December 19, 2006

Emily's guppy had babies on Friday. They are in the net breeding trap in the 55 right now. I guess they were born (12/15/06) and now they're about 7 mm. Last night I put some chunks of chicken liver into water and swirled it around. I sucked up some of the cloudy water in a syringe and squirted it into the babies breeding trap. They were eating it! I guess I'll try raising them with chicken liver one or two feedings a day.

We started with 15 babies; at least one died already.

November 17, 2006

I only have five swordtails left now. :(

The rest all died. Three are all grown up, one male and two females. I think the red female had babies about three weeks ago, but I'm not sure. I didn't see any babies. Only two males got their swords. I think they got their swords in early July.

I think I had six green colored swordtails. One of them got a sword and he was very beautiful, shimmery blue, green, and purple, with a light red lateral line. He died though.

I have a mature green female, but she is not as big or as healthy as the red one is.

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Yesterday one of the baby fish got stuck in the siphon. He couldn't swim well after that and he looked almost dead. I decided to flush him. It was so sad but I was afraid he'd get sick and the rest might get sick too. Two weeks ago my littlest one died too. I think the other 3 littlest ones got eaten. :(

Some of the biggest fish (ones in the 10 gallon seem to be bigger) are pretty big. I think they are like maybe an inch long now. Some are still pretty small though.

January 20, 2006

Yesterday the smallest baby fish died. He hardly was much bigger than when he was born. I put him in the breeding trap and I don't think he liked it. He would've died anyway though. The rest of the fish are much bigger now.

December 31, 2005

Baby fish turned seven weeks old yesterday. A few are still tiny and their tails get nipped a lot. I finally put my fish in the 55 gal. fish tank last. Then I moved like 25 babies into the 15 gal. They are doing very well. Only one little one got put in the 15 gal. tank. He doesn't have much tail anymore. Poor fish.

Some of the fish are pretty big. Like 3/4 in. long. I think I have like 45 of them. Like 10 still don't have color. I read that red swordtail moms can have green (wild colored) swordtails right along with the red ones. Maybe that's what happened.

(Note: That's what happened. Some are wild green color)

December 21, 2005

I got a 55 gal. fish tank last Wednesday. Paid $115 for it. Used two savings bonds. Been having trouble with the heater. Tried my spare today and it seems to be working okay. Prayed that God would send me a 55 gal. tank in Wednesday's paper and He did!

One baby fish died yesterday. He had just about no tail. They're still nipping pretty bad. The biggest ones are like 1 1/2 centimeters and the smallest ones are still like 3/4 centimeter. Most are in between. Some still don't have color.

December 9, 2005

The baby fish are four weeks old today. It seems like such a long time since they were born!

A few are still clear colored. They've grown in the past few days and of course they've been eating a lot of food!

I wasn't feeding them enough I guess, so they started taking bites our of the little ones' tail. :( I started feeding them more and I think its getting so they don't nip as much.

I've been praying for a bigger fish tank. There will be too many fish in this one soon!

December 5 2005

It seems to me that my baby fish have grown quite a lot in the past few days. Seems like no matter how much I feed them they're still hungry again a few minutes later!

I think I have like 40 and only like 8 of them are still clear. All the rest are orange. Sure does look like a lot of fish!

They aren't all the same size; some of the biggest ones are like three times the size of the littles ones.

The orange ones sure do look like my female swordtail. I can't wait for the males to get their swords.

December 3 2005

The baby fish are still about the same.

My snail laid eggs on the wall though, so I will shee how long it takes for them to hatch.

December 2, 2005

The baby swordtails are three weeks old today. They're still pretty tiny and they don't all have colour yet, but they're proggressing.
Yesterday I read in the encyclopedia that male swordtails don't get their swords until they're a year old! I sure hope it doesn't take that lon.
(Note: I think it took 6-7 months for the males to get their swords.)

November 29, 2005

My fish are almost 3 weeks old now. Some of them have been an orange colour for awhile now, but some are still clear. They are all different sizes now. Today I finally saw a few fish with the second set of fins. They're still little so its hard to see the new fins. I noticed that its the biggest ones that have them, the bigger ones are clear. Maybe they grew instead of getting colour.

November 16, 2005

The fry are about 8 millimeters long today. They are still the samte color they were 3 days ago. I've been feeding them powdered fish food. I might give them some powdered, dried brine fish [Note: actually brine shrimp]

November 13 2005

The baby fish don't seem much bigger, but most of them have found little bellies. They eat! I have to grind the food into powder so that they can eat it. Their bodies have just the faintest pink colour. They can still hide in the gravel. One is hiding in it right now! The babies are doing well, unfortunately the parents have ich. I hope they get better without killing all the oether fish. :(

A diary of my baby swordtails-Nov.11 2005

Today my fish had a while buch of babies. They are about 5 millimeters (1/2cm) long and are clear with big dark eyes. They are so tiny that they can fit down under the gravel. I've been crushing up food for them but it still isn't small enough. They look a lot like mosquito larvae. They are clear like a glass catfish.
Daddy just bought the three females from Petco yesterday. The mother is okay, but she looks a little droopy and the other fish were bothering her.
The baby fish like to hide in pieces of floating plant.

My fish journal

I think I mentioned awhile ago that I was going to try and put all the entries in my fish journal on here, one at a time. Well I really didn't get very far. I do not remember if I even posted any entries. So I am going to start again. I plan to enter them in date order. I will try to copy them mostly as I wrote them, correcting pretty much just grammer and spelling errors. This 'fish book' I have started out at as a diary of my baby swordtails. The first entry was November 11 2005.