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.