Saturday, September 4, 2010
Posted by Sarah on October 7, 2009
It’s been a sad week.
The last of the chameleon eggs went bad, and 8-Ball, our Figure 8 puffer died.
He seemed to be doing great, and eating well, so I’m really not sure what happened.
8-Ball was the one remaining puffer we had, and I hoped that he would be around for a long time.
I guess some things aren’t meant to be.
Posted by Sarah on September 5, 2009
What does it say about me that I’d rather have these avacodo puffers than any other type of push present that I can think of?
I don’t really want a push present, the puffers are already out of my price range even if I did, and the last thing we need with a baby girl due in less than 2 months is more fish, although Jeff thought she should have her own fish tank when we first found out we were pregnant.
I think that’s changed though, at least for now.
In case you don’t know – a push present is something you get during or shortly after labor to thank you for pushing the baby out.
I’ve heard of jewelry, trips, spa visits, and all sorts of push presents, but I’ve never heard of fishy push presents.
Have you?
Posted by Sarah on August 18, 2009
Jeff and I were talking to someone this weekend who’s having trouble keeping guppies alive.
He said he’s bought guppies from all over town to eliminate inbreeding, but each time the guppies manage to die within a few days of purchase.
At first he was keeping the guppies with mollies and swordtails, but after he read online that you couldn’t keep guppies with mollies and swordtails he started keeping the guppies in a tank by themselves.
For the record, we’ve kept guppies with mollies and swordtails, and although we haven’t had many surviving guppy fry, the adult guppies were fine.
The swordtails and mollies did hunt down any kind of fry that were in the tank, so if you’re trying to breed, I wouldn’t suggest keeping them together.
Although Jeff and I didn’t determine if the guy with the problem was actually buying from all five of the local stores in the area, at various times I’ve seen guppies that didn’t look healthy in all of the local stores.
We were pretty fortunate with our guppies – we did have one batch of feeder guppies that died – I think the male feeders are prettier than some of the fancier guppies, so we tried them first, even though they don’t always get the best care.
Of course that reminds me – I should have asked the guy if he was using feeders, but he did say he purchased some at a store that I know doesn’t sell feeder guppies, so he probably was buying at least some fancy guppies.
Our second batch of guppies – three females and one male did great. They also didn’t eat their fry, so we woke up one morning to see about 20 newborn guppy fry floating above the heater, with the adult gupppies happily swimming around the tank.
Unfortunately, our guppies have all died now, so we didn’t have any to offer.
Since I’d just done my daily browsing of Aquabid, I suggested that he check out Aquabid for endlers or guppies. Some of the strains are even advertised as not eating their fry, which is great if you’re interested in breeding them, either to sell, or to feed to your other fish, like this guy was doing.
Have you had anything similar happen?
I have heard several times that livebearers in general don’t seem to be as healthy as they once were due to inbreeding.
Have you noticed this?
Do you have any suggestions for someone who keeps having trouble finding guppies that will stay alive locally?
Posted by Sarah on July 30, 2009
I’m getting pretty frustrated at a spammer on the Northern Lights Aquatics Fish Keeper’s Forums.
I don’t think the spammer necessarily knows that what he’s doing is spam, but it’s still irritating.
Coming to my or any other forum, blog, or website and posting “We have another forum about this same subject here” is the same thing as coming to a dinner party at my house, and saying “My house is down the street, and I’ve got dinner ready too, we can go over there,” to all the other guests after you arrive.
It’s rude, and it’s unacceptable, and most forums don’t allow it at all, and will ban or suspend you the first time you do it.
Of course, there is enough room, and time for everyone to visit all the forums, just like there is enough time for people to go to more than one dinner party in their life – but you don’t invite strangers to a dinner party while you’re at another dinner party, unless it’s already been established that it’s a traveling dinner party, which takes place at one house first, then another house, and another house.
Part of it is my fault, because I let some people mention their forums before, because I thought they were unfamiliar with forum etiquette, and didn’t know any better.
Of course when it keeps happening, and the only posts people make is to say – “Hey, hey, look at my forum,” it gets annoying.
I don’t want to waste my time reading post after post that says the same thing, especially when it doesn’t add anything to the conversation going on, and I don’t think most of our members want to do that either.
If you want to advertise your forum/blog/website, on another site, check to see if they have a section that allows links, and if they don’t contact the site owner and ask if it’s ok, or ask about their advertising rates before you post.
In most forums you can send a private message to the site administrator with your question, or you can look for a “contact us” page on any website.
If you want people to visit your site, post useful, helpful content that’s relevant to the forums, and to what’s being discussed.
I don’t mind if you posts links to individual posts or articles which are related to the subject being discussed on the forum or the blog, but a link to the front page of a forum or blog isn’t helpful at all.
Our forum members are allowed to have a signature, and if people see that your posts are helpful, and they’re interested in visiting your site, they’ll visit the link in your signature.
If you’re not – they won’t.
If you keep spamming other sites, they definitely won’t, and they’ll tell others to stay away from you.
That kind of defeats the purpose of getting more visitors to your site, doesn’t it?
What do you think?
Does it bug you when people keep posting on a forum saying “Look at my site, look at my site?”
Have you ever done that?
