Politics, Economics and other Stuff

One more pig photo

In lieu of kid photos.  Maybe a bit oversharpened and I'm not sure I get to color curve right either. 

How to spend a dark overcast and rainy day

It has been raining for a month and a half now, with at best a handful of sunny days.

Fish Update

Here is our fancy goldfish this morning.  It has some black trim on the tail fins now, a new development.  We'll see if it is transitory and maybe just a late effect of the trauma of the last few weeks, or a new problem I'll need to deal with.  For now I'm just keeping the water clean and using some low salt doses. 

Our Fancy Goldfish Hospital

Our fancy goldfish seems to have fully recovered from a near death experience with extreme lethargy, total loss of buoyancy control and being nibbled by the other goldfish (which came to a head over Easter while we were away).  It took about two weeks of nursing, including segregation, salt and tetracycline treatment.  All this mess was due to a lack of water changes and gravel vacuuming, i.e. ammonia poisoning.  Now we're just left with frequent water changes until the biological filter recovers from the antibiotics.  I hadn't realized how prone to buoyancy problems fancy goldfish are, though it makes sense one you think about it. 

Update #1: it seems Geoffrey Miller has a book out that explains, among other things, 'Why owning a pet and actually managing to keep it alive is a good signal to a potential mate.'   And I did hear from our summer babysitter that her college roommate did manage to kill off a hamster she got as her secret santa present in only a few weeks (despite 'really wanting' the hamster).  So no, I had to make the effort to keep the fish alive, just as a signal to my kids.  And yes, I do remember how my parents killed off my goldfish in 1972. 

Update #2: Jody comments:

That, was a very clever way of separating the fish. I'm going to remember that trick.

And Jody didn't even hear the debate about aluminum poisoning my wife and I had.  Turns out aluminum poisoning isn't an issue except for low pH aquariums, and our pH is slightly over 7. 

Contemporary Minifauna Outside

My wife has been feeding them more than the recommended amount of pellets -- 'they looked hungry' --, but that had the foreseeable results.