Perl programmer for hire: download my resume (PDF).
John Bokma MexIT
freelance Perl programmer

Baby guppies and other pets

Wednesday, July 5, 2006 | 3 comments

When Esme bought four guppies (Poecilia reticulata), 2 males and 2 females, Saturday the 10th of June I told her that she soon would have more, because guppies breed like crazy.

Sadly, two of the guppies died after some time, a male and a female, which left us with just one couple. We often noticed the male dance around the female, and the female getting fatter and fatter, and also showing the "gravid spot" (near the anus), of the female getting larger and darker, a sure sign she was gravid.

The 9 baby guppies in their new mini fish tank.
The 9 baby guppies in their new mini fish tank.

And today, Esme noticed that the guppies had babies. So I used a plastic tube we normally use to change the water using the well known technique to suck up the babies (carefully) into a small plastic container. After some time we had isolated 9 baby guppies from the two adults, who might eat them when hungry.

Fish tank with the two adult guppies.
Fish tank with the two adult guppies.

I also changed together with Esme almost all the water in the fish tank that houses the two adults. We do this every week, since the water gets dirty quite fast. While doing so I found 2 more baby guppies. They had been hiding between the tiny stones we've put at the bottom of the fish tank. I used the same technique, sucked them up, and transported them to the mini fish tank.

The thirsty scorpion

How do you know when a scorpion is thirsty? Well, if it rests in the dry bottle cap used to provide it with water it might be a sign. Or maybe today it was just too hot for it: 28 Celcius.

Scorpion (Centruroides flavopictus) resting in its water dish.
Scorpion (Centruroides flavopictus) resting in its water dish.

The hungry tarantula

Today I put a small house cricket with the small tarantula (about 2 cm) we captured yesterday. And I guess the spider was hungry, because shortly after it had captured the house cricket, and was eating it.

Small tarantula eating a house cricket.
Small tarantula eating a house cricket.

When the tarantula spider had enough of the bright light and went into hiding, I noticed that the LCD display of my Cyber-shot reported that there was room voor thousands and thousands of more photos. Oops, VGA mode. And hence I couldn't crop and resize the above pictures for better quality.

Also today

Please post a comment | read 3 comments, latest by John Bokma | RSS feed