Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything on here, and even longer since there’s been new life in my fish tanks. Well, today marks the end of both streaks. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but sometime in the last few weeks one of my ghost shrimp had her babies. There have been plenty before I’m sure, since I’ve got 4 females (and had more) and they have been pregnant a lot. This time, however, some of them have survived long enough for me to notice them. They are probably only a few weeks old, but it’s hard to say, as I’ve never seen the babies before, and I can’t seem to find much info online about the size they should be. One is a bit larger than the others, which may mean it was born first, or it might just be female. At any rate, most of them are about a half inch long, with that one being perhaps five-eighths of an inch. They’re really hard to find, and it’s taken me almost an entire day to confirm that there are indeed five of them.

In other news, I got four more ghost shrimp over the weekend, so now I’m back up to a whopping eight shrimp. The lady picked out the four biggest ones she could find, so they are most likely females (not being mean, that’s just the way the female shrimp are). One of them was very pregnant.

Today, I noticed one of the pregnant shrimp looked a bit smaller. It would appear that maybe some of the eggs hatched, but it still looks like there are some there. I’ll have to do a bit of observing to be sure.

I’ve got some good news, and some bad news. The bad news is that you don’t get to choose. Actually, I separated my pregnant ghost shrimp so that her babies could have a chance to not get eaten when they hatch. Unfortunately, she died sometime in the night, so the babies are done for. The good news is that I have another pregnant ghost shrimp. Unfortunately, I’m down to 4 of them now, so I’m really counting on those babies to survive. It could be two weeks or more until they hatch, so for now, I wait. Maybe Walmart will still have some left next time we go down there. At any rate, I can’t abide the thought of life without ghost shrimp right now… Ok, maybe I could, but not very well.

Well….not quite. One of my ghost shrimp (see previous post) now has eggs. Inside them are babies. Unlike the shrimp themselves, the eggs are not clear. They are bright green. How weird is that? I took about 25 pictures, and 3 of them turned out pretty good. They are the first 3 in that album. You may have to view the full versions to actually see the individual eggs. I’m going to have to do some more reading on how to care for the babies. Hopefully, I can find some way to keep them alive, but feeding may be a problem, as they are likely to be very small.

Well, last night I decided to spend some of my Christmas money, and I bought 10 ghost shrimp. I actually ended up with a freebie, since the lady dropped one on the floor. This morning one of them was dead, so that may have been the one. They’re cute little guys, so hopefully neither the mollies nor the frog will pester them too much. They’re pretty small too, so you’ll probably want to view the larger pictures.

If you look close, you can even see the heart (the little red blob behind the eyes).

I’m now down to 20 fish. No, they aren’t dying on me. People are finally asking for them, and hopefully they are doing alright in their new homes. On Sunday, we are going to Forman, ND to ‘interview’ at the church there. Last night the youth group t-p’ed our house. It also rained last night, and so we have a soggy mess of toilet paper all over the yard. Oh well, we still feel loved.

I’ll be going through some (around 200) pictures and posting them online, so you can check that out later.

Lost 2 fish the other day. I’ve got pics from Day 1, and Day 3 in the gallery (just a couple good ones, no overload here). The fish are now 1 week old. I’ll have to take some more pictures to celebrate, and I think I’ve got some from Day 5 on the camera too.

Amanda went out last night, and I was bored. So I was watching the little baby fishies, when I noticed there was one I had missed. I snatched him out with the net, and found I had somehow caught 2 without realizing it. A while later, I see that there were two more. I caught one, and then there were still two. Finally caught all of them and put them in separate containers. Total: 38. So far, I haven’t seen anymore.

As promised, my fishy (named Ivory) had babies. 33 of them. They are pretty neato looking, and there are a few pics in the gallery

I finally sorted all the photos we’ve taken since last November. My computer had died in mid-December, and thus I was unable to do anything with it until January. Now it’s February, and I realized that I had quite a few photos to take care of (around 200 or so). So I uploaded a couple new pics of the guinea pigs, and a bunch of our pics from Christmas.

I still don’t care much for the institution of Valentine’s Day, but I do like to celebrate my love for my wife, and since it had been one full year since we were engaged, I took her out for dinner. Then we went to Menards, and looked at all sorts of stuff for a new house (still don’t know which one we’re buying, but soon). We had a good night out on the town, and it was good to get out of Ellendale for a bit.

I got a call yesterday morning from Cherrie. She said, “They’re putting the rafters up, someone needs to take some pictures.” Work on the LLHSLC is in full swing, even though it ought to be too cold and snowy for any sort of construction. God is definitely favoring TBC right now, and the progress they are making on the new building is astounding. I’ll put up a few pics, just so you can see how it’s shaping up. For more pics, you can go here.

My present from Mandy yesterday was a new fish. I picked out a big, fat, very pregnant molly. She’s white with some orange coloring. Should be having babies any time now. There will be more pictures when she does.