And now, for no reason, an update on my fish.

Wolf, the Geophagus, is easily one of the best fish I've ever owned. I'm really surprised that I haven't heard much about 'em prior to purchase -- they're so animated, so busy, and the way their eyes and mouth move paint all sorts of emotions on their face. I've since seen many more Geos sold in the stores around here, but I kinda lucked out on the size of this one -- it was huge when I bought it, but he's even bigger now. You know those frozen cubes of mosquito babies and brine shrimp? Wolf can get 'em down in one gulp. The other fish have to zip towards him and literally rip shreds from his mouth -- something they can't be bothered with unless they really like the food. The brine shrimp cubes provide Wolf with his best trick, though. When he eats those, he'll sit there trying to figure out some way to swallow the comparatively giant cube, mashing it up in his mouth. Ultimately, hundreds of brine shrimp clumps will -- swear to God -- fall through his gills like a Sea Monkey parade, with the other fish following him around to pick up the pieces. It's amazing stuff.

As for the Parrots (the first fishies in the tank for this round, as seen in an earlier blog update...they're doing really well. The two larger ones have paired off to make several unsuccessful egg-hatching attempts. Since they're painted, amongst other factors, I've read that actual fertilization and hatching of said eggs is really rare. Indeed, whenever I see caviar in the tank, it's about three days away from being completely white and moldy. This doesn't keep the Parrots from guarding them like hawks, zipping across the tank to shove everyone else away. The parenting process seems to have made the duo a bit more docile, though -- they formerly kicked the crap out of my other fish for the sheer joy of it, but now they don't bother without good reason. Luckily, since the two monster Parrots have been so busy egging around (and doing that insane kissing courting thing), the smaller and oftentimes beat-up red one has had a chance to heal up and grow quite a bit.

The Giant Plecos continue their reign of terror, virtually oblivious to the fact that there's other fish in the tank. One of them has a habit of sucking while laying sideways or on his back, mouth not affixed to anything in particular. The first few times, I thought we were in for a dead fish. But this has been going on for a while now -- I guess he's just quirky. While I have special food for these beasts, I have to admit that I've never once seen them eat anything. They suck on the glass and rocks, but that's about it. Yesterday we passed up on buying an even bigger Pleco (nearly twice the size) for just ten bucks, my point being that they're incredibly cheap for such large specimens. Not sure if that's a local thing or not, but they're definitely a great selling point for keeping a fairly large tank. Giant Plecos aren't exactly "exciting," but it's sorta cool to have these two big aquatic dinosaurs lurking behind the plants.

The algae eater remains a favorite. Everyone who's visited (and who know their fish) are in awe of how huge the thing is -- typically, these are the tiny little guys people buy to clean their tanks up. Ours is like, 8 or 9 inches, looking like a cross between a fish, a frog, a snake and another animal from some faraway planet. Despite rumors that algae eaters of this size quietly turn from docile to asshole, ours remains quite skittish and hasn't once bothered another tank resident. We totally lucked out on this one -- I've never seen another even approaching this size sold anywhere, and from what I'm reading, he's already well past the average "big" size, which in itself is a rare thing to begin with. Ally Algae is also blessed by being the seemingly healthiest member of the tank. You know how some fish just have that extra extra healthy look about them? This one does. And I'm pretty sure he realizes it.

Finally, our latest find was something described to us as a Dolphin Whale, but web searches for that term only provide a huge gamut of whale watching tour sites and instructions on how to make marine life mobiles out of construction paper. Best as I can tell, it's the opus of the elephant nose family. He's around nine inches or so, and yes, he looks almost exactly like a dolphin...just smaller. Unbelievably cute, and his mannerisms as pretty dolphinish, too. Whenever I go to feed him (a process that involves sticking live worms under rocks, can't tell you how much I love that), ol' Dolphin sucks at my fingers and does all of these strange "feed me" dances. I'm really curious to find out more about the species, so if any of our fish gurus out there have some info, pass it on.

End fish update.