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It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's Super Fry!


gardenman
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Yesterday was filter cleaning day for my fifty-gallon tank and the Cascade 1500 canister filter got dragged to the kitchen sink for a thorough cleaning. I have a very fine mesh strainer in the drain to catch any snails or whatnot that should sneak through. It also clogs easily because it's very fine. It clogged yesterday as I was cleaning the baskets of filter material and water backed up in the sink a bit. As I'm finishing, I look down and in a corner of the sink, swimming away like a salmon heading upstream to spawn is a baby swordtail. Somehow, that little guy/gal had managed to get sucked into the filter without getting destroyed, Then survived the washing of the various media (sponges, Matrix, crushed coral, etc.) with water that's anything but temperature matched to the tank water. It's somewhere in the ballpark between freezing cold and boiling hot, but not a perfect match for the tank. It survived any soap residue left in the sink from hand/dish washing, and he was still alive and looking pretty good. I scooped him out in a drinking glass and set him aside, expecting him to die at any moment. Nope. He was still doing fine after I finished cleaning the filter and getting it reinstalled and operating. I emptied out a breeder box and poured him in and he's still doing fine this morning. That is one seriously tough little fish. 

I shouldn't really be too surprised. His great great grandparents (maybe add an extra great or two) chewed their way out of their dead mother several years ago when she died shortly after arriving. When I removed her body from the tank, I saw an odd hole in her abdomen and then saw the eleven fry that had escaped. They're a very tough group of fish I've got, but this little guy/gal takes toughness to a new level. He's/she's got a breeder box to himself (herself?) for now. I may poke around and catch some fry for company for him/her, I don't make much of an effort to save fry these days as my tanks are a bit overrun, but when a fish fights that hard to survive, you've got to reward him/her. I'm not sure it's possible to kill him/her anyway given all they've been through and survived. So, the adventures of Super Fry have begun! Where will the adventure end? God only knows.

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I tried taking a picture of him/her this morning, but even knowing where it is in the photos, it's nearly impossible to see him/her. It looks just like a normal, newborn swordtail fry, but it's a tough little fish. If I can get a better picture later I'll post it, but for now the pictures show more the roots of the plants he's hiding under than him.

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fry are amazing at times. ive taken nets and skimmed crud out of a tank and dumped the crud out in the toilet , and found fry in the toilet. scoop it out, and it lived a long life. the fish just got an adventure to tell the grandfry.

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