Dear Readers,
It would appear that I have become a great-grandmother at the tender age of 36. A fish great-grandmother. My daughter’s silver molly has just surprised us all by giving birth to four small fry (though the children all assure me there are certainly many more babies, we just cannot see them because they must be hiding in the recesses of the fish castle). Which means we can now honestly say that have more fish than we know what to do with. Or that will properly fit in our tank, lovely though it is.
Now, I would like to point out that Jay is the party responsible for bringing this pregnant fish home. Just as he is the catalyst behind the entire fish tank project (which is what I referred to in this post), the gerbil gifts last year, and espouser of the general outlook that “pets are good for children. They teach them about God’s world, and about caring for His many creatures.” Uh-huh. What he leaves out of his persuasive rhetoric is how much the Mommy of the household also gets to learn about God’s creatures. Sometimes more than she’d hoped to. Heheheh.
However, in all honesty, I am a big fan of my pet-loving husband, as well as the newest pets at House of Horne. The tank he put together is really pretty, makes a soothing gurgling noise, and sometimes during the day I sneak into the boys’ room and stand in front of it to watch the fascinating little fish swim all around, so calm and peaceful in their 10 gallon water world. Of course with the addition of the newest fishies, something will have to be done since we are over the recommended capacity of our little tank. But surely, given what faithful customers we are at our local Petsmart, they will be delighted to pay us for our pretty fish babies, right??
Let the babies grow up and I’ll use them for catfish bait. The children can learn that God ordained that some animals are food for other animals. They can also learn that a small investment can yield big rewards.
I’m not sure exactly how you explain this to the kids…but the food chain is probably going to take care of the fish overpopulation problem. The small fry fish will be snacks for the others. The tank has hiding places, so a few may make it to adulthood, but odds are not many will in that confined of an area.
You could get a snake. It’s about the most carefree pet there is. My son feeds his snake once per week, and cleans up after the snake a few days later. Other than changing the water bowl out every other day or so, there is nothing else to do. We can go on vacation for two weeks and do absolutely nothing for the snake other than put his heat lamp on a timer if it’s the cool season. If only the dogs were that trouble free…
We had a pregnant platy long ago. Only one fry survived; most were eaten, and of the two that we rescued, only one lived to adulthood. It was tough when that little guy died; I’ve never raised a pet from birth before.
Seriously, though, you have neons and guppies; I don’t think an inch of that accounts for a whole gallon of water.