And as you have read on numerous occasions and seen in immediate help, your female is still good for another 5 batches of fry from that male. That is the best match you can provide for your female if you really liked the male. She is good for fry through Thanksgiving right now. Have you space for those five additional batches? ;) And by the end of July your fry from the "batch of 27" will be sexing out if they have space. Males are more fun to watch, but you needn't spend more money upon another.

I just dumped some killie eggs into a couple of shaded 1/2-gallon bowls. But when they hatch, I've a week to get those small batches into a 5.5 or 10-gallon tank or else I know that I will run the risk of messing them up.

I've found bowls like those very useful for sorting fish and holding fish and plants while tearing tanks down. (Cover them.) They are also pretty good worm feeders in 20s and will hold peat moss for annual killies to spawn in.

But they mean stunting at best or slow death if I were to keep a dozen killie fry in there too long. And guppy fry are larger!

Last Saturday, a gorgeous morning, on the way home from a Farmer's Market, we caught a rummage sale (four books we will actually read for a princely 75 cents). There was also a sign for an estate sale. These are so sad sometimes, that we hesitated upon the impulse to swing by.

Sure enough, there was abundant evidence that a widow lady had either passed away or become so frail that she had moved or been moved to an assisted living center. We went through that with my parents and could really identify with what her daughters were going through. One of them shared how when she and her sister had begun sorting through 20-30 year old boxes of keepsakes; they had "played" with the stuff for a day, as all sorts of memories tumbled from those boxes and closets and shelves and drawers and nooks and crannies. Different rooms of collectibles, neat but not what we were interested in, resembled shrines. There was some nice, if a little worn furniture, but we still have too much of my folks' stuff and need to give away more of that. I can imagine the memories for those girls and yet they have to get rid of those items in order to clean up and sell the house - often to pay for the assisted living arrangements.

On the way out, almost like it was a wake, we stopped to trade stories and memories. We had never met before, but felt that we had known the family a long time. There was a box of pet care stuff, including a lot of fish care "stuff," in the garage, resting upon a tank which looks to be about an 8-gallon constructed upon the footprint of a 10-gallon tank. The wood chips suggested how that tank had last been used.

A wan smile, I suppose, crossed my face as I observed that it would take the summer to soak the small mammal urine out of that aquarium. Still, we are funneling stuff towards a couple young people who are increasingly into fish. $5 took home the whole thing, including the tank, a glass "turtle bowl" and a plastic drum bowl (already in the bleach barrel). Some baking soda and elbow grease will clean up the four hoods for auction, if they work. So too, the three HOB filters will be tried out to see if they are worthing sterilizing and cleaning up. And then there is the gallon-brandy sniffer full of sea shells...

Duh! If those guys want the equipment, they can drop by for a cola and a little scrubbing. ;)

Sigh! A new hobby, cleaning up more old equipment. ;)

Look for garage sales, they are less emotionally draining that estate sales. ;)

Also look in the pages of these little advertisement newspapers which get tossed on the front steps or clutter up the mail. There are some bargains to be found there. A recent offer included a 55-gallon aquarium, stand, filter, hood, and etc for $55. I'm sure some cleaning would take place there too. Assume that the fish all died and the tank will need to be bleached.

And I will admit to walking the dog a little farther on garbage pick-up days, as the 10-gallon tanks which were Christmas presents get pulled out of the garage and put by the curb.

"Nitrogen cycle? What nitrogen cycle?"

"What do you mean we had to gravel vacuum all the dirt out from under the undergravel filter?"