8 July 2020

Would anyone like some fish?

Not the freshly dead, filleted and ready for cooking and eating type of fish, but the smallish live tropical type.

You would need a tank, and also a heater for the tank, because they are very particular about water temperature.

Because that’s where our problem started.

I’ve discussed before about animals I own that seem to channel other animals – my current dog being part squirrel, for instance.

I can now tell you quite emphatically that our fish are also part rabbit.

Because by golly do they enjoy a bit of breeding.

I think Josh started out with about six fish (they are mollies) along with a couple of algae eater fish, affectionately known in our family as ‘scum suckers’. They all cohabited quite nicely in the tank with some plants and heaps of room to swim around. Until we noticed little small flecks in the tank who also enjoyed swimming around. They’d had babies.

We did worry that the adults might eat the young, because quite frankly the extra competition for food and use of the remote control has tempted many a parent over the years to consider downsizing.

But no – the adults carried on their merry ways, swimming and eating and making messes for the scum suckers to deal with. Oh and a bit more breeding.

We eventually, after about the fifth breeding episode, had to invest in a second tank. But little did we know this would merely give them more room to swim and eat and breed a bit more.

We have discovered the error of our ways, just in case you are about to offer advice. We had been topping up the tank with room temperature water, not the special warmer temperature water they prefer, and the subtle adjustment to the overall tank temperature is also apparently a signal to start procreation activities.

A full stocktake of fish numbers hasn’t been completed effectively, because no matter how often I try to get them to stay still by bribing them with food or a slightly colder water temperature top up, they keep moving. But I reckon we have over fifty fish in our two tanks currently.

So – would anyone like some rabbit fish? If you’ve got a tank already and a heater that would be perfect, otherwise a setup like this is relatively cheap from Kmart, I believe. We need to reduce numbers before the next lot start eyeing off the likely prospects swimming around their tank…

Oh and in other totally unrelated news I’m getting another grandson in January! But I’m not offering up that one 🙂