I'm telling you anyway

Hello welcome to my infodump blog,

Here are my ember tetras and neon tetras in the tank I set up during a hyperfixation blast, enjoying a new plant.

Some ghost shrimp are hiding in there too.

This is my first ever tank, and it took a lot of self-convincing to actually decide to have an aquarium because there's a chronic fear of forgetting to feed or care for animals since I have ADHD. Thankfully, this tank is right next to my bed so object impermanence can't take this from me!!!

I get to wake up and turn on the light and see them all wake up from their own fishy sleep to get food, and I love it.

Go forth my minions

There are little caramel-cream-swirl-colored Vagrant Scrub Snails all around work, so I absconded with a few and put together a little house for them.

After searching for over a year for what I thought was a Bluefin Killifish, only to discover it was actually a wild Sailfin Molly that I had seen when they turned up in the pond at work, I kind of accepted that I had never seen a bluefin killifish and probably never would.

AND THEN, TO MY GREAT SURPRISE.... I found REAL Bluefin Killifish living in the very same pond.

Seeing them for the first time, they were small and even more beautiful than pictures suggested, with the brilliant blue dorsal and anal fins and a red tail.

I got to watch them zip around and display to each other during their spring courtship, though my phone camera can't quite capture the experience.

That makes two fish species with brilliant blue displays in the pond--these guys, and Sailfin Mollies!

a.k.a. first ever time seeing a Hoverfly larva, with no idea what it was, and desperately searched until I found the answer.

Turns out they're voracious predators of aphids and considered beneficial to gardens! Adult hoverflies look like miniature bees or wasps, but they actually don't bite or sting, and politely pollinate flowers all day as well. I see tons of them in this location.

Now I desperately want to find one again.

As a person with ADHD who partially relies on constantly finding new things to learn about to balance my brain chemistry, it is so nice to know that there are an infinite number of creatures on this planet that I don't know about.

I have learned about so many bugs, snails, birds, fish, snakes, and plants just by seeing something, wondering what it is, and diving into research to find the answer. It's one of my favorite activities, and I wish I knew a way to do it for a living that didn't involve going back to college for 8 years 😭

A delightfully chubby Least Killifish female and a very cute "dalmatian" melanistic Mosquitofish male, both caught with a net in the retention pond at work.

New amphipod behavior observed today. In the scientific world I think they call this scaring the beejeezus out of each other

One of the world's smallest! The Least Killifish is the smallest live-bearing fish in the world! They live alongside a zillion Eastern Mosquitofish and possibly some other species I haven't caught yet to identify.

A bunch of softies! I see softshell turtles a lot, butI haven't looked up what species they are yet.

Giant, hella invasive fish! (Plecostomas added a while ago to control algae. They do not) Thankfully, the pond does not directly output to any other bodies of water, even if it floods, and it has a fish fry control grate on the overflow outlet for the grass carp that were recently added.

Gators!! Mainly small ones, safely growing bigger away from the adults. I see them basking or floating almost every day. I stumbled on this guy napping while I took a walk.

I recently got up enough courage to offer to help take care of the pond, which has an immensely thick layer of muck on the bottom and so little oxygen that the fish hang out in a few shallow channels most of the time.

To my surprise, management happily agreed and is giving me everything I requested to take care of it, including a nice aerator and hundreds of dollars of beneficial bacteria tablets. Even my suggestions to change the landscaping routine and plant native pond plants were enthusiastically accepted.

Glubby in front of my house

????

FANWORMS?? THE FLUFFY THINGS THAT LIVE IN TUBES ON CORAL REEFS AND HYDROTHERMAL VENTS? THEY'RE IN THE LAKE DOWN THE ROAD?

Of the 10,000+ species of polycheates, only like 168 of them live in freshwater and only a fraction of those are fanworms, and ur telling me I found some of these guys with my $30 microscope from Amazon?

There's so little about them I can't even find a picture of what I have, much less ID it, without heading into some scientific publishing.

12:13 a.m. and I am hunched over a digital microscope on my bed watching a copepod breathe