Smokingboot

larians said the truth of it yesterday. 'All your pets breed!'

What he means is that the animals I have picked are hard to identify in terms of gender; gerbils, snails, fish. The gerbils were a pleasant mistake, all three that somehow turned into 21. They were cute but 21 is enough. I don't want gerbils ever again.

I took over the aquarium, Rory Rumblefish builds his bubble egg nest, Rapido the golden apple snail turns up pregnant and deposits her egg cone at the top of the tank, and now the corydoras are at it.

Coreys are great little fish. They are a bit like catfish, with their little mouth barbles, wuffling up sand in search of food, they don't bug other fish, they like each other, they don't need to be treated like special snowflakes and they love to play. There are four in my tank; I thought they were all boys, a band of brothers. I live and learn.

There's one who, now that I look at it, is bigger and darker than the others...the girl, it transpires. The others are all chasing her around the tank; they nuzzle her, quiver, dance about and arch their bodies sideways. She rushes off, they all rush after her, she turns back and goes for one; He stands side on to her, she seems to push her head into his side, the pair of them forming a little T-shape. Then she rushes around again. I watched and saw why...she's looking for flat surfaces including the vertical sides of the tank. She swims vertically upwards, revealing her undersides all pink and a bit distorted, and down towards the tail, two fins clasped together like hands holding something. She presses herself against the side of the tank and out of the fins slides...an egg, stuck to the side of the tank.

Then the whole dance starts again.

But is the egg fertilised? Apparently so. How? There was no connection that I saw, except the moment when she pushed her head into his side, which didn't look like mating to me. Aquarium websites were remarkably coy in describing how the egg is fertilised. Wiki helped me. She drinks the sperm which passes through her intestinal tract really quickly, and fertilises the egg she then plants somewhere. So there we have it. My tank is a scene of piscene bukkake.