tried a fresh water dip in case it was a parasitic problem. She was more active after the dip, but still very lethargic. I left her in a bag with large holes cut in it for circulation to try to keep her from hiding in the rocks and dying and/or being preyed upon by the scavengers in the tank. When I got home around 5:00 PM she was not breathing anymore. Here are a couple of pics I took in the morning. I still plan to make a page for each fish I have, so I’ll be posting a memorial page sometime.

So two nights ago my wrasse was being very timid at feeding time. She’s always been wary of large motions around the tank (i.e. me) but she wasn’t wanting to come out and eat. Finally she ate a bit but she was looking kind of rough. Last night I got pics of her. Again, mostly stayed in the rock work during feeding. Looks even worse. *sigh*

I tried catching her this morning but thanks to the warty mushroom I failed. The wrasse ended up moving just enough to hide more. No real energy to the process, just get to the next rock and lay down. I’m afraid I won’t have a wrasse this evening.

Pics:

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