Dogs and little fishes
Poor old Toby's in the vet hospital again with another paralysis tick, poor thing. You know your dog is ill when it sniffs at its favourite treat but isn't capable of eating it! Michael and I are feeling very guilty that we didn't spot the damned tick, but at least we did spot the symptoms and get him to the vet in time. I hate to think what could have happened if both of us worked away from home: we might have come home this evening to find Toby dead on the carpet... Hopefully he's going to be OK: we rang the vet this afternoon but were told it takes 12 hours before it really becomes apparent which way things are going to go but he did say that at least we'd been able to get Toby admitted in good time. Oh dear!
On a lighter note, we took Ella out this afternoon (she is going back to school tomorrow after her chicken pox/ear infection) and went to get the first fish for our newly set up aquarium! Those of you who visited us in Bristol may remember the octagonal column tank we used to have in our hallway. We've had lots of fun here filling it and getting it set up: our first thought was to use bore water, which is what we have as a water source for all our water needs, but the pet shop staff told me that it was too full of minerals for tropical fish and that we'd better use rain water instead. Thankfully with the aid of all available water-holding receptacles in the house we were able to collect enough rainwater to fill the tank in a single evening: 100 litres off the roof in a few hours! After several days of settling down we've now put in 6 assorted Platys and 2 different small cat fish. We'll see how they go. Having only seen red Platys with black fins or orange Platys with red tails it was interesting to see greater variations in their colour: we've got two ordinary red ones with back fins, one orange one with a red tail (named 'Sylvie' by Ella), one almost black one with a bit of red ('Black Spot'), one with metallic gold sides ('Shimmer'), and one orangey-red one ('Daisy'). I suspect that we have a mix of males and females as we had last time, so hopefully around Christmas when the tank's had time to settle down we might have Platy babies again!
On a lighter note, we took Ella out this afternoon (she is going back to school tomorrow after her chicken pox/ear infection) and went to get the first fish for our newly set up aquarium! Those of you who visited us in Bristol may remember the octagonal column tank we used to have in our hallway. We've had lots of fun here filling it and getting it set up: our first thought was to use bore water, which is what we have as a water source for all our water needs, but the pet shop staff told me that it was too full of minerals for tropical fish and that we'd better use rain water instead. Thankfully with the aid of all available water-holding receptacles in the house we were able to collect enough rainwater to fill the tank in a single evening: 100 litres off the roof in a few hours! After several days of settling down we've now put in 6 assorted Platys and 2 different small cat fish. We'll see how they go. Having only seen red Platys with black fins or orange Platys with red tails it was interesting to see greater variations in their colour: we've got two ordinary red ones with back fins, one orange one with a red tail (named 'Sylvie' by Ella), one almost black one with a bit of red ('Black Spot'), one with metallic gold sides ('Shimmer'), and one orangey-red one ('Daisy'). I suspect that we have a mix of males and females as we had last time, so hopefully around Christmas when the tank's had time to settle down we might have Platy babies again!
posted by Sara Bowen at 12:58 pm
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