Fish Fries

A while ago I mentioned here that one of our fish was expecting - the time came for the babies (fries) to be born!

We managed to get the mother fish into this contraption minutes before the first fry was born (these fish give birth to live babies).  The idea of this floating box is that the mother fish is at the top, separated by another section below with small holes where the baby fish can fall through.  This way they do not get eaten by either the mother (after 12 hours she would be ok with eating them) or by the other fish in the tank.  After a full day/night, there were about 8 live babies born (there were more, but they didn't make it).  We were quite excited that it finally happened!

Alas - somewhere between going to Church and coming home, all the fry were gone :(  We figure the holes in the box were too big and they slipped through, becoming snacks for the waiting fish below (they were seriously waiting around the box with hungry eyes!).

So, we have an empty tank - no little fries swimming around.

BUT - we have another pregnant fish - so with some adjusting (covering the holes with "something" to keep them in) we hope to try again with the next batch!