Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Fish are friends, not food.

I think I've written about this a little already but here it goes again. A couple of months ago I was up in Wesley's room and looked at his poor forgotten aquarium, the inhabitant long gone, and decided it was time to bring it back from the dead. I scrubbed it out, filled it up and got it running again. After a couple of weeks of letting it cycle we bought Sunny the betta. He's a fun and happy little fish who greets me each evening when I go feed him and give him water changes. It sparked something inside of me. The need for more aquariums.

So I went onto Craigslist and started looking for aquariums. I've always wanted a hexagon aquarium, or a hex tank as they are referred to. So that is what I looked for. Low and behold there was a nice hex tank about half an hour away. So we brought it home, painted the base and got it up and running. I've never filled up a 35 gallon aquarium before and decided it would be easier to just lug the hose into the living room. So that's what I did. I let it cycle (run without fish in it to let the water perimeters equal out) for three weeks before getting six Buenos Aires tetras to put in it. That tank is right next to the computer desk so I find myself just watching it for no other reason than because it's so peaceful. I really love it.

But apparently that wasn't enough. Sean mentioned that there was an empty 5 gallon aquarium under the stairs in the basement and of course I had to set it up. It was Wesley's old aquarium before the light assembly died.  I wanted to try my luck at a planted tank. So I brought it up stairs, bought some black gravel made for plants, stuffed it full of driftwood (thanks again mom and dad), bought a LED light strip off of Amazon and filled it up. I bought a water plant at the local pet store and am waiting on two more that I bought off of eBay (I failed to see they were coming from Malaysia...so who knows when they will arrive). I put this tank in the kitchen and it's small but it might be my favorite tank...so far. I plan to make this a shrimp tank with just a few red cherry shrimp. I might get those off of eBay too, we'll see.


But there's more. I have a 29 gallon tank that's sat unused in the basement for a couple of years now. Sean said I should set it back up, you know since I'm in "aquarium mode". But there just wasn't the perfect place for it upstairs and the basement was a bad place for a fish tank, it got neglected down there. So we moved some furniture and found a nice section of wall in our bedroom for it. I've spent the last few days buying new gravel, attaching driftwood via suction cups to the bottom of the tank (it floats!) and filling it with plants. The sound of running water is nice to fall asleep to.

It was time to buy some fish for it so off I went to the local pet store where I found three Mollies, two of which were quite rotund. Mollies are live bearers, meaning they give birth to live babies rather than eggs. They also breed like rabbits, giving birth after just one month of gestation. So I suppose I wasn't too surprised to see little baby fish fry in the aquarium not even 12 hours after bringing home the momma fish. I did my research and knew that most baby mollies get eaten by the adults, thus taking care of any over populating that might happen in a tank. I thought I was ok with this fact of nature but turns out I wasn't. So there, at 7:15 in the morning (on a school morning no less) I'm frantically trying to net out these teeny tiny fish before the mom eats them. The kids thought this was great fun and helped me find most of them. I netted them into a red Solo cup until after I dropped the kids off at school and could go buy a breeder net (a netted box that attaches to the side of the aquarium). So now we are the proud parents to 15 baby yellow Mollies. They are adorable....that is if fish can be adorable.



Since we are talking about new tanks, I can't leave out Greta's. We were at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago and found a complete 2.5 gallon aquarium set up for $5. I couldn't resist it and so I set it up in Greta's room as a night light since that is entirely too small to put a fish in (in my humble opinion). It was pretty as it was but it needed....something. Then I found the jellyfish. Apparently there is a trend right now to put fake floating jelly fish in aquariums. I found a couple and plunked them in her tiny tank. Turns out they are pretty fun to look at and float around quite peacefully with the current. It's a pretty neat night light if I do say so myself. So now you know about my latest obsession. I think I'm done.


Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Fall Parade

One of our fun fall traditions is the local fall festival and parade. We go every year and enjoy it all. This year my sister was down and my nephews got to enjoy it as well.







Monday, October 5, 2015

Happy Fall!

I'm writing you this blog entry as I sit with my cup of hot tea with the tv going in the background. I turn it on in the morning so there is noise in my house. Any noise will do. I'm tempted to turn on PBS so I can hear the morning cartoons like Curious George and Sesame Street. I miss those morning cartoons now that both kids are in school. It's oddly quiet in my house. It's not a bad thing, just different.

I've fallen into a nice routine now that I've got the house to myself for seven whole hours a day. It consists of replying to work emails, packaging up sculptures that have sold and sculpting when everything is done. I've been watching all sorts of interesting shows and documentaries. Shows that my kids wouldn't watch (or shouldn't watch). It's nice catching up.

Sean spent the weekend working on siding. Poor guy is ready for it to be done and I'm happy to report it nearly is. He put the last second story piece up yesterday and now all that's left is the two entry way pieces and a ton of trim. Yay for scaffolding being taken down!



The kids like to play out front while we are out there. I found Wesley nearly in the koi pond taking it upon himself to scoop out the floating algae. He did a great job!


Greta likes to ride her bike for about ten feet, that's about it. We've decided it's more about putting on the cute helmet and ringing her bell than actual transportation. She's in no rush to learn how to ride without the training wheels. In fact, she could care less. She's always done things at her own pace, that's her style.



We didn't know about the super blood moon lunar eclipse that happened last week until I saw all the alerts pop up on the weather channel we watch. So out we tromped onto the deck at 9:45 pm to see an orange moon. Pretty cool looking. We sent the kids to bed but promised to take a picture.