I spent some time at Nippon Goldfish today. I bought a thermometer for the new tank, forgot to buy some Flora Base or Flourite substrate, and am mildly annoyed that I can't readily find the three live plants I want to design into the new aquascape (two are rare, one is popular and therefore always out of stock). Patience, patience.

On the plus side, I bought two new Neon Tetras, to honor the deaths of Durey and Taileferre. Their names are Satie and Cocteau, and they're bright, sprightly chaps (chapettes?). This brings the population in my original tank to 12, and that's it. Any more fish and I risk bioload management problems.

I noticed the other day that the 4 Neons and the 6 Cardinals were schooling separately, and that the Neons seemed to be shier than the Cards. I've always heard that Tetras should be schooled in minimum groups of 6, so with Satie and Cocteau, perhaps they'll be a little happier all around.

I'm going to go back to 10-15% water changes every day for about five days, to account for the pH fluctuations that have occured as a result of the recent addition of the driftwood (which, combined with my buffering, wants to bring the pH down to 5.0, lower than I want). My water going in to the tank will be well-controlled at 6.5. This should result in a final stable pH of 6.0, where I was about a week ago.

It's interesting to note that driftwood "naturally" lowers pH, which means I may be able to get out of the chemistry business. It's too early to tell. I'm going to have to monitor the water quite heavily for about a week, until I solve the problem.