And then there were two...

I woke up this morning to find two of my guppies survived the night in the big tank (though they probably won't make it the rest of the day).  I'm quite surprised to see even one, much less two of the ten I put in there alive.  As if the giant fish hunting them weren't bad enough, I keep a heater in the small tank so the large tank is much colder.  Sorry fishies...either adapt quickly or become lunch.

Mixed Thoughts

I just put about ten of my midsized guppies in the 55 gallon tank with my 2 monster koi and 3 large goldfish.  It's mostly population control because my 10 gallon tank is way too crowded and I just noticed new small babies.  I feel kinda bad making them chow for my others but I also kinda like giving the big guys something to play with.  The guppies have been in there for almost an hour and the large ones have mostly stuck to the small amount of regular food I put in there shortly after the guppies.  It was actually quite amazing watching my goldfish slurp up the food but not a guppy (which is the same size and shape).  It's like they and the koi don't want to eat the little guppies with the light on.  But I guarantee they'll be gone by morning...midnight snacks to my bigass porkers.  I do feel a little guilty about the guppies but I just don't care about them as much...they are a much more impersonal fish than the others.  And now the babies have a little more room to grow.  At least until the next time I have to trim the numbers in that tiny tank...

Tweek and Craig

Tweek and Craig are two bettas that I acquired in Spring 2008.  They were the last in a rather long string of fish I named after Southpark characters (though the only bettas).  I had Tweek for a little over a year and Craig for almost two years.

Tweek was a crowntail betta.  I always enjoyed watching him: though the tips of his crowntail fins were actually more a transparent white color, you could see the royal blue of the curtain behind him and it amplified the intensity of his aggression when he flared at his neighbor bettas.

The necessity to keep male bettas in separate bowls was obvious almost constantly during the time I had Craig (right) and Tweek especially.  I also had two other older bettas I'd had already awhile.  Close together they were always flaring at each other...They were really beautiful and graceful to watch as they were perched on the window sill adjacent to my bed.

Craig was one of my longer-lived bettas.  He barely didn't make it back to South Dakota; he died a week before I moved home last Christmas.

Short-lived

When I first got Nathan Explosion, Truly Scrumptious, and Caracticus Potts, I also got two beautiful betta fish.  One was bright yellow and I named him Sunshine.  The other was white with little hints of red and Holly named him Bloodmoon.  I had these two for exactly one week before they both died on the same day.  It was bizarre.  Had I known that would happen, I would have taken pics the day I got them.  They were, however, part of my Life-Long Project (details later).

Here's the only pic I have related to these two fish.


They are two of six bettas that compose my fifth and most recent tattoo, a band located on my left upper arm.  Sunshine and Bloodmoon are on my inner arm.

Nathan Explosion

I got my first koi at the same time as I got the last two goldfish, in January 2009.  He's a standard koi...which are really just fancy domestic carp.  They can grow pretty much as big as their environment allows.  I decided to name my first after the lead band member of Dethklok from the show Metalocalypse.

Nathan Explosion was only about two and a half to three inches long when I got him.














He was the baby of the big tank at the time...

But he grew and grew...The pic above and below are from October 2009

And here he is a few days ago, now at a WHOPPING 13 inches (approx)...

I love you, truly...truly dear

As far as my fish chronicles are concerned, I know I made a post awhile back about my little goldfish Truly Scrumptious and Caracticus Potts...However, they've grown a lot and they no longer live in the little 10 gallon tank I have, but my big 55 gallon tank.  So here's the little buggers.  I got them in January 2009 and named them for the main characters in my favorite childhood movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Truly is a red cap oranda goldfish.  Orandas are known for their wens, the large hood over their face and around their eyes.  The wen gets larger as they get older.

Characticus Potts is a black moor (telescope eye) goldfish.  Black moors are known for their large protruding eyes, which are misleading in that their vision is more limited than other varieties of goldfish.  As they get older, they gradually change color starting with the underbelly.

These two varieties of goldfish are personal favorites of mine.  Truly is my second oranda and Characticus is my third black moor.

Color Themed Betta

In the Spring of 2009, I got three Betta fish named Purple Haze (like the song), Red Dawn (like the movie), and Midnight.  I had one older Betta named Craig that I'd had for a year already when I got the new three.

Purple Haze

 Red Dawn

Midnight

 

All four on my desk.  Left to Right: Red Dawn, Craig, Midnight, Purple Haze.

The Chronicalling Continues...

So did anyone else start blogging more after watching the movie Julie and Julia?  Hah, nobody's really reading anyways...but maybe someday if I'm more diligent about it or someone takes an interest...

Well, I watched that today.  I was going to try to start my post during the movie, but it's a Z day today.  My nephew Zidane is a totally awesome little guy but at nearly 7 months he's demanding more of my attention on the days I watch him.  I like that he's not crawling yet, or, bad as it sounds, rolling really.  It's not that he can't roll, it's just that he's not interested.  That makes him immobile yet, which is great.  However, he's finally started sleeping through the night which means his day naps are fewer and farther between.  I'm betting this post will take ages to finish simply because he's been refusing to go down for a nap for hours.  No matter...

In the late Spring 2009 I acquired a few fish for my 55 gallon tank.  Two of them were small bottom feeders called plecostomous.  I guess one of them was a special kind that wasn't as hearty as the other but neither of them lasted long.  At that time I had 4 goldfish and a koi in the tank and was looking for a little help with cleaning but these two suckers randomly disappeared both within a week of me getting them.  I therefore do not have any pictures of either.  I did name them though, both after the same character from Metalocalypse:  Milminiman Lanylin Swimwamley.  And I will be getting tats of them as well.  (Just little ones as part of a larger whole.)

The other two fish I came to own at that time were a pair of butterfly koi.  I named them also after Metalocalypse characters only these were after Dethklok band members Pickles and Skwisgaar Skwigelf.  The pictures I have of these two are from October 2009.  They were only about 3 inches long when I got them, but by the time these were taken they'd grown at least another inch.

Skwisgaar is the yellow koi.

 

Pickles is the orange koi.

The other fish will be formally introduced in a later post but are named as follows:

Scott Tenorman- chocolate oranda goldfish

Kyle- red ryukin goldfish (white in these pics)

Damien- black moor telescope-eye goldfish

Bradley- calico ryukin goldfish (upside-down in the corner)

Nathan Explosion- standard koi (white/black spots)

Here's a few more shots of the crew from that time.

 

Here's some of the old video footage of the scaly buggers swimming along to a tune from one of of my top 5 favorite movies of all time Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain.  It's called "La Valse d'Amélie".  It's funny because all these fish are either named after Metalocalypse and Southpark characters.

My Little Pony Fish

A backwards Chronology of my pet fish starts now:


These three handsome male bettas are my most recent single dwelling fish.  I got them here in Soo Foo earlier this Spring.  My three and a half year old niece Chloe helped me name them after things from a My Little Pony videotape that she loves just as much as I did when I was her age.  It actually came out the year I was born.

Floom:

Smooze:

Ogg:

Modern Marvels...meet Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

I just finished watching Modern Marvels: Failed Inventions.

My thoughts...

After seeing all the failed attempts to marry the concept of a motor vehicle with an airplane or a boat, I am proud to say that I have always loved the impracticality of a flying (or floating) car.  My very favorite movie from childhood was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.  Partly because of the music, partly the story, partly the costumes, but mostly the main character...the car that could float on water and fly through the air.  I'm actually pretty glad that inventors have long since given up marketing car/plane and car/boat ideas to the general public because it allows my pristine childhood fantasy stay in the realm of fantasy (or at least completely unattainable by my own means).  The idea is just not practical.  Normally this would upset me, but with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, therein lies the draw.

A totally awesome set of failed inventions I fell in love with in the show was the Dymaxion car and the Dymaxion home designed by Buckminster Fuller.  He's my hero...


This may seem like a bit of a stretch to shift into "fish-mode", as I call it.  But I happen to have a lovely pair of goldfish whom I've named after the lead actors in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Truly Scrumptious and Caracticus Potts.  I've had the two since January of this year just chilling in my 10 gallon start-up tank.  They live a quiet simple life compared to my other fish and I love to watch them.   I had this idea I want to put some music to some video I shot of them palling around and post it on youtube.  I'm going to do that right now.  Except here's a few stills from around the time I first got them when they were wee little babies...

Characticus Potts is the Black Moor Goldfish.

Truly Scrumptious is the Red Cap Oranda Goldfish.

I enjoy this shot because they look so far off behind the foreshortened driftwood...and they're obsessed with their reflections.

And here's Truly up close and personal:

::::UPDATE::::
Truly Scrumptious and Caracticus Potts (the fish) make their debut on YouTube