I lost my red cray when she climbed out of her hospital tank and took a scenic tour of my apartment. My electric blue cray is still kicking, albeit with only one arm despite molting again. I gave away a huge batch of baby crays during spring and summer but to the best of my knowledge only one is still around. If my blue ever dies I'll consider investing in one of the cherax species with big, club-like claws. For now that tank is seriously overloaded with fish, snails, and seaweed, and my blue cray isn't doing very much to police his tank since winter is already here and he's feeling sluggish.
In my big tank, I've added a couple new cory cats, a suckermouth catfish, and a small school of tetras, plus lots of new super fire red shrimp and tiger shrimp. I've started to learn how to tie moss down on driftwood and my first two experiments are now "developing" in this and another tank. My biggest challenge thus far is getting the shrimp to mate. I've decided that I don't have enough long mosses, just flat, slow-growing ones. Shrimp like to be able to hide in the moss, not just walk over them.
My hospital tank (formerly the baby cray tank) has been changed into a wild Neocardina and snail breeding tank plus fish relocation home. The fish in there are hardy, even the one-eyed(!) mini green barb (at least that's what I think it is) and I really ought to give them their own aquarium soon. Since the hospital tank has higher PH I'm hoping that my Sulawesi snails can produce some successful babies before their shells are eaten to death. The shrimp, on the other hand, aren't doing so well. You can buy them in massive batches here in Tianjin, which means massive dieoff once they get into any tank at home. Every day turns into a dead shrimp fishing exercise.
And now some quick notes:
- My girlfriend successfully bred her Robo hamsters and is looking to breed them again after finding a few hamster-homes for the first litter. We lost one male a couple months after his birth but the rest are doing strong, especially the females. I've suggested mating the original mom and dad again plus buying a new male next spring to mate up with all the girls from the first litter to avoid diluting their genes very much. Robos are social hamsters and we have a large cage for the females and a medium-sized cage for the males.
- In other Robo news I recently bought two platinum Robo hamsters for my girlfriend and they, amazingly, are the only Robos that will sit still in your hand for a few minutes. This pair we also hope to mate and build two final colonies of regular and platinum Robos.
- We've added another chinchilla as well, a female, but we won't be housing her with our male chin until spring of next year. She's a bit of an odd one. Having them together means we get to hear a wider range of chin squeaks and barks.
- I've observed that buying dogs and most exotic warmblooded animals is considerably more expensive in China than in the US. On the other hand, if prices here are any indication, the aquarium side of my hobbies is ten times cheaper in China than in the US!
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