Babies Are Delicious

I got an extra surprise for my birthday this year.

Fish babies.

I have two aquariums. A 55 gallon tank with most of the fish & a 10 gallon tank that just had a couple of pregnant platys. They'resort of like unarmed swordtails. Both are live-bearers, so they pop out little fully formed baby fish instead of laying eggs. When we set up the aquariums we bought a bunch of live-bearers: mollies, platys, & wags. The biggest, fattest, pregnantest females at the pet store. They were so pregnant when we got home & I pulled the little bag-o-fish out of the grocery bag in addition to the 6 or 7 little momma fishes there were about a dozen little black & white baby fishes. Apparently one of the dalmatian mollie couldn't wait to get home to have her babies.

Luckily we'd planned on setting up the 10 gallon tank as a nursery, so we just tucked the little babies in there, safe from the evil clutches of the adult fish.

What evil clutches, you ask?

It's a well known fact that big fish eat little fish. It's a less well known fact that big adult fishes eat little baby fishes. Even big momma fishes & their own little baby fishes. I think if it hadn't been night when we brought the fish home from the pet store they would have eaten all the babies before we even got home but it was too dark for them to see the babies. It's possible whichever dalmatian molly had her babies on the way home had more after I dumped her in the 55 gallon tank & any of the latecomers just turned into sushi.

Then, like I said, on my birthday more babies appeared. The black & white dalmatian molly babies are big enough we put them in the 55 gallon tank with all the rest of the fish & scooped up a couple of pregnant fish to put in the 10 gallon tank. On my birthday I was admiring the fishes & noticed a little baby fish swimming around in the nursery tank.

Then I saw one of the Big Momma fishes swimming up to have a look at the little angel.

Then I saw her swallow poor Junior whole.

I don't know how many babies lost their poor fishy lives like that, but he probably wasn't the first. Luckily I have a little plastic nursery box. Inside the box is a divider with holes in it that the babies fall through so the momma fish can't eat them. After the momma fish is done popping out babies you can take her out of the nursery box & pull out the divider so the babies can stay in there where they're safe.

Unfortunately, it didn't work as well as planned. You see, the little baby fish are pretty stupid. They sit around on the bottom of the nursery box for a while, then start swimming around. They seemed to like swimming straight up. Right up into the waiting mouths of the momma fishes. Luckily, the nursery box was broken. Two sides have thin plastic strips, sort of like combs, that let water flow through the box but the fish can't get out, but it's old & something fell on it & busted out a bunch of them a while ago. So what we ended up doing was putting a couple of the most pregnant fish in the top of the nursery & put the rest of the adults back in the 55 gallon tank. Then I sat in front of the 10 gallon tank on baby patrol. Every time I noticed a baby in the bottom of the nursery tank I'd reach in & lift it up until the baby fell out the hole in the side into the regular tank. Sometimes I was too slow & the little fish disappeared, but we ended up with between 15 & 20 babies. It's hard to say exactly how many because they're awfully tiny & hid in the plastic plants, even though there aren't any other fish in there that could eat them.

And as if baby fish weren't enough, yesterday our cat had kittens. Thankfully, she only had 2, not 15 or 20. It's her first litter & she's a little cat, so we weren't expecting very many.

So far she hasn't eaten either of them. Of course, she could have had a couple that we never even knew about & gobbled them up like the fishes.

You never know.