Grandparents, Again!

By now you must know about our fish, but what you don't know is our latest addition to our lovely tank. Our fish had babies!! Again!! This probably the third time that Chris and I have been grandparents via fish babies. The lucky parents are King Louie and Jasmine (all the fish in our tank are named after Disney characters). King Louie is a beautiful Blue Cobalt fish, but he is actually light purple with dark purple stripes and he is gorgeous! Jasmine is one of our lovely Red Zebras (we have another one who is male named Alladin, but apparently Jasmine found King Louie more attractive). She is actually a beautiful bright yellow. I call them our "jeweled fish" because they have pretty sparkly circles on the side of their heads that look like earrings, and pretty yellow polka-dots on their anal fins. The funny part is King Louie, Jasmine, and Alladin and all brothers a sister! But their babies seems to be functioning just fine.

I meantioned that this is our third time being grandparents. What happened to the other babies? Well, they more than likely got eaten. Ya, that seems harsh, but here's why they didn't last:

• Our tank is huge. It's a 55 gallon tank, and there's lots and lots of plants. The baby fish start out smaller than the size of your pinky nail. And they're quick. So, netting them and putting them in a separated part of the tank is pretty much impossible.
• It's a real treat for our other fish to be able to eat small fish. They rarely do because we don't want to buy small gold-fish at the pet store for fear of disease spreading to our fish (very common in pet-store fish). So we knew our other fish would enjoy the thrill of the hunt.
• Those babies are actually pretty smart. They know to hide close to the ground and in the safety of the plants. So we figured we'd give them a fighting chance, and the smartest fish would survive and be able to produce other smart fish.
  

Another cool thing is these babies are born live from their mother's mouth! We can tell when Jasmine is pregnant because her mouth is very full, it looks like she has a double chin. She carries them in her mouth until they are ready to come out, then they book it immediately for the plants!

We are always surprised and excited when we see new babies hiding in the plants! We are rooting for these guys to make it!