Saturday, November 21, 2009

fires and fish


The kids found two of these flashlight/magnifying glasses while we were cleaning out Lee's grandmother's house. I can't tell you how many times I tried to start fires with magnifying glasses when I was a kid. Never worked. I don't know where Leah and Neal got their fire genes, but they can smoke a leaf in about two seconds flat.



Terrible picture, but what you see here are two snails and a fancy guppy. There's another fancy guppy that must've been hiding behind the rock. (I'm not exactly sure what makes them so fancy.) There's also one of those small, tank-cleaning catfish thingies named Roger. The really cool thing about this particular combination of plants and creatures is that the water stays remarkably clean, which makes this aquarium a low-maintenance addition to the household. We've had it for months now, and it seems to be a healthy little ecosystem.

Mmmmmmm -- Lee just made brownies. Gotta go!

2 comments:

Julia said...

Can you tell me the combination of plants and creatures? That sounds like a winning combo truly!

countrypeapie said...

Hey Julia -- sorry I'm so late to respond!

The fish are fancy guppies, and I think the snails are called apple snails (you can find both of those on Wikipedia -- I didn't think to add the links to the post). I'm not sure what kind of catfish we have -- it usually stays hidden in the castle, and the last time I got a good look at it, it had grown a lot bigger. The plant looks like a philodendron, but I'm not certain what it is.

We got tired of flushing fish, so Lee went to Ed's Pet World and asked them to give him something hardy and low-maintenance. He came home with the guppies, the snail, and the plant. (We already had the catfish.) He doesn't remember what everything is, but maybe you can take C and J to Ed's Pet World the next time you're stateside!