Monday, May 19, 2008

Guppy Alert

Yesterday, my husband spent a great deal of time on "Guppy Alert". Boney II, our resident pregnant guppy, decided it was a great day to have her babies. My daughter, Carmen, spent a lot of time watching her tank and periodically would run out of her room, shouting, "There's another baby!" Dad would spring into action, grab the net and spend the next several minutes searching for the baby. Carmen has young eyes and can easily spot a 3/16" long baby. They make a good team. I tried to net out a baby but apparently I'm not adept. No surprise. Despite our efforts, the male guppies managed to eat a few and it was a bit unnerving to hear my 7 year old daughter give me the gruesome details. We did rescue at least 12 babies so we feel good about that!

However, now we have many more mouths to feed. And many potential females. You know what that means. By the end of the day, Carmen announced she was "Done with babies!" It has been fun watching the first 3 babies grow (one died, 2 lived and are thriving). It's also fun to see so many tiny babies in the "tank within a tank" that they are housed in. But we know that our future is full of many more babies to come. Do we really want to go through this again and again? Where does it end?

The only humane option is to give them all to the pet store, who will take them for us. Carmen was a bit disappointed that she couldn't make any money by selling them to the pet store owner. But there is already a tank full of guppies there, the owner doesn't need anymore.

Carmen would like to buy a beta like her Dad and brother each have. One fish. No babies. She's a smart cookie, I think!

By the way, if you'd like to read a REALLY long post I did about my flat tire, check out my HSB blog (see my HSB Blog link at left). That is, if you've nothing better to do ;)

4 comments:

Cat said...

So commercial guppy farming has no appeal for you all?

Read your tyre post - what a saga! I would have been beside myself after going through all of that!

Mama Self said...

We don't have any pets right now, and I don't think I could handle it anyway. A couple of mine would have been pretty upset over the guppy cannibalism thing, too. I'm glad you were able to find a good solution to your expanding pet situation. :)

Melissa Stover said...

thank you for your prayers!
we've never had fish babies.

Anonymous said...

How FUN! What a great educational experience. Fish are just so cool to watch, there's no two ways around it. We have a tank of some sort of little fish my kids netted from our canal out back...it's an interesting little ecosystem. Thanks for sharing the fishy fun!