(no subject)

[damselfish]

Sorry for being MIA this week, the first draft of a big paper was due and it took a remarkable amount of brainpower to churn out something so awful.

But I rewarded myself Saturday with a much needed trip to the fish place, and brought my grandmother along because it's nice to have company, especially company that helps me dither over what I want. My grandmother's aesthetic sense is vastly superior to my own, and she likes the classics.

So imagine my surprise when we're walking down the rows of ponds while I contemplate tetras big enough to hold their own against my angelfish* and we stop at a pond with tiny fish the color of high-lighters. I've never seen them in full sun before-- they're always kept under black light in pet stores-- and the colors are almost violent in their brightness. Shocking greens and yellows that would do the 80s proud, and mellow pinks and blues.

"They're so cute!" Grandma exclaims with uncharacteristic delight.

They're glofish. Really tiny glofish. Zebra danios are too small for keeping with angels and these are the smallest danios I've ever seen, so I ask about the blue kerris with them.

"Oh, let me buy you one! I want to buy you one."

"I don't have anywhere to put one. They're the perfect size to be swallowed whole by the angels," I say, fidgeting, because I have such a hard time saying no.

"But I want to get you one."

I squint down at the little yellow ones that have caught her attention. They are... a lot nicer than I had ever imagined glofish to be, since in the stores they're always a bit dim looking. I remember that I'm going to be taking the 6 gallon apart soon, and it should be easy enough to rig with a black light. "Yeah... I could set up a habitat with glofish and blind cave tetras."

Grandma is suitably grossed out, but the girl working with us brightens up. "That'd be SO COOL!" I laugh and mention that I've seen some for sale at the petsmart by my house, and never got any because they purportedly like dark aquariums, which I currently can't provide.

So my grandmother loves glofish. Who would've known!

Anyway, I did not buy glofish. I left the store with:

2x congo tetra
6x black gto tetra
2x gold sailfin molly
2x punctatus cory

The congos were expensive ($7 for a pair) so I sprang for the $8 for 6 black GTOs. I was told they're just like "black tetras, but with fancy fins." I've never heard of black tetras, but when I got home I learned two things: 1) black GTOs are so uncommon that Google has almost nothing on them and no pictures, and 2) they're black skirt tetras that're extra skirty. Cool.

I'd have a picture, except they all came out ridiculously blurry.

Addendum: On Sunday, my grandparents came over and marveled at my aquarium. Pleased! Then grandma looked at the 6 gallon and asked whether or not I could keep glofish in it. I underestimated how much she likes glofish.

*Really, really big angelfish. I don't remember how small they were when I got them, but I'd say the smaller pair has almost doubled in size at this point. When the minnows died, I realized the tank was mostly empty except the angels, and I started to scramble to get more community fish in there before it turned into an angels only aquarium. It might yet be angels only, at which point I'm shipping them all off. I think I already have to remove the gold one, because it's a rampaging bully, and maybe another because I suspect I have a quartet of boys. The bullied one is definitely a boy, and the others are ambiguous/leaning toward a male body shape. It isn't too much antagonism for fish, I just hate seeing the marble getting chased around by the gold and the silver and gold go face to face.

I'm also a bit undecided on the mollies, since they're kind of bland looking-- their markings are cool, but they're not that colorful. And I think the tank might be overstocked. It almost certainly isn't, but I forgot what busybodies tetras are.