Good morning everyone.
This is not chicken related but Rosie wanted me to show off her new "babies". She has been wanting to set up a tank for a while. I have drug my feet and refused to let her. Do not get me wrong, I love aquariums, before the chickens I took pride in my fish tanks. I'm still a little salty over the last one I had that Rosie and grandma wrecked. 20 gallon going on 3 years with a established colony of swordtails and mollies. Livebearers are my thing when it comes to fish. Grandma takes Rosie fishing when she is around 4 and they come home and put in a bluegill she had caught. I was at work and come home to this thing having eaten everything in the tank. I was both devastated and angry. "Bluegill" the bluegill grew huge and was the bane of my existence for 5 years. I actively tried to accidentally kill him for the last 3 years as he would eat every tank mate including snails and my pleco. He destroyed any real plants I had. I hated him. He finally met his maker when he got stuck in the castle that was left in the tank. When he was finally gone I noticed the tank was developing a small leak so I just scraped it all and sold the equipment and well, hello chickens.
The last year me and rosie have went back and forth over her wanting fish. I told her I was not sinking money, and time into something for her to go catch another "creek" fish and throw it in. Well she finally came to her senses and came to me wanting livebearers and she found cory cats. She then got my brother on board and he drug out his old 5 gallon he had stored that when he got could go either salt or freshwater. It was clean when he stored it but she spent 3 hours scrubbing it 3 weeks ago. Spent her birthday money buying a new filter, heater, and the start up chemicals. She learned the cycling process from Michael and did all the water tests herself. She also saw just how quickly one can sink a $100 into something and not have a single fish yet.
Sunday it was time, we took her to petco. Seeing how it was a 5 gallon I told her her options were limited. She is my child after all and headed straight to the fancy guppies. They actually for once had females and not just males. She picked out 4 females and 2 males. Well, no, the pretty snakeskin male is mine and I spotted the female that had the snakeskin tail pattern. The other male is orange and she got 2 yellow females and a orange one to go with him. Then she goes off looking for some shrimp for the clean up crew. I head off looking at plants and their other tanks. I spotted my next tank. Why hello you gorgeous 35 gallon cube that I can have so much fun with. I also scoped out and very much approved of their selection of swordtails, mollies and platy's. Oh do I ever have ideas now. Rosie then comes and excitedly drags me to another tank. They were sold out of shrimp but they had cory's. Pygmy cory's at that. They only had 2 left which had to come home with us. They are cute little devils I will admit.
After they were acclimated and released into the tank it is not even a hour later and Rosie drags me into her room. One of her guppies was doing what guppies do. 3 fry already. She ended up dropping 10 that we know of. Now, there is plenty of hiding spaces in the tank and a live plant just for them. I purposefully did not buy a breeder box. I told her the strongest and smartest will survive, we would not try to save everyone of them or she would be overrun in a month. The next day my brother comes home with a fake plant that is like a ball just for them at her request. They have found it and most if not all are happily swimming inside and the adults cannot get to them.
Here are 2 video's I took Sunday. You think taking pictures of chickens is hard, I forgot just how hard it was to take a picture or a video of fish. I think I used to use the nano settings on my camera I just do not remember which ones I used. It will for sure be about 2 weeks before I even attempt to take a video or picture of the fry, they are tiny. I also admit after a few days I like the cory's. Rosie may be onto something there and now when I set up the big tank I want a school of 5 or more of them.
View attachment 4139858View attachment 4139859
tax
View attachment 4139861
in respect to broodiness. Ha!
