When I saw the little wriggle in my empty fish tank, I first thought it was a bug. I had removed all the fish and plants and I was scrubbing the tank accessories in the kitchen sink. To my complete surprise, the little sliver flitting about the tank was a baby red-eyed tetra! I could see about five of them moving around, and as I watched I spotted a few more. I had no idea my tetra were spawning.
Honestly, I hadn't been paying much attention to my fish lately. Their tank was filthy and I'd been leaving the light off for the most part. Probably the perfect time for them to get some luvvin'. Red-eyed tetra are supposedly difficult to breed, so it's ironic that mine did without any temperature or pH regulation, or special feeding.
Now, I know nothing about fish, aside from that I clean the tank and feed em every day, but I did know that I had to get the fry out of the tank somehow because I needed to clean it. The problem was that they were hiding in the gravel. To get them to come out, I had to stir up the gravel, which stirred up sediment and in turn made them very difficult to find. They look kind of like this, or this, though neither of those photos are of red-eyed tetras.
I collected them with a small net and freed them in a wide-mouthed glass jar with tank water. In retrospect, I should have tried to siphon them as it would have been less damaging. The hardest part was finding them, and in the process I think I brained a few. I collected 15 fry in total, although only 12 survived to be put in the jar.
It's a miracle those 15 survived as long as they did. Tetra are egg-scatterers and love to cannibalize small eggs and fry. Yum Yum. I'm sure there were a ton more eggs and probably loads of wee fish hatched only to be devoured before they could shed their yolk sacs. So my second problem was that I couldn't put the fry back INTO the tank after I'd removed them, or I'd basically condemn them to being eaten by the adult fish.
I had no second tank on hand and it was close to 8:45PM-- there was no chance I could get to a pet store to purchase a tank and whatever food the fry needed to survive. I had no idea what to do with them.
After freaking out for a bit, I rigged a system I figured would keep them alive overnight, at least long enough for me to get some food, if not find a tank. I filled a sandwich baggie with tank water, placed the fry into it, and suspended the baggie with rubber bands from the tank heater's cord. I then poked holes in the baggie with a staple to see if I could facilitate some water circulation.
This morning when I came into the office, several more fry had died. I now had 8 living. Sadly, the female red-eyed tetra also passed in the night. When I'd left her, she had been aggressively pursuing one of the smaller males, who I assumed to be her mate. This morning she was stone cold dead. The coworker who gave me the fish says she was over 3 years old. I suppose after seeing her progeny safe, it might just have been her time.
It might also have been my fault-- I clipped a piece of one of the plastic plants to put in the baggie so that the fry would have some shelter and some small pieces escaped to float on the surface. My tetra female is a huge glutton (the only one of the fish who ever really expressed interest in food) and could have eaten/choked on a piece of plastic. Oops.
In any case, I feel I owe it to her to keep her fry alive. At the moment, the seven remaining are doing well. I've replaced the plastic baggie with a fine mesh fruit bag from the grocery store in which they have a small but sheltered habitat. It's a sort of isolation-tank. I'll get them a tank in the next few days. For now I'm feeding them frozen baby brine shrimp, which I dissolve in water and pour into the bag. The circulating water moves the shrimp around the tank and the little fry seem to enjoy eating them.
While I sort of feel like an unwed teenaged mother raising these seven unwanted fish, I do want to see them thrive and prosper, if just to cannibalize eggs of their own someday. Aww.
Posted on May 11, 2007 @ 11:16 PM | 8 comments
Comments:
a dooce-worthy anecdote! nice!
hmmm, there's gotta be a way you can set up a justin-proof site to post pix of wedding dresses you're considering. or at least post pix of the ones you RULE OUT so at least we can get an idea? weddings are sooooo fun! you are tall and slender, definitely the best for formal-wear, also with the kind of bust apparently that formal wear most flatters. you're going to be a model-worthy bride!! especially since you seem to have good taste; i doubt you'll end up looking like a cake-topper or stripper. the onlyl thing that would make it better is dark brown hair. ah, how pretty that looks off-setting all the pale.
By 
, at
2:56 PM, May 12, 2007
Lols it must be anon commenters season. Uneducated anon commenters season more specifically, as you didn't in fact write anything that would dooce you. Lolslolslols...
Too bad about your fishes! But you're doing it all wrong. You know, I know everything about fish and fish tanks. You can't pretend you are a fishes' mother, for serious. How dare you say that they will be cannibals themselves one day? Have you had enough of my train of thought yet?
-Rachel
By , at
10:28 AM, May 13, 2007
Odayum, I blew my anonymous cover! Maybe someday I'll have the cahones to communicate my honest thoughts to you. ;)
By Rachel, at
10:30 AM, May 13, 2007
as in worthy of dooce's writiing talents! duh! that old definition is so passe.
]
By , at
5:46 PM, May 13, 2007
Please post photos of your wedding dresses on another blog that Justin won't find, but so that we anons can find it... you'll have to link to it here... but wait... hmm. Wrote myself in to a corner there.
Oh but WAIT, I saw some of the dresses already, so I guess I don't really care at all whether you blog them up. Here's hoping your fish don't eat each other and get you fired for blogging about them. Or something. The actual definition of words is so passe! Let's make up new ones that no one gets!
Oh, by the way,
“A single death is a tragedy,” Joseph Stalin said. “A million deaths is a statistic.”
By LazyLightning, at
7:14 AM, May 14, 2007
P.S.
Purple monkey dishwasher.
By LazyLightning, at
7:15 AM, May 14, 2007
whoa! LL found out i'm really beyonce's little sister! (knowles, baby). she's the smartest person EVAR. ;-)
By , at
7:54 PM, May 14, 2007
plus extra points for pointing out my nonsensical linkage idea was, well, nonsensical!
By , at
8:18 PM, May 14, 2007
