yesterday was the most stressful of all.

  i came home and my pregnant female (Elizabeth) was looking bad. the day before i had stopped treatment of her bacterial infection after a week and a half of treatment. she looked great days ago, so i figured she was cured, but i was wrong.

  when i got back from school, she could not eat. she would try, but she would spit everything out, which, if i remember correctly, is due to bacteria or something in the lining of their throats. right? i don't know.

  i also caught her shimmying. moving from side to side like they are trying to go somewhere, buy staying in the same place. i saw her do it twice, 2 hours inbetween.

  obviously, i treated immediatly. i was so worried about her. i even added some extra aquarium salt, which is logical, but after that i added water conditioner...i'm not quite sure why. i was just fixated on keeping her alive.

   i could hardly sleep last night. i was so tempted to go down there at 1 in the morning to check on her. but i knew she needed her rest and refrained.

  i got up and hour early to see how she was. to my delight, she was still alive, and did not look any worse than the night before! i fed her and her tank mate, and she was able to swallow much more than yesterday. i was so excited.

  now, we have to backtrack a bit....to yesterday at school.

  as raquel has posted, she and i assembled the fry tank in my school yesterday (as if anyone hasn't read my infernal rants already, my science teacher will be taking Elizabeth's fry when they are a week old. she is 2 weeks from birth.). actually, all raquel did was wipe off the space that the tank would sit on.

  it is a darling little 5 gal with natural river-tumbled gravel.

  i went back after school to take out extra gravel (there was about 3 inches), clean it out, and fill it with water. i also got the filter and airstone assembled and going. this whole thing took about 1 1/2 hours. but it was so fun, because my teacher has such a collaboration of fish/aquarium supplies in the back of her room. there is stuff i've never heard of! she has about ten 5 and 10 gallon tanks in the back corner as well.

  the heaters she has back there are
1) very, very old and
2) MUCH too big for a five gal. I estimate her smallest is a 50 watt, and a 5 gallon uses a 25 watt. so i will be buying a 25 watt a little later... like next week.