Gone Fishing

We recently replenished our fish tanks with some beautiful new fish!

Choclo restarted a ten gallon tank with a betta, some corys, and a few neon tetras.

He named his crown tail betta Hamlet, "because he's such a drama king."

As you can see, he is challenging his lovely reflection!

He also got a pair of these panda corydora catfish.

They are a fun little cleanup crew: where ever one is, the other is sure to be sniffing along so as not to miss out on anything.
 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, in Oob's tank, his enormously old (and extremely large) cory continues on happily with some new tankmates.

 

He has four or five very vibrant male guppies.  It's a good amount: they like to chase each other around, but there are enough fish that no one fish gets stressed.

 Lastly, in the big community tank, I added a dwarf gourami.  I love these fish- they are so vibrant!

Something Fishy

We set up new fish tanks for Choclo and Oob!

These are both fish tanks where the old fish had aged out (died of old age), so we scrubbed them down and got new gravel and a whole new set up.

Choclo has the 10 gallon tank and he has some long finned leopard danios - very beautiful small fish.  They look a little ordinary until they spread their gossamer fins!

Oob has the 5 gallon tank, and he got a pair of small African Dwarf Frogs, one of whom turned out to be an escape artist!

We think we have him sealed in, but I guess we'll find out!

A Moment of Weakness

 We were in the grocery store, visiting the lobsters (do you ever visit the grocery store with small children and not stop to visit the lobsters?), when Choclo began wandering down the fish counter.  Look!  He was beside himself. They have FISH!

Fish, as I'm sure you know, comes in neat boneless fillets and steaks.  FISH!, comes with its eyeballs.

The last several times Choclo had asked, I had told him we might try it when I wasn't morning sick.  Well, I didn't have that excuse.

I looked at the red snapper skeptically.  The fish looked back, equally skeptical (seriously, look at that first picture, he clearly thinks this is not going to end well!).

I caved.

We bought the fish as a home school project.  It was too expensive to be just food!  We were quite interested in his lung-like gills.  I asked the fishmonger for some extra scales to look at under the microscope.

We examined him carefully, inside and out, rubbed garlic paste and salt on the inside, then stuffed him with lemon and basil and tossed him on the barby.  If only I had a Barbie... you know I can't resist a visual pun!

I must admit, he looked pretty tasty coming off the grill!

He tasted pretty good, but not $8 a pound spectacular.  It's hard for me not to compare it with an $8 a pound rib eye steak!  But it was more educational...

I think if I had to do it over, I would have marinated him and cooked him longer at a lower temp so as to get more "grilled" flavor.

Any whole fish cooking tips out there?

Camping, Round 1

Round 1 was the Boy Scout Camp and Fish and Hike and Do Cool Stuff Extravaganza. This was Zorg and the Emperor's first time doing the scout camping thing. I should be clear that this was all over one weekend, the actual week long camp will be in August!

I should also point out that I didn't go, so my commentary is second hand (or perhaps third rate!).

They camped out by the fish ponds and boated and fished.
Despite their best efforts, no one fell in!

They then cleaned, cooked and ate their catch.

















They also did quite a bit of fun hiking - scrambling over rocks and stuff. They found this interesting plant. We looked it up and discovered that it is Indian Pipe (AKA Corpse Plant!). This is amazing (Biology Geek Alert)! It has no clorophyll! It's a parasite on a particular fungus and tree symbiote!


They also found this recently used turtle nest. Those white scraps near the hole are the egg shells. It's a bit weird to call them shells when they are more leathery, but there you are.


They also made a side trip to an Amish farm. The Amish boy in the picture was raising an abandoned fawn and let Mxyl and Zorg pet it. How fun is that?

End of the Year Part 3

I almost forgot about the guppies! We set up a 10 gallon breeding tank for our guppies. We keep our showy males in the community tank and the female(s) here. The males get, er, conjugal visits.

We started with 2 females, but lost one in a tank disaster (filter got disconnected and the ammonia spiked).

We have also lost a number of the males, although we haven't been able to figure out what went wrong. The water readings have been perfect. We dosed the tank with fish antibiotic, so we'll see...

Interestingly, I met a more experienced fishkeeper at our local fish store and when I asked why my males had died, he told me the following: (It helps to picture him, he looks like a senior member of a biker gang) "Ya know, with guppies, they're either gonna make it, or they're not. Don't worry about it. I had a friend who kept guppies in his toilet tank for 8 months. No kidding! He had a small apartment and he put screening over the hole so the fish didn't get flushed, ya know. They had babies and did just fine. How's that for water quality? Didn't worry about filtering or chlorine or nuthin - but he sure did frequent water changes!"


Our dear friend Fr. Mark arrived back for the summer! We had a little party, naturally! He is from New Orleans, and is the epitome of southern manners. I knew we would be great friends when, the first time we had him over (3 or 4 years ago), he patiently listened to Zorg for 20 solid minutes, then apologized for not understanding all of it (Zorg was 5 and had a speech impediment).

This time around, after the kids had taken him on a whirlwind tour of their rooms, art projects and lego creations (and explained the Bionicle universe), he sat down with a bemused expression and said, "It's like I never left except they're all taller!"


In other news, thanks to the kindness of a lovely lady, we got to visit a horse farm, and everyone got to ride!

That's Mxyl on Hawk.

The gentleman leading the horse also showed some fantastic riding - no saddle or bridle, just riding! I've never seen anything like it, it was lovely to watch.




And Klenda, also on Hawk. It was the first time she had ever been on an actual horse instead of a pony!




Zorg and Leena got to ride on Pumpkin Pie.

The Big Tank

Each of the four older kids has had their own fish tank for almost 2 years and we were starting to look to expand. Zorg particularly was interested in a big tank (although that's Mxyl in the picture).

We have been reading up on fish tanks and window shopping at pet stores for nearly 3 months, but never had the cash for a big tank.

Surprise! It turns out that Zorg's godfather is really into aquariums! And he just happened to have a 29 gallon tank lying around...

We've been having a great time! Talk about educational! We are cycling the tank- adding fish and plants carefully to get the bacteria to grow to take care of the ammonia the fish will generate. And the other bacteria to take care of the nitrites the first bacteria generate and instead make nitrates which make the plants grow.

It's really setting up an ecosystem. We needed to choose a substrate (sand or gravel) that would support and nourish the plants, and lighting that would grow plants instead of algae. We need to choose the right plants for the lighting and water conditions... the right snails to eat dead leaves and algae but not live plants...oh, yes, and FISH!

Zorhg is picking most of the fish (with his godfather's guidance, believe me, I did not figure any of this stuff out on my own!). So far we have transferred some of our old cory catfish and bought a flock of fancy (male) guppies. Yeah, it should be a school, but their colors and patterns are more like tropical birds.

Embarrassingly, one of my favorite things about the big tank is the water tests - chemical assays for ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and pH! This has dovetailed beautifully with our earlier chemistry unit!