********************* Goldfish and Dragonfly Nymphs: A Small Aquarium Saga
One of our goldfish, with a bent body (“kunoji” shape) possibly due to kidney enlargement, had been in a kind of fragile but stable state. I had held out a faint hope it might survive, but over the past day or so, its condition has worsened. It refuses to eat and drifts weakly away from the other fish. Seeing it like this is truly heartbreaking.
Meanwhile, the nymphs had been separated into two plastic containers to avoid overcrowding. Unfortunately, one of these containers ran into trouble.
I had been looking for ways to reduce the mess from leftover frozen bloodworms and make feeding easier. The idea I had was to introduce a few medaka (Japanese rice fish) into the container. They might clean up leftover food while coexisting with the nymphs. According to online sources, there are cases of nymphs eating medaka, but our nymphs were still too small to prey on adult fish, so I judged it would probably be safe.
However, once we tried it, things didn’t go as planned. The nymphs did not attack the medaka, but the medaka immediately started stealing the nymphs’ food. When I lowered the tweezers into the water to feed the nymphs, the medaka swarmed and gobbled up the bloodworms before the nymphs could get to them.
Worse, the nymphs, intimidated by the sudden rush of medaka, started leaping around the water. Feeding them properly became impossible. In the end, we had no choice but to separate the nymphs and the medaka. So much for efficiency—the only result was that we ended up starting a completely new medaka tank. Truly a case of putting the cart before the horse.
Back in a single container, the nymphs needed a bit of extra care. I added goldfish tubes and sponges to give them places to hide. At least consolidating them into one container made feeding far easier.