Mystery Package

Last Friday was a rather dreary, wet and rainy day. It was a chilly 50 degree day and I was expecting a package. I've never ordered something alive off of the internet before and I was worried because it was scheduled to be delivered last Friday. It was also the day that the kids had their Halloween parties and I wasn't going to be home to receive my package. So as I drove out of the driveway on my way to the school I thought I'd check the mailbox in the off chance it was sitting in there. It was! I didn't have time to make it back into the house to unbox the contents into the warmth so I tucked it into my sweater and off I went to the Halloween party.

The box and it's contents stayed warm with me until I got home and had a chance to open up the box two hours later.

Inside among the newspapers  was a small bag containing an even smaller plastic container full of water. What was in that water?

40 baby Malaysian Trumpet Snails of course! I had read all about how beneficial they are to aquariums and couldn't find them locally so I bought them off of eBay. Two days later they were sitting in my cold mailbox. I popped them into a little bowl of warm aquarium water and they perked right up. These fascinating snails burrow down in the sand and eat dead plant material and debris. They burrow out at night and clean the tank like the little janitors they are. I plopped them into the little kitchen aquarium with Baby Macy our newest betta (Greta named it).

Just thought I'd share how I wore a box of snails to my daughters Halloween party last Friday. Not often do I do that.

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.

Aquariums, Siding and Minecraft

School has been going for a month now and I'd like to say I've fallen into a nice routine but alas I haven't. I've been sculpting a lot and selling a lot but I forgot how long it takes to package up sculptures and ship them out. Some days I spend the whole day doing that. And then there are days like today where I don't work at all. Today I did something I've never done before. Today I boiled driftwood in a big pot on the stove.

You might be asking yourself, why would anyone boil driftwood? Well apparently if you are wanting to put a big lovely chuck of driftwood in an aquarium you should boil it first to kill anything living in it and to release the tannin in the wood. This is all great if you happen to have a ginormous pot big enough to put the whole chunk of wood in. I do not. So I had to periodically rotate the wood so all chunks were boiled. Then it went into a Rubbermaid container with water to leech out the rest of the tannin. I will change out the water daily until the water stays clear instead of tea colored (because nobody wants tea colored water in their aquarium).

See look! You learned something new today, as did I. This is all being done so eventually I can place the wood in a 35 gallon hex tank I just bought off of craigslist. It's been cycling for a week now and I'm thinking it might be time for a couple of fish to help the cycling. My parents were kind enough to bring me driftwood and rocks from Colorado, thanks guys! Since the driftwood will take weeks to be ready I put some of the rocks they brought home in the tank. I can hardly wait to fill it with schooling fish.

Sean has been busy working on the siding in all of his spare time. It's coming along. I think he's more than ready to be done with it.

The kids are enjoying school. Greta's anxiety seems to have gone away for the time being. She was having a pretty rough time when kindergarten started but we've been working on it and she's coming out of her shell. I'm super proud of her. Each day they come home from school, do their homework and then play Minecraft together. They build some pretty fascinating stuff. That's about all that is going on around here.