The tasks for today have been really fun! The main initiative was to move the crayfish tank to the new office, and we started by cleaning out the main tank. Yesterday we went over and the smaller tank had filled with dead bees, and the water was brown and reeked of death. The pump had stopped working, so a lot of crayfish were also dead.
A weird thing- when the small ones are alive, they're brown. When they're dead, they turn really red.
When we started pouring the water out and vacuuming the bottom, we also found some bones that probably belonged to a mouse. There was a lot of disgusting stuff in there. But there were actually a number of live crayfish, which we spirited away to the larger tank.
So to start out today I moved the fish and crayfish of the living tank into a bucket to move. I think I caught rocks more often than I caught the fish, but I did get them all and we moved everything to the new building.
I pulled the rocks out and cleaned them, and was looking in the empty tank when I saw a little tiny thing move in the water. I immediately thought that it was a puny baby crayfish, and got really excited. My aunt helped me catch it, because it was barely longer than the main part of this i. I became really crazed and searched frantically until I pulled out 2 more. Then when we dumped the rest of the tank out I knelt in the little puddle with my face 4 inches from the surface, scrambling around in the mud to make sure I hadn't missed any. I did find another and we put them all in a little container. I was really happy the whole time we got the tank running, and afterward.
We also looked for lizards and saw a lot of Zebra-tailed lizards and Desert Iguanas.
When our work was done we drove back. I was really worried because the babies weren't moving. At all. The water had gotten really hot, and I was afraid they had died. I was right, and was bitterly disappointed. Later, though my aunt looked at them under a microscope and said that they weren't baby crayfish. They're unidentified shrimp-like things!
Besides that, our work wasn't done. We had saved some fish and brought the small aquarium home so we could set up a crayfish tank for me to observe a little every day. I cleaned that out and set up the filter. I accidentally broke one of the bubbler stones, but we had an extra. Even if it doesn't work quite as well as the one that came with the filter. Oops...
When we went to Petsmart to get things to outfit the tank with, we also got a little African Dwarf Frog to go in the tank. It's incredibly cute! On Sunday when we trap crayfish we'll add them to the collection, but even now it's very cool and exciting!
A weird thing- when the small ones are alive, they're brown. When they're dead, they turn really red.
When we started pouring the water out and vacuuming the bottom, we also found some bones that probably belonged to a mouse. There was a lot of disgusting stuff in there. But there were actually a number of live crayfish, which we spirited away to the larger tank.
So to start out today I moved the fish and crayfish of the living tank into a bucket to move. I think I caught rocks more often than I caught the fish, but I did get them all and we moved everything to the new building.
I pulled the rocks out and cleaned them, and was looking in the empty tank when I saw a little tiny thing move in the water. I immediately thought that it was a puny baby crayfish, and got really excited. My aunt helped me catch it, because it was barely longer than the main part of this i. I became really crazed and searched frantically until I pulled out 2 more. Then when we dumped the rest of the tank out I knelt in the little puddle with my face 4 inches from the surface, scrambling around in the mud to make sure I hadn't missed any. I did find another and we put them all in a little container. I was really happy the whole time we got the tank running, and afterward.
We also looked for lizards and saw a lot of Zebra-tailed lizards and Desert Iguanas.
When our work was done we drove back. I was really worried because the babies weren't moving. At all. The water had gotten really hot, and I was afraid they had died. I was right, and was bitterly disappointed. Later, though my aunt looked at them under a microscope and said that they weren't baby crayfish. They're unidentified shrimp-like things!
Besides that, our work wasn't done. We had saved some fish and brought the small aquarium home so we could set up a crayfish tank for me to observe a little every day. I cleaned that out and set up the filter. I accidentally broke one of the bubbler stones, but we had an extra. Even if it doesn't work quite as well as the one that came with the filter. Oops...
When we went to Petsmart to get things to outfit the tank with, we also got a little African Dwarf Frog to go in the tank. It's incredibly cute! On Sunday when we trap crayfish we'll add them to the collection, but even now it's very cool and exciting!
Noooo! Baby crawdad/unidentified shrimp-like things! What a tragedy... How are the other crayfish doing?
ReplyDeleteI have some in my aquarium now. They are troublemakers! I yell at them and scold them, but they know I love them. But they eat my plants.
ReplyDelete