Been Gone Fishing

It has been far too long since my last blog.  Life has been exceptionally busy since mid-August as I've been smack in the middle of training with our Resident Assistants and then opening of the residence halls.  A crazy 16 straight days of organized chaos with some fantastic people!  However, being the introvert that I am, I'm majorly glad to finally have a bit of a break of alone time for the next couple of days.

Earlier in August, I moved to the Student Apartments on campus.  I'm now in a small but very homey apartment.  Unfortunately, there are no windows - only skylights.  I felt bad for my cat Evey who has been accustomed to full views of the outside world.  So I decided to get a 20 gallon aquarium along with three molly fish so that Evey has something to watch while I'm away all day.  I've never had a fish before in my life except perhaps when I was much younger.  I never knew how complicated it was to set up and maintain an aquarium, taking into consideration: the size of the aquarium, the filter, heater, decorations, water quality (and delicate biological cycle in the beginning), and type of fish.  At the moment, I have a dalmation (like it sounds) molly, a black molly, and a silver lyretail molly.  The naming process was an undertaking in itself.  The dalmation's name is Sergeant Pepper; the black molly is Champ - he is a trooper because as I was pouring the fish from their bag into a net, Champ missed the net and crashed into the bucket below, but he has survived wonderfully; the silver lyretail is Wiseguy since he has no fear of Evey when she presses her little nose up to the tank, plus Wiseguy just has the goofiest personality of the three, I think. 

It didn't take long for me to realize that Sergeant Pepper was pregnant.  She just had babies (or "fry" as they are technically called) on September 1.  Two days later, she is still having more babies.  It's bizarre that molly fish, especially females (including the mother), are like cannibals, eating the young.  I didn't really want to get a breeder net (separates the babies from the adults) because I don't really need that many additional fish in the tank.  I bought some floating plants instead for all the little guys to hide in; this gives them a fighting (or fleeing?) chance to survive the scary monsters.  I've had to crush up the fish flake food into powder so the babies can eat it.  I also had to prevent the fry from getting sucked into the filter, so I invested in some panty hose (an awkward shopping experience) to cover the filter with - it still can do its job somewhat.  I'm a little disturbed by how the filter looks now (see below), but hey... what can you do? :) 

This is definitely a fun and rewarding experience.  I'm really hoping that some of the fish fry survive - considering there are probably around 15-20 babies still after three days, I think some will make it and mature into adults.  Perhaps toward the end of September, once it becomes more apparent how many new fish I'll have, I'll likely go out to the pet store and purchase some different colorful fish!  I think I'm much more interested in the fish than Evey is now.  I can certainly see why people love having an aquarium.