Contingency ~ 後備

延遲並非避免。

What is deferred is not avoided. 

― Thomas Moore

Auspicious Goldfish decorations
for the Lunar New Year

Since the beginning of the year, I have collected a few more TVR spawns, thanks to the onslaught of alternating rainy days and warm days which drove the Ranchus' libidos gaga. I am now trying to delay the spawning till after the Lunar New Year and as far as possible for the females to accumulate more eggs. There is still another few more combinations that I hope to try out before wrapping up TVR breeding for the year.

The supply of daphnia this year has been unpredictable, and I was forced to activate plan B - the baby brine shrimp (BBS) alternative that I have been deferring for years. The main reasons for not trying out the BBS sooner is my reluctance to mess up my home further and that preparing brine shrimp eggs for hatching every day also eats into my already meagre hours of sleep time. Heck! what to do with so many mouths waiting to be fed?

Some of spawn A, photo taken
when they were one month old.

Improvised beer dispenser
as BBS hatching gadget 
Cheerio!!!

Thanks to Richard who shared his experiences to hatch brine shrimps, I have gotten a good hang of it. The BBS will be my backup plan when I cannot acquire enough daphnia for the baby fishes. I am no longer worried about the supply of daphnia during the critical stages of BBR development, and I can continue to push the BBRs to grow in the few days of Lunar New Year holidays where there are no supply of live daphnia. 

In this blog post, I would also like to wish my readers: A Very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous Lunar New Year!