Triops a no go

Well just a follow on to the Triops experiment. They were a no-show. I never saw any hatch out and so finally today I rinsed out the tank and set it up for some fish fry I hope to have soon….
Somewhere along the way waiting for them I kind of lost interest so I am going to let them drop.

Triops

Yep - yet another aquatic thing to try. Someone mentioned Triops on the GSAS alias and I figured what the hey - sounds interesting - I poked around on the web and found some more info on them. They are a slightly horseshoe crab like thing that has 3 eyes and grows to about 2 inches. Their native environment are ponds which go dry so they are a bit like killifishes and such like. They have short lives and their eggs expect to go through a dry period before hatching when the pond fills up again.

So I went down to “Science Art and More” a great place to buy misc. toys, glassware and such. I get long glass “eye” droppers there to feed and dose tanks plus grandkid presents…. I found some triops eggs in a cute little kit. It included some dried pond muck (aka - nutrient material) and the eggs. I set up a small tank and put them in a glass dish in its water to soak yesterday. Didn’t see anything today.

More later!

Don't run in Holey Socks

So the exercise kick is on and I hit the gym early with the thought to start training for the Danskin Triathlon My worry about Triathlons has always been the running leg so I figured I should see if I can get to a point where I can run the distance. Hopefully before the drop dead date for registration I can at least decide whether or not my body will put up with the run leg.
Anyway 10 minutes in to the treadmill workout - a 3.6mph walking pace with a minute of 5mph jogs now and then - I realized that the socks I had put on where the ones with a hole in the left heal. So now I have a hole in my left heal with a cushy band aid over it. Sigh…. I did manage a little over a mile and a little over 17 minutes on the treadmill.

It's the end of the world as we know it....

Wooooeeey it is wet out there - Snow started on Saturday afternoon and then turned to rain that night and it has been coming down in buckets ever since then. I got to work and half the parking lot was flooded. I parked on the edge of one of the lakes and am hoping the car is not knee deep when I leave tonight!
Sinan stayed home today. he is much better but still not back to normal. I would like to be at home with a hot cup of coffee and a good book!

Family Matters

Well Sinan got to spend the day at the Hospital yesterday to get a hernia repair - as he describes it a “bilingual hernia” repair. My question was what the other language was?? Anyway he did fine and felt pretty good last night - Of course that would be the local anesthetic and drugs talking. He did ok during the night, didn’t sleep very well but that is probably because he slept so much during the day. I on the other hand craved sleep but read quite a bit of my current book and kept getting woken up to get ice and make sure he did not fall on his nose any time he got up.
Mom called at around 2:30 AM because of pains in her chest. We talked for a while and figured it was not a heart attack and finally she felt good enough to try to sleep. By that time I was awake and so was Sinan so I read some more…..
Today Sinan spent most of the day in bed taking the percocet every 4 hours or so. He told me early in the morning that he was going to call and cancel the operation….. Just need that time machine.
Tomorrow should be better.

Water Boxes Update - Vinegar Eels

Got home a little late tonight feeling a little anxious about the new fry but when I looked in the tank they where flitting around and looked fine. Still pretty tiny but they all seem to have something in their bellies. I squirted in some vinegar eels and got a few walter worms from the box I started last night also.
I have tried both vinegar eels and microworms as tiny fry food in the past and much prefer vinegar eels. They have a few big positive attributes as far as I ma concerned - They don’t stink - even when old. They live in the water column of the tank for about a day - (hard to really tell) They do not sink to the bottom and die right away, polluting the tank on the way like microworms can.
I keep a total of 4 bottles of vinegar eels - 2 are florence flasks that I use to feed from and two are old wine bottles I use for a ready backup stock. I had poured off a lot of one of those bottles to distribute at the meeting last night so when I got back I freshened all 4 bottles by pouring off the liquid to a bowl, dumping the old apple slices I have in all the bottles. I then added more apple to each and some of the old liquid plus some 50% water and 50% apple cider vinegar solution. The wine bottles are filled almost to the top and stoppered with bits of old filter sponge washed and cut to size. I fill the florence flasks with apple/ old liquid (with worms) and new vinegar solution to the bottom of the neck I then insert cylinder plugs of old filter sponge. I push it down to the bottom of the neck and fill above it with plain water. The worms go through the sponge to get to the fresh water above and gather there. It is then really easy to use a dropper to get them off and squirt them straight into the fry tank! I learned this trick from this livefood culture Site.
The wine bottles with the stock just sit in the back of my shelf for club meetings or a sudden need for a gizzilion worms….

A New Fry to Raise

Attended the GSAS meeting last night and one of the other club members brought in some Pearl Celestial Danio fry. As luck would have it my two fry tanks have been sitting empty since I transfered the albino angels out to a bigger tank. So I won the auction and came home with 7 fry and a walter worm starter.
Now I have raised lots of livebearers and also killie, angel & rams from eggs and from fry both but these are new. I had read a little about these fish but had not thought about getting them, as it happens I may just end up with a species tank of them!
First I have to get them grown up!