Proud Fishy Mama...

So if you remember back to the first of the year, right before the robbery, I was whining about how I always get sold pregnant fish.  Well, we have had baby fish numerous times but they all eventually die.

So I am an uber proud Mama this time cause of the 30 plus fish we had in 5 days, TEN are big enough to go in the 'big' tank.  Whew! My days of making sure their water was the right temp, and crushing the flakes small enough are over! I tested putting just the 4 biggest babies in first, and when I did I realized two things. 1. They were already nearly the size of the 'adult' (aka mom and dad) fish that we still had. And 2. That Mom & Dad fish were scared of the invaders. Enough so that they hid under the Motorcycle bubbler for two days.  Rusty thinks I'm lame for patting myself on the back for this, but I tell ya, it's been quite a bit of work! And secretly, he's just glad he doesn't have tank cleaning duty anymore.

Fish are weird.

And just in case the insanity strikes again, I wanna make sure I remember that 2 black Mollies, 1 Orange Mickey Mouse- although he only has one dot, and 7 white Mickey Mouse fish made it. Even though there were double the black mollies to everything else.

Also this weekend Rusty, Braden and his Great Uncle Todd & Great Grandpa Bopy went on their yearly fishing weekend.  Braden didn't catch a thing but had fun trying. And thankfully, Rusty did catch some and didn't bring any of it home--You're the best Hon!

And finally, Brenner just hit 8 months old. Man, I wish I could freeze time! He is working on picking up the speed of his crawling and just yesterday he started this...

Oh man. He just pulls to a stand for now, but it won't be long before he's cruising the couch... Every time he does it Berkley yells, "Mom! Brenner is doing that sum-ting! Come quick!"  It cracks me up... I forget just how often you have to sweep and vacuum when you have a new crawler in the house.

Conspiracy Theory...

I decided after MANY long months of heming and hawing that poor Larry our Beta Fish was getting lonely in that big 'ol tank, so I finally got him some friends.

And after just 3 days I was reminded just why I like Larry- he doesn't breed baby fish.

Yup I am pretty sure there is a sign at each local pet store that has a picture of me and the caption,

"Sell this woman pregnant fish!"

You may remember our many adventures with fish babies, but it has been quite sometime since we have had even a single newbie. Right now I have no less than 30 babies. Black and orange ones. which leads me to believe not only are the fish stores plotting against me but the fish as well, I mean COME ON! What are the odds two fish would have babies in the same 24 hour period?

Assuming they make it that long, anybody need a pet?

**Updated with pictures of the newborns**

The gold ones- nearly invisible above and the black ones below- all smaller than the pebbles in the bottom... TEENY TINY!

Enough with Dead Fish Already!!!

So you may remember that we had the oh-so-brilliant idea to get Braden a fish tank for his birthday last year. Then we dealt with babies being bred by the dozen, and I mean within days people...  And again a few months later...And don't forget we had to get a house sitter when we went to Europe to watch the fish-(nothin' like 5 year old drama!!!)  Now I am no fish expert (as the fine folks at Petsmart will agree) but it seems to me like fish are a lot more involved than one would think. 

Braden with Larry number 3 (I think)

For starters, the whole tank cleaning thing.  One sales person says clean the tank once a month but change the filter every week. Another says clean water every other week and the filter monthly. And another 5 people tell me something else entirely! So now I have it worked down to a system, when the tank looks like the one in the dentist's office on Finding Nemo- I clean it. Now this use to be Rusty's job, but somehow I inherited it... Oh, and I had the brilliant (seriously tho) idea of getting a sucker fish because they eat algae! So my tank is way cleaner! They are seriously ugly though and I won't put my hand in anywhere near it, they kinda freak me out. 

But then there was a whole series of fish dying, 'must be the Ph' they said so we got the stuff to fix that and bought a round of new fish. Then another few drop off and it 'must be the water temperature' so we get a heater. Then we didn't have a 'bubblier' and that must have been why those few more died. Then we got 'ICH'. Which is as gross as its name. It is a bacteria fish get that makes their scales get air under them, painful and gross.  So weeks of daily water changes, plus the medicine for it and a new batch of fish have a squeaky clean home. 

Now you may think I am exaggerating, but I bet if I checked my credit card history we would have bought like 50 fish over the last year. No joke! Currently we have three cute little gold guppies (6 have come home with us in the last week), a sucker fish "Sucker the Third" (first one lasted eons and Sucker the 2nd lasted just 48 hours), and a gold Molly fish.  Monday I flushed the silver Molly "Maggie" after she was attacked by our Beta fish. And I wasn't really sad to see her go because I knew my baby fish days were OVER! The Beta "Larry the 5th" was red this time, instead of blue and that seemed to make him more aggressive. He attacked the three little guppies and took on Maggie who was WAY bigger than him. So he got himself put in fishie time out (a small vase aside the tank to remind him what he could lose). But apparently he couldn't take the separation. He feeds on having other fish around (no pun intended-ok yeah there was) and after a mere afternoon in timeout he was dead. Sad. 

SeRiOuSlY people! I am DONE with the fishies! I swear when these last 5 die out the tank is DONE! Or at least when the other 4 die the sucker won't have anything to eat and he will probably just give up.

In fact it seems the only fish that has managed to hang around a while is Nemo! And he is a cyber pet! EEK! 

So Braden is gonna have to learn to love him some plush fish (thank heavens Webkinz makes a bunch of them)- cause I am so done with the ones we have now!

Tom is a girl...

Well, well, well, what have we gotten ourselves into? Apparently one of our new fish, that Braden got less than a week ago for his birthday, is a girl fish, not a boy. How do I know this??? Tom had 9 babies this morning... Yeh, yeh, laugh it up, its only Murphy's Law that of all the fish in the tank we would get the one scooped up that was pregnant and ready to birth. Joy. This morning Braden asked me to help him feed the fish. When i went in his room I saw something floating and it caught my eye. Then I saw another little something and I knew I was in trouble. As we got ready to head out the door to preschool the count was up to 6. So, after having a major flashback to my youth, (when we had several fish tanks and always had some fish breeding) I realized I would need to go to the pet store and get another tank. Yes, I could have left the babies in the other tank and odds are the would have been eaten by the other fish, but how do I then explain that to my 5 yr old? So in less than week we went from no pets, to 1 fish tank with 9 fish( including 2 that have already gone down the toilet) to 2 tanks with a total of 18 fish --- anyone who wants some Black Molly fish let me know... These suckers are tiny by the way, about the same size as the gravel they are swimming with. Braden wants to name them, but how would I keep them all straight???