drastic change...

before...

after...

i think i'm addicted

Today may or may not have been the 4th time I have been to Red Mango in a week. Don't worry, I make sure my ice cream loving husband gets in on the fun too.

again?

Yes,  I am doing another blog about our fish. Our fish are our pets though, and I feel like it would be socially acceptable to blog about a dog as much as I do about our fish, right? haha. That is my justification anyway.

Owning and keeping an aquarium healthy is WAAAYY more difficult than you would first suspect. The main reason Hunter and I decided to go with fish was because we figured they were cheap and low maintenance. Boy, were we wrong. Our first batch of fish was a nightmare waiting to happen. We were ill prepared to deal with them. We had various chemical issues in our tank and didn't have a good feeding process down which resulted in the death of a good amount of fish. As soon as we started to get that cleared up, we had a bacterial infection. It seemed like one problem surfaced after another. Needless to say, by the time we had gone through all the necessary treatments to try and fix all the problems we were having, we probably could have afforded a dog - including pet rent every month.

There is a good end to the story, at least so far. We learned a lot with everything we went through and we think we know how to properly manage a tank now. The discovery of activated carbon filters and a gravel cleaner were key points to our aquarium becoming healthy.

Just when we thought we had it down however, we had seemingly healthy fish start dying again. After lots of research and water tests, we determined they were dying due to the male/female ratio. Apparently instead of dealing with competition, male guppies just eliminate it.

This last week we went through a restocking process with the hope that this venture will be far more successful than the last one. We now have a 1:1 ratio of male and female guppies, a few platies, and a couple other breeds that I'm not sure of the names. We also bought an algae eater to help keep our tank nice and clean.

So far, everything is looking good. Hunter even found more baby fish today - which is definitely a good sign because female guppies will hold their fry in until they feel safe enough in their environment to give birth. It's crazy to see how quickly our last batch of baby guppies has grown considering that they were only born just over 3 weeks ago. We can't call them the babies anymore though, so they have now been given the new name of kids.

Anyway, there is our fish saga. If you have any questions about taking care of an aquarium, I'm sure we could answer at least a few of them. Until next time, happy fishing!

i'm healed

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Balmy 23 degree weather

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first run of the year!

Not only was it my first run of the year, it was my first real run since I have been married as well as my first run post tendonitis in my foot. I am happy to report that both my foot and my lungs performed far better than I could have hoped for. Thank you, body, for healing.

surprise!

Since we went to Denver for Christmas, we decided to make a surprise trip down to Parowan to visit my family and exchange presents. We had been trying to find a good time to go down but had been struggling because I have an interesting work schedule through most of January. I did have these last couple days off though so we were able to make a trip. Instead of telling my family we were coming, we just showed up. We brought all the makings for dinner and presents. My family were all so suprised and happy to have us there for the day. It was so much fun to see how happy and excited they were to have us there. We made dinner, went to the high school basketball game (which included a tour of my high school for Hunter), played Phase 10 (I won, by the way), and watched Despicable Me. The next day we were able to stay and have lunch before heading home. Fun times for sure.

Thank you family for a great couple days and some awesome Christmas presents!