You Should Know Betta

Is It Summer?  Not yet, but it sure feels like it.  And, what do we do when it is too hot to move?

DRINK ICED TEA AND WAIT FOR AUTUMN!

As a side note: no, my tummy is not all better.  I actually only posed with those drinks as a prop.  The waitress brought Master Pravus two iced teas by accident and she told him to keep them and we thought it would be funny if I posed like I was drinking two at once.  I drank less than a quarter inch out of one.  What a waste.  Still, it was kind of funny having two giant mountains of iced tea for a couple minutes, wasn’t it?  She said we might as well keep them though because otherwise she was going to have to throw them in the trash anyway.  Ah, well.  Rubbish either way sadly.  Immortalized in my blog though for giggles!

No, in the Summer we lay around in the heat and stare at pictures of kitties online while Styx and Dongalor look over at us grumpily.

See, there we are – not wanting to move.  Tablet in hand.

The cats are about the same:

The good news is that I finally got a cute picture of Styx with her little blue warm up kitty!  I kept trying, but since she got so sick her face is always covered in snot and detritus and I don’t want to show her that way.  We’re always gently cleaning her up but it does make it a bit harder to get a natural shot of her with her toy.  She loves her little warmy kitty.  Awww.

Due to the heat, this was a pretty chill weekend.  Actually, I’m pretty damned sure that from here to October or so (when it starts to cool down) will be pretty fucking chill with the occasional feat of strength to go do something crazy.  Well, our version of “crazy.”

Friday night Master told me that after he got me accessed he wanted to make this weekend our “finish up the aquarium” weekend.  Well, our “plant up the tank and add the last couple of fish weekend” really.  The thing is, removing Henry to add the fish would drag the “final touches” out to the middle of the week most likely but at least we’d be 90% there.  Still, it’s a lot of work planting and acclimating a school of tetras and a couple of shrimp to the tank.

So, that’s what we did.  We decided early on that we didn’t want any fake plants in our tank.  Real plants help your tank for a lot of reasons and if you get the right ones, aquarium plants are easy to take care of (and really inexpensive) plus the fishies love them) so that was what our hearts were set on.  There are a couple of family owned fish stores near us and on Friday we went to the first one.  They only had one of the plants we wanted, and none of the fish.  That’s OK.  We brought it home, and added the anacharis to the tank.  Already the tank looked 100% better.

The next morning after my infusion we headed to another family owned store.  This one is one of our favorites, but they close wicked early during the week so we knew we wouldn’t make it there on Friday.  As we suspected, they had the other two plants we wanted!  Hooray!  We got a java fern (the one we wanted most), an anubius nana, and wound up picking up a nice smooth aquarium rock that we hadn’t expected to buy at all.  Ha.  We always wind up buying things that we don’t intend to get there, but it was perfect to tie the anubius nana to.

After we got all of the things that didn’t swim (heh) it was time to buy the most exciting part of the aquarium haul!  Yup!  The shrimp and tetras!  To be honest, I’ve never really been a huge fan of neon tetras.  It isn’t that I don’t like them, it’s just that I found them to be a bit on the “plain” side so I just overlooked them all of the time.  Master Pravus told me the week before that he wanted a school of them for the tank though because they were some of his favorites!  Go figure!  So, we got twelve neon tetras.

Neither of us have ever had any shrimp before, but we wanted to get some because betta get along so well with them, and they look so cute!  We were originally thinking of a snail but when we did some research it was obvious that they were going to need a lot more algae that we could provide without tablets and then we would have to make the tank inconsolably filthy.  Shrimp will eat vegetables, some fruit, etc as well as fish flakes etc etc so they seemed a better fit for us.  So we bought two amano shrimp.  We named them Jiub and Hamlof Red Tooth (geek pride) and brought them home.

You probably can’t tell from my picture, but Hamlof is the one missing a leg.  Yes, missing a leg!  We noticed a leg floating in the plastic bag they gave me at the store once we were halfway home.  He must have lost it somehow during transport.  🙁  He should regrow it during molts, but that’s still pretty awful.  Poor little guy.  Jiub is okay. 

They’re both really exciting to watch.  I had no idea amano shrimp were so exciting!  They swim all around the tank and can get really high up!  I thought they were just bottom feeders.  I have a lot to learn about shrimp.  I can’t wait!  They do love the marimo balls almost as much as Henry does.  They will even push them a few millimeters at a time.  It’s really fun and cute to watch.  Of course, they also eat any flake food that falls onto the marimo balls as well.  They keep everything nice and clean.  I love them.  We’ve even fed them some broccoli and they gobbled it up like little piggies.  I loooooove these guys!

I have to admit too, that adding the “horde” of neon tetras does add something to the tank.  I’m glad that we own them, because if I lived on my own or made the choice myself (as I said) it’s not something I would have ever chosen but they do look nice in the tank.  I don’t feel as close to them as I do to Hamlof, Jiub, or Henry but you can’t name them because they all look the same and there are so many of them.  Still, they are much prettier in our tank than they look in the store.

We are planning to add Henry back on Tuesday or so.  I can’t wait.  He’s in a holding tank for now, but soon he’ll be in the ten gallon wonderland!  Very soon!  My poor little fishie!  Here’s a shot of the tank completely done..  Done except for its most important member.  The King of the Castle..  Henry VII!

That’s pretty much it for our lazy weekend.  It was just spent working on our aquarium and acclimating the fishies.

Oh, and here’s a Bizzaro World bonus shot that was taken on a timer when we were trying to get pictures. Master Pravus grabbed me and it was too silly not to share.  He just had to get in on the action.  =^^=

Did you spot the fidget spinner in his hand?  Ha ha!

Oh, hot days.  I do not want them.  As much as I like snuggling up with Master Pravus, I can do that in the Winter.  I prefer doing that in the Winter.  I’m the opposite of most people though.  The Summer makes me not want to move, and the Winter makes me feel energetic.

Oi.

>.<