Fish Spotting


Choose a tank... Choose your fish... Choose fake plastic plants with little green leaves...

Jen and I finally decided we were ready to open our hearts and our home to pets. We bought a fish tank about six weeks ago.

After waiting a week to let tank settle, we bought a pair of swordtails (one male, one female) on a Friday night. The males are yellow and silver. They're about two inches long with funny tails. The females are more orange and goldfish looking.

Swordtails are supposed to be fairly hardy. We figured they would be a good choice for our first fish. Unfortunately, we got off to a bit of a rough start. The female acted really weird all week (staying low, hiding behind things). The male started bouncing around and swimming into the walls of the aquarium. (I noticed the fish food we were using contained "fish meal". Had I given him mad fish disease? Gasp!)

The male was dead by Wednesday morning of the first week.

We’re we bad parents? Had we done something wrong? The temperature was fine. The chemistry readings all came back normal. I was beginning to lose hope. Maybe we had just gotten bad fish from the pet store.

Then, on the next Friday morning as I was feeding our one remaining fish, I noticed a few little floaty things near the rocks. Was that food floating around? Was it just a poo? I looked closer, and saw two little eyes looking back at me (was it a poo with eyes?). I also noticed that the adult female was suddenly a lot friskier.

I looked some more and I noticed 5 or 6 other pairs of little eyes. Baby fish. Cool.

As it turns out, the female was pregnant. Swordtails are "livebearers", so she may have come home from the pet store knocked up (and that helps explain the nutty behavior) (still not sure what was up with the male...).

Instead of going back to the pet store for replacement fish as we had originally planned, we bought some netting to seal off the babies from the dangerous areas of the tank. And it’s kinda funny... If I hadn’t spotted them that morning, the new fish we were going to get very easily could have eaten the babies and we never would have known.

We spent at least an hour that night fishing the babies out of the tank and getting them into the netted area. Just when we thought we were done, we would spot another one. And they can be pretty tough to catch when they don’t want to get caught. They like to hide between the rocks along the bottom. There were about 15 babies in all.

We’ve only lost six of the babies so far. And they’re getting big so fast. I don't know if the remaining fish will all live, but the whole "circle of life" thing taking place right in our living room was pretty neat to watch.

I'll keep you posted on how many survive.