My First Blog!

When I first heard about blogs, I never thought I would ever make one. "Blogs are for people who have a lot to say!" (and I didn't think I was one of those people) BUT, now that I'm married, life has gotten just a bit more interesting! ;) I figure family, friends, and such can read my blog and keep up with my "new life" :)

After a few weeks of being married, our house began to feel a little "lonely." So, Kyle and I went to our local Humane Society & adopted 2 orange, male, tabby kittens whom we named Max & George. As I tell stories about my "furry children" to my mother; she reminds me how much I used to hate cats. Well, now that we have our own, I love them. I don't know what it is; their curiosity, playfulness, or trouble-making, but they're awesome. And I have figured out that I'm not allergic to them!! YAY! :)

So, we have Max & George, and our snake-Nike. Snakes aren't my thing. Nike doesn't scare me or creep me out, but I've just never had (or thought of having) a snake as a pet. But Kyle has had Nike since he was about 10 years old; needless to say he was part of the package deal :) The best part: He's GREAT entertainment for the cats!

Now, onto our newest addition; Kyle and I are now maintaining a saltwater "nano" aquarium. It's a Fluval Edge; a 3D cube aquarium that provides viewing from every angle. (No lid so the little furry kids can't get into it!) Now, neither of us has ever had a saltwater tank before. We had turtles. Which our parents took care of. So, this is very new & (hopefully) won't be too complicated!! This is what the tank looks like:

Of course, ours isn't exactly the same, but we LOVE the color: burnt orange! We bought the water, sand, and a live rock to get us started. The tank comes with lights, a filter, and the stand. But, we got a hidden treasure inside our live rock! A day after we set the tank up, I noticed a little snail stuck to the side of the tank! It had survived our set-up and initial decorating :) So, I decided to name her. Sammie the snail!! She is a Cerith snail which looks like this:

Once she stayed alive for a few days, Kyle & I took our water down to Petco for a free testing to make sure it was all balanced. And it was great!! (yay! :) So, we figured that we would get Sammie some friends :) We are starting out with the cheap ones just in case they end up dying, lol :) We also headed down to the beach to see if we couldn't find some more coral or rock to put in the tank (save some $$) And we found some! After some googling, we figured out that we have to boil the rock we found at the beach. So, along with dinner, we boiled our beach rocks. They look awesome in the tank! We are hoping we get some "free creatures" from our new rock :)Today we went to Petco and decided since the water tested out ok, we would get some new friends for Sammie! We got another Cerith snail (Sandy), 2 Cortez Crabs (Pablo & Sanchez) and a Scooter Blenny (Charlie). Let me show you what they look like:
This is the Cortez Crab:

And here's the Scooter Blenny:

All of these creatures are "bottom feeders" basically the maids of the sea world. Now if only we can get some to clean up the house....

Anyways, I will put up some pictures of our new creatures, their habitat, and keep you updated on how it's going! If anyone has any tips, secrets, how-to's, or anything of that nature, let us know! As of now, we are reading up online how to do this. I hope we can get the hang of it without lives being lost! :)

Thanks for reading!
Lauren :)