{"id":944,"date":"2012-04-25T21:43:42","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T02:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/?p=944"},"modified":"2012-04-25T21:43:42","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T02:43:42","slug":"our-fishtank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2012\/04\/our-fishtank\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Fishtank"},"content":{"rendered":"

To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever written about our fishtank before. I know I’ve written several times about our fountain\/pond set up in the front yard of our current house.<\/a>\u00a0We have a 5 gallon tank<\/a> in our kitchen also.<\/p>\n

Jacob got his first fish around his 5th birthday. Small tanks with bettas and danios. Easy-to-care-for fish. We took the fishtank (sans fish) to Nebraska, and tried out some other fish — Glo-Fish danios<\/a> were popular with the boys but they seemed to not live for more than 3-4 months at a time, and cost twice as much as non-fluorescent danios.<\/p>\n

In Florida, we set up one more time, this time with fancy guppies<\/a>. We kept 3-4 guppies in the tank and they did quite well. We lost one of them after about 6 months, which seemed par for the course.<\/p>\n

About a year ago, we took on a blue gourami<\/a> from a friend who was moving. A BIG blue gourami who proceeded to eat the tails off two of the guppies…the ones with the prettiest, fanciest tails. Since they were apparently threats to him even though he was about 20x their sizes. A fish with no tail doesn’t last long.<\/p>\n

From May 2011 until April 2012, we had a small Endler’s guppy<\/a> (which had a very plain tail and therefore was allowed to live) and the blue gourami. They existed in very quiet harmony.<\/p>\n

The guppy is still with us, the blue gourami passed away at the beginning of this month.<\/p>\n

So we repopulated the fish tank with some smaller fish. And decided to replace the really old plastic plants and anchor-thingy tank decoration in the tank while we were at it.<\/p>\n

Zebra danios<\/a> have always done well with us…so we bought 3 of them. You want to get groups of three because they’re “community fish”, and are happiest in groups.<\/p>\n

We also chose a new kind of fish — new to us. “Mickey Mouse” platys<\/a>. These are also community fish — considering the boys’ obsession with Hidden Mickeys, these were PERFECT! The boys love them!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Here are two fo the Mickey Mouse platys. Aren't they cute? They're about the size of feeder goldfish.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
A closeup of the tail. See the Hidden Mickey?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While we were at it, we redecorated the tank to Post-Modern Bikini Bottom. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
You can see one of our zebra danios towards the top of the pineapple.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever written about our fishtank before. I know I’ve written several times about our fountain\/pond set up in the front yard of our current house.\u00a0We have a 5 gallon tank in our kitchen also. Jacob got his first fish around his 5th birthday. Small tanks with bettas and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[225,89,155,227,224,226,154],"class_list":["post-944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-danio","tag-disney","tag-fish","tag-fishtank","tag-mickey-mouse","tag-platy","tag-pond"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t