35 More Babies Moved.

I didn't think it would be so hard. Friday night I started feeling pangs of sadness. I love these little baby fish. They are so precious to me, the way they flit around in their tank, up and down, all excited when they see me coming in the room.

I didn't realize there were still so many in the tank. Probably another 80 or so, are still in there. I pulled 35 of them out and took them over to the fish store on Saturday. It was hard for me, emotionally. I guess because, even though this is what I've been working toward, it's hard to realize that soon, I will only have four albino babies.

My husband reminded me that we can breed them again and that is our plan. That helped a little.

When I got to the fish store, one of the babies I'd brought over there before was dead and floating. Oh dear. That made me kind of sad. It's strange but the babies that are over there haven't really grown much. I'm not sure why that is, whether they're not getting enough food or what.

The transition of the new babies went well, I moved them into their tank at the fish store the way I like to, scooping them out with a net and putting them in the tank. I hate the way we've done it before by pouring the water through a net and catching the babies all at once in a rush. That's gotta be hard on them to have all that water rushed past them. (sigh)

Or maybe I'm just being weird about it.

When I got home, I took a few minutes and watched the remaining babies swim around. They're so precious and cute. The four albinos that I'm raising are getting bigger everyday. One in particular is about 2 inches and I think it's a boy. He spends a lot of time in a cave like area of the tank moving rocks. Plus, his dorsal fin is turning into a perfect triangle, and I think in time it will form a point. The other three have a roundness to their dorsal fin. The sharp point is indicative of it being a male. He sure is a pretty little fish, but that means I can't put him in the main tank, the female tank. Otherwise, I'll start having abundant babies again.

In exchange for this batch of babies, I brought home three 3 pack filters for my tanks. Oh, and I brought home a baby algae eater. He's in the five gallon tank, the green tank. I'm hoping he'll clean that tank up a bit.

Mr. Blue and All Them Babies.

I moved Mr. Blue back into the 6 gallon tank on Thursday evening. The temperature finally stabilized enough for me to feel comfortable doing the move. It now runs between 75 - 76.5 degrees (fahrenheit). The heater kicks on around 74.9, that's okay. Especially, when I factor in that for the two years they were at the office and I had no idea they even required a heater or had a thermometer on their tank that they did just fine.

He seems to be okay in there, I moved his tree rock with him. He hides behind that when he's afraid and there's a space on the other half of the tank that's just rocks, so he can "flash" over there to his heart's desire. He moved the rocks out of the middle of the pile, so it kind of looks like a donut -- whatever makes him happy.

The babies are doing well. To my knowledge, I haven't lost any. I see a bit of aggressive behaviour from the 4 larger albino babies, but most of that is displayed when it's feeding time. It's about time to take another batch of them over to the fish store -- about 20 of them, I think, would be good to take. Probably next Saturday. Then, a couple weeks after that, I'll probably take the rest of the babies over.

Then, I'll just have the 4 albinos, Mr. Blue, the 7 females and 1 algae eater.

I want the albinos to reach adulthood so I can determine if any of them are males. I do not want to put another male in the tank with all the females.

Stable?

I'm still working on getting the six gallon tank's temperature stabilized. In the morning I turn it down a notch and the heater goes off, but then when I come home the temperature is up over 78 degrees.

Today I turned it way down. The tank cooled off to 74.9, so I turned it up just a bit. The heater came on and brought it up to 75.5. If it continues to stay at 75.5-ish, I can put Male Fish back in there.

*time lapse of one hour*

The six gallon tank is staying at 75.4. This is good.

For now Mr. Blue is still in the five gallon tank, but the algae growth is going nuts in there, it's basically a green tank. Poor fellow. Mr. Blue seems okay, though. I wish the tank was big enough that I could put the algae eater from the 36 gallon tank in with Mr. Blue. Boy, oh, boy, that algae eater would have some good eatin's.

I set up the auto feeder on the 36 gallon tank. That was a bit of a project, I had to clip the plastic piece that goes over the top rear of the tank to make room for it and cut another piece so the food could dispense into the tank. Then I had to figure out how to program it and ration the proper amount of food to dispense. It's set up now and working. It's a nice feeder. Instead of the entire food holder rotating on the timer (like my old one, which gathered too much condensation), the timer is digital and when it's feeding time, the food holder rotates quickly around, opens the little trap door, dispenses the food, rotates back up and shuts its little trap door. Takes about three seconds. Pretty snazzy.

To the left, the 12 gallon baby tank.
In the middle, empty 6 gallon tank.
To the right, 5 gallon tank with Mr. Blue hiding behind his tree rock.