lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

it looks like sunny california has finally decided to join the rest of the party and start fall.

tried out an african dwarf frog in the big tank with aristarchus- aand it looks like aristarchus isn't a 'plays well with others' goldfish. froggy squished himself into lots of little crevices and goldfish tried to squish into them too- and now it looks like he's got a fuzzy growth on his gill covering that I'm hoping is injury related and not fungus or something like that.

Froggy is now sharing a tank with Phronima the Betta, who is supremely uninterested. the froggy seems pretty uninterested in anything except hiding between Princess Leia's legs.

...I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

so far he's also pretty uninterested in the froggy food I got him- hopefully he's just in the aaaaahwhat's thatwhat's that wheretheHELLamI stage and isn't going to be a picky eater, because I don't want to play bus tag again in downtown oakland. yeesh.

frog is (so far) named Hermit Leatherface or something like that. yes, The Boy named him. he was the one that wanted a froggy, and I think he's somewhat disappointed that Aristarchus didn't want a playmate. we'll try a ghost shrimp next, but he'll probably try to eat that too.

hey, frog has decided to come out from under the plant (and Leia). hi, frog.

(I've decided to name the froggy in my head, at least, La Grenouille. not because la grenouille means the frog but because I am unashamed in my love for NCIS. who doesn't want a frog named after an international arms dealer?)

Bettas are strange creatures. this is my first time owning one, because I really didn't care about them- and it's too depressing to walk past them in pet stores because they all look starved and suffocated and diseased and depressed in their little cubes, and you can't save them all because if you bought them all and stuck them in a tank they'd kill each other and buying 1.5-2 gallon tanks for them all would bankrupt you. and taking care of them all? yikes. plus then you've got the knowledge that the next day or next week, the pet store gets a new shipment.

anyway. not a big fan of tetras or other things that would do well in my little hex tank, and not a fan of leaving it sitting on my desk endlessly bubbling to itself, that left me with a betta.

yes, I could have kept it empty as a hospital tank...but...there's nothing else in Aristarchus's tank, and I think it's so small that it would be too stressful to really be a good hospital tank.

and besides- it's kind of entertaining to watch him swim around, minding his own business, then freak out because "MALE!!!! MINE MINE MINE MINE!" ...is actually his own reflection that he can see occasionally because of the refraction index of the hex tank. ok, it's really entertaining.

he's also picking at the substrate. I didn't think bettas were supposed to do that.

oh well. back to the physics. fluid dynamics YAY! ...not.