Aquarium update

The aquarium ecology requires that somebody eat the algae. Dale's research indicated that the best candidates to join our thriving community are a fish called a Siamese algae eater (not to be confused with a Chinese algae eater, which is inferior) and a little troop of amano shrimp. The algae eater hoovers along the rocks, snorting lines of algae and looking twitchy. The shrimp, though, they are really twitchy: when a fish gets too close, ping! they are suddenly on the other side of the tank. (Here's a terrific TED talk on just how fast shrimp movements can be.)


Snaisy seems to be doing very well. She's quite photogenic.


The guppies, meanwhile, are thriving a bit too much. Guppies are prolific breeders and at least one of our females has already had babies. These are fairly likely to be eaten, and mostly that's a good thing; we can't house many. However, a few of them seem to be successfully hiding out in the rocks. It is hard not to be charmed by something whose eye-to-body ratio is so very large.


In other crustacean news, after every bath, Aaron becomes a hermit crab.