Of Life and Times

We have an aquaponic system that is our newest toy. We have made many mistakes, including our first batch of fish an acid bath, but have had some nice successes as well. We are raising tilapia in the tank. We have at least three species. When we brought them home to put them in the tank, one of the fish had flopped out of the container and lay gasping on the floor of the trunk. We put him in the tank with the others, but as the days went on we could see that he was languishing, and was not well. We fished him out and put him in the inside aquarium to either die or get better. He got better, and eventually started to show signs of wanting to carve out his territory. It was not such a horrible task, since he was the only real fish in the tank.

We brought in another fish, hoping it was a female, since the original fish was showing signs of male territoriality. As "luck" would have it, the new fish was a female. As soon as we saw that they had been "frolicking" for a while in their own little corner of the tank, we noticed that she was rolling something around in her mouth. "Those must be the eggs," we thought. And we were correct. We marked the calendar for the nine days of incubation, and started the wait. Our marked nine days was up last Tuesday, but nothing came out of her mouth until Friday afternoon. Elaine and I were sitting in the kitchen talking about the day when suddenly Elaine yelled and pointed at the tank. I looked over to see our mamma tilapia floating in a sea of little fry. There must have been at least 200 of them. They formed a cloud around her.

Later that night, after gawking at the wonder for several hours, we left them alone and went about our business. Later I was the one to yell and point. The gold fish we had just put in the tank when Paul and Tammie moved to Indonesia, was having its tail chewed off by the mamma as she tried to drive it away from her babies. We removed the goldfish before she could kill it, but what followed was amazing. Mamma went back and began to suction all the babies up until she had gotten almost every one of them in her mouth. Amazing! There were only two loners that we could see who didn't make it back to safety, not that they are in any danger anyway. It took almost an hour before she was calm enough to let the family back out again.

Now we are wondering how long it will be before the babies have to run for their lives or mamma will eat them. Oh the wonders of nature.