Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

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featherhead007 said:
Our power was out all night. I don’t know what Edison is doing, but I’m afraid to look into my freezer to see the amount of food that was wasted. Power was out from 9:30 last night until 3:00 this morning. If it was a scheduled maintenance, they didn’t notify anyone about it. I could have had my generator turned on but I didn’t want to get out of bed. :barnie
Rant over:
Click to expand...
Update: the ice in my ice tray was still frozen not melted into one piece of ice. The freezer is full and there shouldn’t be any issues with the frozen food. PTL
 
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.


DSCN4893.JPG
DSCN4892.JPG


tax
DSCN4824.JPG
 
So, when you rely on your daughter and your dad to gather eggs because it is well after dark when you get home, things get missed.
Don't get me wrong they are great at putting everyone up at night for me, they have been gathering eggs, even the silkie eggs. They are just neglectful to mention that neither one will tangle with a bitey broody hen. We also have to clear up their definition of "we got ALL the eggs." No, ALL the eggs includes those under said broody girl. I noticed Goose was broody, but, hello, they are getting the eggs so it was no big deal. About a week ago dad causally said, "so you are going to let her hatch I see." Hatch, hatch what?

Goose has a secret.
DSCN4896.JPG
DSCN4898.JPG

Really dad and Rose, you two knew about this? You also waited at least a week to tell me.
DSCN4897.JPG

To make matters worse, in the last week Gryffyn got the message that incubation was being allowed. Now she has joined Goose on incubation duties.
DSCN4895.JPG


It was too late when I found them, chicks are coming, probably in less then a week now. I almost tossed them, but I brought out a flashlight to candle them and saw dancing at least 8 days or older embryo's in eggs. I could not do it, I could not toss them in the creek after seeing that.
 
RebeccaBoyd said:
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
Click to expand...
Wow. I never had fish before. It looks very complicated, but also very soothing.
 
RoyalChick said:
Wow. I never had fish before. It looks very complicated, but also very soothing.
Click to expand...
Compared to running a incubator, it is actually very easy. Not only that, in the 8 years since I last had fish equipment has advanced and new tools available. I also have a Petco that is local so I do not have to rely on solely wal-mart for fishkeeping supplies. That in itself is a game changer.

Previously it would take a good 3 to 4 weeks of running a tank to complete a fishless cycle to prepare your new tank and establish good water parameters and bacteria. Now there is a product that you can put in your tank 24 hours before you add fish to boost this cycle. In theory you can set up your tank, add the chemical to make your tap water safe. Wait 24 hours and add "safe start plus" and wait another 24 hours and add fish.

I was mean and made her do the fishless cycle and testing on her own in hopes to break her of the "ooh I caught a pretty creek chub, lets add it to the tank" of her younger years. Granted I did go ahead and add the safe start Saturday morning just to be safe.

All is going well and water parameters are testing out perfect. Petco also has some of the cleanest tanks I have saw. They also have a 30 day guarantee which is huge for me. In the old days Wal-Mart only had a 72 hour guarantee to replace any that died and filthy tanks full of sick fish.

Fish tanks are also peaceful to look at. Magnify that by 1000x when you sit staring while snuggling a happily sleeping silkie chick.
 

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