Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Third Time...A Charm?

We are making our third attempt at fish! We had a rough start and the result was several dead fish. We've discovered the PH in our tank is really high. We've spent the past week trying various things to bring it down with no success.

I've made a buddy at the Pet Store (a new store...w/out the fish Nazi) and he also has high PH issues in his tank at home. The solution was to find fish that prefer a PH level above average...so meet our Molly Fish. We have two species of Molly fish, the Black Molly and the Dalmatian Molly. We didn't have a lot of color choices at this pet store, but the kids were happy with our selection. I had prepared them all week that we were going to get the fish that the salesman said would work...they may not be their favorites but it would be more fun to have fish that live longer then 3 days then perhaps their favorite colored fish. The girls actually thought it was pretty cool to have a fish that looks like a Dalmatian and everyone was happy.


Brooke just realized a few days ago that Dorothy had "returned to the sea" so she was happy to get another Dorothy. In fact she ran up to the tanks at the store and yelled to all 1,000 plus fish "HI DOROTHY!" Apparently small fish = Dorothy. Baileigh named her fish Tres (as in, her third fish...proceeded by Uno and Dos) and Mckenna gave her fish the creative name of...Molly!
These fish are a little bigger then our previous species and I think they can hold their own against our snails. In fact, I saw Dorothy pecking at one of the snails which made it retreat inside it's shell. The snails were pretty inactive this past week while we didn't have any fish in the tank, but now they are back to their crazy selves. They are probably preparing their attack plans! I've been keeping an eye on them, but feeling optimistic about our fish.

2 comments:

Jodi said...

I love the Dalmatian fish, too. :) Ben has had a fantail goldfish for almost two years now. His name is "Cracker." (You know - like Goldfish crackers?) Anyway, Cracker has enjoyed floating on this back on the bottom of the tank the last couple of days. I hope this isn't the end....

Mom To Jacob & Allison said...

I meant to ask you yesterday about the fish or lack thereof. We are trying another algae eater - called a "chinese algae eater". So far so good but now we are having issues w/ our water. It looks kind of copper color. I'm not sure what to do at this point. I may go get the water tested when I get a chance.