OMG – this morning I was sitting around trying to think of some good ways to procrastinate on my chores, when I noticed something small, dark and wriggly scooting along just above the gravel in my aquarium.

I moved in for a closer look, and to my shock there was a wee little teeny tiny Peppered Cory catfish! A baby catfish!

A kitten fish! Squeeee!

My two corydoras have been mating like crazy for what seems like at least two months, but I didn’t think anything had come of it – the eggs looked like duds, and they all get eaten within a few days. So this was totally unexpected!

The little baby is about 1/2 inch long, I don’t know how old that would make it, and I don’t know if there might be others. It’s obviously done a very good job at hiding, to have survived to get to this size.

It looks just like the parents, except in miniature.

Yay!

There were a few pictures from the roll I developed last night that were ok, or at least mildly interesting. I need to find something interesting to take pictures of.

These were shot with my Canonet GIII QL17, on Ilford HP5+ at ISO400. It was developed in T-Max for 6 1/2 minutes.

I have these two cute Peppered Corys (Corydoras paleatus) in my 23 gallon aquarium. Originally I got just the one, but I quickly saw how lonely he was getting. He would try and play with the zebra danios, but they would simply ignore him. So I added a second, and they have been best friends ever since. The original is slightly smaller and his name is Doctor Pepper, the second is a bit larger and is named Sergeant Pepper. Anyhow, I’ve been trying to figure out what to feed them, what they actually eat.

According to Wikipedia, “Corys are mostly bottom feeders, so they should be offered sinking pellets as well as supplements of live and frozen foods.” Having read this, I’ve bought special sinking catfish food pellets for them, and I supplement with freeze-dried whole foods (blood worms, brine shrimp.) Yet I’ve never seen them eat these things. The pellets are utterly ignored, until the snails find them. The freeze-dried foods never seem to reach the bottom, everyone else goes nuts for them.

So my two corys spend all their time scrunging around for food, and they don’t seem to be starving, but I can’t tell what exactly they’re eating. Sometimes they scrunge the glass walls, but according to several sources, corydoras don’t eat algae! The only thing I have definately seen them eat, is Sergeant Pepper once ate a tiny squished planorbid snail. The aquarium is infested with some species of planorbidae and consequently they frequently meet with ‘accidents’ that result in them becoming fishfood. I already knew the zebra danios ate them and now I know that the corys eat them too.

But other than this one tiny snail, what the heck are my corys eating?

It’s a mystery.

Misha meets a snail!

I found this wallpaper for Ubuntu Linux while surfing around.

Thought it was kind of fun.

XFCE Look

Ubuntu Linux

Image by xxxatarixxx