Three-Gallon Hatchery

Spent the other day cleaning out somebody's shed, so that it can be moved, so that an excavator can get in, so that a leach field can be dug, so that the plumbing works properly, so that, you know. Yeah.

Anyway, the garden pond needed to be drained and dug up as well, and so I find myself in sudden stewardship of a whole lot of goldfish. We spent four or five hours trying to net them all (at least three bright orange, five-inch fish remain at large in the murky eighteen-inch-deep pond), with several dozen fry in several sizes being brought in. The young 'uns currently reside in a well-lit, heavily circulated five-gallon bucket, where they are quite content to swim in circles and munch on protozoans. And anything else they can, actually. Goldfish aren't picky, even when they're this small.

The works

You can see some of the bigger and carotenoidally advantaged ones here.

Most of them are the size of a grain of rice, and brown.

Cool, huh?

Progress In The Unmistakable Form Of Color

Well, I've finally made the decision that has needed making for weeks and broken out of my umber world, having found myself in something of a mire. I've already worked the sky over twice; the first attempt, subject to miscalibrated lighting, produced a moody, oversaturated cloudscape that would look about right over a moonlit ocean but, needless to say, is a bit out of place for the occasion.

So I mixed out the blues a bit and it looked much better but, still lacking proper lighting conditions, it looks as though it may still be a little bit too deep. The plan is, as it stands, to take another look at it tomorrow and, should it actually need the amount of revision I think it does, to turn tail and hide myself behind a wall of art books.