Comments | baxil: Being poor and eating well

baxil

Being poor and eating well

Jan 17, 2008 01:08

After work tonight, I came home with an organic zucchini to feed Boing for the next three days. It cost me $1.45, which emptied my wallet* and got me to thinking.

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pets, geekery

Comments 23

natetg January 17 2008, 14:07:45 UTC

You could always try keeping a pet pymgy shrew.

baxil January 19 2008, 02:25:10 UTC

I could always go buy a pet that eats plecos.

Eats organic-zucchini-fed plecos.

When I crunch the numbers on that one, I'll need a bigger calculator.

natetg January 19 2008, 02:49:51 UTC

Pygmy Shrews have very fast metabolisms - they have to eat something like three times their own body weight per day or starve.

r_monoxide January 17 2008, 18:22:25 UTC

can you stock up on organic zucchini in season and freeze it or dehydrate it or something? Not that this would be useful for you right now...

baxil January 18 2008, 06:37:39 UTC

Probably not in a way that would keep it useful for Boing. Both freezing and dehydration turn vegetables to mush when you deploy them in water.

I'm not limited to zucchini necessarily. It just seems to be the easiest standby. It doesn't clog up the tank filters much, and he seems to like the taste.

tailypo January 17 2008, 20:03:55 UTC

OMG PLECO. :D :D I didn't know you had fishes. *is fish obsessed*

firestrike January 17 2008, 21:29:34 UTC

Oh, yes. They have fish. Feel free to come help wrangle the darling little Osteichthyes bastards the next time that Bax has to move.

luna_torquill January 18 2008, 04:33:33 UTC

I have helped move a plecostomus before. It was approximately a foot long, took heavy rubber gloves to handle (those spines are fierce!) and fought like the devil. The moving was done in a trash bin lined with very tough plastic. It weathered the experience fine... better than we did moving it.

baxil January 18 2008, 06:40:38 UTC

We decided discretion was the better part of valor and left about an inch of water in the tank. What I didn't realize until afterwards is that "one inch of water" is something like 80 lbs.

Our flat has stairs.

Thread 13

joysweeper January 19 2008, 01:02:05 UTC

*butts in*

We kept a betta male in a community fishtank with goldfish and a couple gourami. He did well enough, I think. It's been a while. I probably wouldn't have noticed...

We used to have two bettas before that, one in a fairly large, shallow bowl. Then my mom poured him into the community tank before we went on vacation. You can just guess how _that_ turned out.

I liked how the bettas ate. They don't have kissy-lips like the other fish we had; they actively lunged at food. Do plants really make a big difference? I'd like to get a dorm fish, but I'm kind of leery about it.

baxil January 19 2008, 02:30:10 UTC

> Do plants really make a big difference?

Oh, my, yes. Fish pee ammonia (toxic!), which is transformed by nitrifying bacteria into nitrites (toxic!), which is further transformed by bacteria into nitrates (plant food in small quantities, toxic in large quantities).

Nitrates will build up and build up and build up in the water if there's nothing there to use 'em. You have to change the water on a very regular schedule to keep levels safe for fish. Of course, algae, being photosynthetic, will kick the levels down some -- but then you have to scrub lots to keep the glass clean, and change the water out anyway to clear the algae out!

I vacuum my planted tank maybe twice a month to remove excess Boing-poop (and change the filters a little more regularly), and that's the only regular maintenance I do. The plants take care of the rest. I'll occasionally check the nitrate level in the water, but the plants have grown so much that they'll suck it all away -- I usually can't detect nitrates at all.

joysweeper January 19 2008, 03:19:52 UTC

Huh. That makes sense. Thanks!

Still thinking about a fish. I hear that bowls are bad for various reasons, not least of them stale water and no swimming-space. It's something to mull over, at any rate. I doubt I'll pick up a pet any time soon.

elynne January 19 2008, 10:22:29 UTC

panzerwalt has officially taken over my interest in fishtanks in the household; he has - three (I'm pretty sure it's three; living room, laundry room, his room, yep three) running now, all of which have plants. And he has the two-bin fountain-thing with plants in the back yard, and he's got a rock garden thing in the front.

I have a plant. It is still alive. I consider that a win. :D Also, this post and the comments to it made me giggle hysterically.