Fish and Froglet....

 After a lengthy debate we decided that it might be a better and more useful idea to get a fishbowl and some little fish rather than a rescue dog. You need not take fish for a walk or have expensive Vet bills to keep them. They are however not a cheap item to acquire if you reckon them out at weight for money. At $3.75 per gold Barb which would weigh in at about 1to 2 grams per fish...
We brought home the bowl and a male and female guppy which Brian reckons were going to reproduce at the rate of knots, plus two gold barb which the aquarium man said would live happily together.....They looked very handsome on the breakfast table and are very interesting to watch.

However, two mornings later I found one of the gold barbs dead at the bottom of the bowl, poor little thing either hated our breakfast table or just decided enough was enough and he missed all his other mates...The next day I noticed that the male guppy had half of his beautiful tale missing.
He seemed alright but during the following days I started to notice the gold barb was harassing him. Well, the upshot was that the guppy gave up and died also....You can see the gold barb with the black dot on his tail in the photo. The female guppy is below him slightly to the left. He started bullying her also but she wasn't going to let that continue and told him off in no uncertain manner and they seem to be getting along alright now.
The photo with the tub is where the tadpoles from Mt Compass reside and the duck weed that grows in there is amazing in that I take a hand full out each day to give to the gold fish in the pond and the stuff grows back almost immediately. The gold fish love the weed and gobble it up in no time at all.
One evening last week we saw one of the tadpoles emerge as a froglet which was pretty exciting so I popped it in a container and put it in the frog bog where hopefully it will thrive and soon add to the Base and Baritone frogs I hear at night now. Perhaps it will be an Alto to start with.

The last photo is one of how the pond is progressing with all the plants in it. The fish seem to be breeding up, as there are quite a few small gold fish and also a host of black ones which will eventually turn gold as well. I have managed to catch two to put in bowls on the verandah to keep the wrigglers down..
Apparently I have been misleading you sadly, as there is no such word as "froglet" this device keeps on underlining it so I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary.....well , well , well, you will have to forgive me, but I still think it is a great word....

Koala and the Frog Bog

This is February and it is cold....well, not for long of course, the temperature will rise to above 30*C by tomorrow.We had just over an inch of rain last week which was so welcome.Not only did it  refill our rainwater tanks  but I didn't have to water the garden for at least two days.

This morning the Magpies were giving their questioning call again so I went out to see what had sparked their curiosity. There in the fork of the tree was the local Koala, quite comfortable and not worried about the camera.

Last week, just before the rains started, Ben from the Mt Compass Yarrabee Water Garden, came and brought us the Apricot water lily Brian had wanted as the ones we have are red, white and yellow, so he wanted a contrast. Ben also brought more oxygenating plants for the pond and put in those, as well as a heap of water lilies I had propagated from the old plants which came out of the totally congested pond last September.
I had kept a lot in the old bath stationed under the pepper tree and re-potted them into ice cream containers. It will be interesting to see if they will thrive in those tubs.

The pond is looking so much better with all this new vegetation and we can actually see the goldfish now enjoying the much more spread out cover. For the time being the White faced Heron has given up trying to use the pond as a breakfast bar as there are so many more places for the fish to hide. I have even seen little fish as well now so the big ones are breeding as well. Some of the little ones are quite black but some are showing gold as well. This pond gives me more pleasure than an overseas trip.....it is just delightful

Besides the pond plants, Ben also brought us bog plants for the frog bog so that too is looking much better. There is water parsley, water celery and a buttercup which looks pretty dominant at present. The plant on the right is a ludwiggia and will hopefully grow and hang over the edge to give more cover. I can still only hear two frogs at night calling to each other but today a frog with a very loud call sat and barked most of the day.....
do we have day frogs?....
There are also some tadpoles Ben brought us and they are sitting in a tub growing fat and developing legs we hope, ready to join the night chorus eventually...a Frog Bog Symphony......to look forward to...