Robert Gentel’s Blog

Pet stores to me are like a candy store to a kid. And like a lot of kids a lot of my money goes toward the friendly pet store owners, who must love me like their own children given how much I spend with them.

Anywho, today I went to the pet store and bought (among all the other junk):

- A new collar and engraved name tag for our dog Harry. No other collar had fit him well since he’s so small but this simple black nylon collar fit him perfectly and he’s not getting his paw stuck in it when he scratches his neck. The collar also has our phone numbers on it, which is important since he runs out the wrought iron garage gate whenever we open the door to see if he can befriend any strangers. He’s so friendly with strangers that we worry about him being stolen or lost and the engraved dog tag with our phone numbers is a small comfort.

- A cat house for our kitten Fiona. It’s an adorable house with two levels, the inside is carpeted and there is a nice cushioned balcony on the second level where her food bowl will now reside, thusly solving the problem of Harry eating her food, leaving her to eat his dog food. Harry has already made it abundantly clear that he’s moving into the first floor, which is fine since she likes being with him (she sleeps wherever he does) but the second story is nice, since there’s a built-in cat toy that is the first toy she has played with without Harry taking it from her and destroying. Our cat’s almost as excited as I am about her cat house!

- Last but not least, I bought a special fish hatchery with a built in fish nursery. I’ve now used every fish hatchery design I’ve seen. They are usually simple products that come in a few varieties, one is a net that basically just serves as a nursery, as if you put an adult fish in it will eat the fry. There are also plastic hatchery/nursery products that float in your tank separating the fry from your adult fish, they come with an internal separator(s) to separate the fry from the mother and the best designs comprise a V-shaped separator with a slot in the middle and the fry fall down through the V into the lower portion of the chamber. There are others with a grid-like separator but in my experience the fry swim up through those and get eaten more often.

The one I bought today has two separate chambers, and uses a standard air pump to draw water from one into the other, so the new fry are sucked into a separate compartment that can be easily separated to remove the fry.  I’ve only tested it briefly but it looks pretty good.

I need to make a visa trip mid-December and it looks like I’ll be going to Panama (just looking for something nearby and Nicaragua isn’t as interesting to me. I’m not too excited about the whole thing, as I have to leave by the 15th or so and will have friends in Panama around the new years so I may even go by bus to make it more interesting.

My girlfriend is waiting on her passport so she can go with me but I’m going to get residency in Costa Rica just so I don’t have to make these stupid visa trips.

It was just two waves of motion I felt and were probably only tremors but they were strong enough to spill water in two of my aquariums and make my dog bark.

They were easily the strongest I’ve felt here in Costa Rica so far and I hear car alarms in the distance.

Anywho… back to work.

When I got my 50-gallon aquarium in November, I put all my fish in and left my mid-sized tank unplugged and sitting in a corner. Today I wanted to get it ready for some guppies that I want to breed and I cleaned it and set it up in my office when I noticed a baby guppy swimming around.  I unplugged the filter and stopped putting food in the tank almost two weeks ago and the lil’ bugger is still alive.

I quickly setup a filter and gave him a big meal (steak and eggs).