The Saga Continues

I've got a pair of Chinese Firebelly newts, and the female has just begun laying eggs for the first time. Not sure what it is about our aquariums, but I hope it means we're doing a good job. She's been laying anywhere from 3-10 per day for the past week or so. She does this by folding a leaf over with her hind legs and making a newt-egg-taco. One. Egg. Per. Leaf. She's really finicky about this.

My new tank is still growing in, and she's been doing a real number on the plants, often crushing two leaves for ever egg she lays. I've tried fake plants, strips of plastic, and anything else that I found recommended on line, but she only likes the real deal.

Finally, I plopped some java fern in today--the stuff grows like a weed in our other tanks--and she went to town on it instead of my nice plants. So, crisis *mostly* averted. Now I just need to find someone who wants a bunch of baby newts when they hatch...

Gotta Keep 'em Separated

Mommy fish and 31 of her babies have now been moved to the 20 gallon tank. This process took quite a while, and talking like Sesame Street's The Count only kept it interesting for so long (31! 31 baby fishies. AH! AH! AH!). The remaining 3 or 4 will have to wait until they're a little bigger and can't hide from my net so well.

Turns out we were lucky. According to the internets, had our female black molly been a little older, she could have had as many as 100 baby fish.

Must Be Something in the Water

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but all of our fish decided to have babies all at once. Linnsey's tank wound up with 2 batches of whitecloud fry, and my black mollies, whom I've only had for 3 weeks, just had 10 babies while I was at work today. I was quite surprised when I came home today and checked in on my plant growth, to see a bunch of small black fishies hiding in the Riccia and Ambulia.

We've already given a few of the whiteclouds away, but if you like fish, lemme know, because I think we'll be looking for homes some of the mollies, too.

Leakiness

Our 20 gallon fish tank sprung a leak! =( So that's what I got to spend my Sunday afternoon dealing with. I had to drain the whole tank and catch all the fish so that I could swap the whole thing out for a new one.

It wasn't all bad though--we got rid of a bunch of plants that had gotten overgrown, as well as the dingy looking black gravel. I rearranged the tank to show off the piece of driftwood I got a while back for our pleco. The java ferns have finally gotten well attached to the driftwood, so it looks kinda neat. The gravel is also replaced with much more natural looking pebbles. Even kitty thinks the tank is improved now that the fish have fewer places to hide. I'll post pics as soon as I get my camera fixed.

Any ideas for what to do with the old tank? I'm such a pack-rat that I feel bad just throwing it away. We already have 3 fish tanks (plus a quarantine tank), so even if we could fix it, I'm putting my foot down against filling it with water. Current ideas involve a terrarium, maybe with cacti or lizards or something. Now that we have a projector, we can get rid of our tv and put it there.