Almost Catfish babies.

On March 8th, I woke up to the most curious thing. Catfish eggs! Of course it took me an entire day to figure this out, as I was severely confused as to what happened. None of my fish are of the same species, but as I soon found out, some kinds of catfish can breed with other kinds of catfish!

I had been noticing this fellow, Leonard, getting a little more corpulent than usual. Leonard is also the dominating mass in the tank, a peppered corydoras catfish. So I determined that he (now a she) was responsible!!

This here is Samson, a panda corydoras catfish. I guess he's the father!!

There weren't as many eggs as I suspected, as fish can lay hundreds and hundreds. At first glance (in the morning), I probably had about 50 or so. By the time I got home from work and everything, I saved about 20 of them (as fish like to eat eggs) and netted them up.

A couple of days later I bought a larger net enclosure for the eggs, but unfortunately they all got fungus :(. It was determined that the catfish must have been spurred on to breed because of a bit of a cold spell we had here the previous weekend. Their breeding season is usually triggered by the rainy season!


As sad as I am about losing the eggs, I've done a lot of research into keeping them properly, so next time it happens I'll be prepared! Go catfish!



In other news, I went for a run today. Ran a little further than I did in the last couple weeks. Running turns my knees to jelly and makes my allergies rage, but I feel sort of good after.

Tomorrow I get off work early, so I think I'll take a browse in the tropical plant section and see if I can get a couple of new plants for my toad tank. This fern I bought probably four months ago at a super market has just gotten really haggard, it was a poor choice for that environment. I think I'll get a taller plant to go between the two plants on the right side of the tank and a medium height leafy-viney thing to replace the fern on the left. My toads have been singing basically every night this month! I love their chirping.

So ta ta for now! I'll be posting more pictures of plants soon. I did a bunch of transplants of tomatoes yesterday and they all seem quite happy! I hope to do more planting once I get a little money in my pocket. I'm going to try out lettuce, radishes and carrots, I think.