Does this mean we're grandparents??

We drove to Peachtree City right after work last Thursday to celebrate Dave's Mom's birthday with the rest of the Wheeler clan.  We didn't get home until 10.  We normally feed our fish right before we leave the house at 6 every morning and then again right when we get home from work at 6 in the evening.  Since we were getting home so late, I assumed our cute little fishies would be hungry!  So I went straight over to the aquarium and fed them.  I noticed that two of the fish (Clyde, the guppy, and Neytiri, the silver platy) weren't going to the top of the tank and eating like they normally do.  They were hovering over the rocks.

My heart sank.  The last time that happened, the fish that hovered was dead by morning.  :o(

I started freaking out a bit and Dave tried to calm me down.  "We can't do anything about it now.  All we can to is use the net to get them out in the morning."  How comforting...

Dave left to brush his teeth and get ready for bed, but I just couldn't step away from the aquarium.  I love the fish and hated to think that we were going to loose TWO more!!!  I sat there thinking, "What in the world are we doing wrong?!?!?" 

Remembering it was late and we had work the next morning, I decided I needed to just let go and go to bed.  As I started to leave, I noticed something moving in the rocks.  I called Dave over and asked him what it was.  He said, "Ummm....  It's a baby fish."  What the?!?!?!?!?

How in the world could we have fish when all the platys are female??  We figured out that we must have bought a pregnant fish.  (They really should make it easier to tell if a fish is pregnant or not!)

And, I don't know what I was thinking, but I didn't think the fish would be so teeny tiny!  They are super little!!!

Dave said that fish don't just give birth to one or two fish, so we started searching for more baby fish.  Sure enough, we found more.  We realized that the two fish who weren't eating were actually "hunting" for baby fish to eat.  Platys eat their babies.  Yuck!!!  Not very good parenting skills if you ask me!

So, here it was well after 10 pm.  But, Dave (the wonderful husband that he is) began a Search and Rescue mission to get as many of the babies out that he could.  He successfully saved 8 of the cute little fish babies.  We put them in a good-sized rubbermaid container.  (Only had the 1 tank...)

Anyway, long story short...  On Saturday, we watched as all the large fish in the aquarium pecked at the rocks and hovered around the plant, waiting to catch a poor, helpless, unsuspecting baby fish.  How rude!!!!!  It was not fun to watch and so we knew we didn't have many options unless Dave wanted to deal with a freaked-out wife after witnessing national geographic moments right in our aquarium.  Not cool!!!

Dave and I took a date-night trip to PetSmart and bought a bigger aquarium.  (Yes, we are suckers!  Only for cute teeny tiny baby fish though!)  Dave (again because he is such a wonderful husband) got the big tank ready and moved the 4 big fish (Crush, Meg, Neytiri, and Clyde) to the new 10-gallon tank and put the "rescued" babies back in the 5-gallon tank.

It took awhile for the babies to realize their lives were no longer in danger.  We were finally able to count 12 fish babies!  Pretty cool!

This is so way NOT what we expected when we got our original fish a couple weeks ago.  However, it has been amazing to watch the babies grow so quickly.  They are so stinkin' cute!!!  I could watch them all day!  :o)  (And I try to...  But Dave thinks I'm crazy...  ;o)

Oh!  After doing research online, we are thinking that Sidney (our fish who died) was probably the Mom of these cute little fish.  It is not uncommon for platys to die after giving birth.  Sad!  (However, I don't know that I'd be in great shape either if I gave birth to over 12 babies at one time...)  Some of the fish babies are starting to show some of the same colorings and markings as Sidney.  Can't wait to see what they look like in a few weeks!

Here are some pictures of fish aquarium adventures  :o)

The blob in the top left is a pebble from the aquarium.  There is a baby fish not too far south of the pebble; there is also one at the very right side of the picture, almost directly across from the pebble.  They are tiny!  (This picture is zoomed in quite a bit.)

These are the cool blue and green pebbles Dave and I bought for our new LED-lit aquarium.  Tamara would love it! :o)

Here's a pic of both the tanks and our temporary set-up.

In honor of this festive occasion (while Dave was setting up the new tank) I wore my fishy pajamas.  :o)

Our so way amazingly cool aquarium!  There's lots of extra room in there for our fishies!

Here's a close-up of one of the baby fishies.  Kinda hard to see, but it's that little gold dot underneath the blue cleaner thingy.  See it??  I told you they were teeny tiny!!!

Here's the feature that sold Dave on this nifty LED-lit aquarium.  It has a night light!  Look at the blue-ness!!!  Oooooo!!!  Aaaahhhhhhh!!!  How pretty!!!

Anyone going to want a fish in about 4-5 weeks?  I'm so way serious!  We can't offer a 14-day guarantee like PetSmart