Friday, November 8, 2013

A Big Fish In A Small Pond - Part 4

....As time went by, we were down to just one guppy when all of the sudden it happened. No, I didn't get to see the frog engorge itself on  a guppy - but now there were many little guppies swimming around! Apparently, one of the guppies who had made it this far spawned and delivered 10-15 guppies.

Once our girls saw this, they were excited...then worried. "Dad, you can't leave them in there! The frog will eat them!" Against my better judgment, I fished them all out, mother included, and put them in their own tank. One interesting fact we learned after this is that a female guppy can spawn many times after only be fertilized once.  Now, this tank resides in our oldest two girls room and it is filled with guppies (the younger two have the beta tank).

So, for the longest time now, we have only had the Cory Catfish in with the frog. But that changed this week. I went into town (that's what we do now that we live in the country-side here in AR) and found some new fish-mates for our frog and catfish. These new mates needed to meet some criteria: they needed to be able to be in the tank with different species, and they needed to be TOO BIG to be eaten by our frog. With this knowledge in hand, we picked five silver dollar tetra and brought them home.

After draining and cleaning the tank, I replaced the rocks with sand, a second log-like hiding structure, and a live plant. I was going for a more realistic-looking scene this time. Once the water was treated and ready, I returned the frog and catfish, then floated the bag with the silver dollar tetra. Twenty minutes later the new fish were swimming around in their new environment, checking out all the nooks and crannies. There fish are much larger than our frog and definitely have no fear of him.

So, what did I learn through all this? Here are a couple of things that come to mind:

  • Don't assume. If I hadn't assumed that the frog was the same, we might this have 5 neon tetra today.
  • You may be a big fish in your small pond, but there are always fish bigger than you! 

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