Monday, June 29, 2009

Speaking of fish......

I would like you all to meet Junior He/she (we don't know what sex yet) is a baby Convict Cichlids. When we got our 10 gallon tank we got a pair of Convicts along with a few other fish. We though they where a male and female (they have a red coloring on their sides) but we where not sure. Well after about 2 weeks they started killing some of our other fish in the tank. They where doing this because they are VERY protective parents, and low and behold we saw eggs in the tank. Well those eggs hatched and most of the babies got eatin by the other fish or sucked up in the filter. Mick then took out the Convects and what ever babies he could and put them in a smaller tank on the counter. The mom and all baby's died but Dad is still going strong. This was about a 1 1/2 months ago. A few weeks ago Justin told us he saw a baby in the tank. We thought he was kidding cause we never saw anything (the baby was hiding in this volcano air thing we have in the tank). Then finally one day we saw him!!!! For Father's Day Mick got a nice 36 gallon tank. So we moved all the fish over to that tank and put the Dad in the 10 gallon and left Junior in the little 1 gallon tank (yes that's right we have 3 tanks). So now Junior is swimming around like crazy, has learned what food is and is still sleeping in his volcano at night. To give you a idea of how small he is, look at a dime and imagine a fish laying on it with out touching the sides (yeah that's how tiny he is). He is growing though and in a few months will be big enough for the "Big" tank.

Its pretty cool to see a fish grow from Egg to fish. I have never seen it before, and just because of that Junior has a special place in my heart. I never thought I would be attached to a fish but he is definitely one I would be sad about if something happened.
On side note Dad is doing well we just got him a new wife and hope to have more babies soon. Sadly these baby's will be used as feeder fish for some of our other fish we have. The circle of life :)

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