A duck walked up to a lemonade stand…

and he said to the man, running the stand ‘hey, have you got any grapes?’

Not sure if it was inspired by this or too many episodes of The Simpsons, but Mr 9 wanted to start a lemonade stand.  Only a few problems with this; we don’t have a supply of lemons, we don’t know how to make lemonade and we don’t have enough foot traffic outside our house to make it worth our while… But I didn’t want to quash his ambition altogether.  So what can a small boy do to make some money? The answer was staring me down – literally.  Breed fish.

I grew up with aquariums, my father also a fish hobbyist. There’s never been a time in my life that I have not had at least one tank (if not several) running. My kids already have many of the basic fish keeping skills having always had tanks around them too, so this seems like a good hobby to get them into.  We are just sticking with live bearers at this stage, as they are the easiest as far as I am concerned.  If they stay enthusiastic we can move on to more complicated fish later.

While it may not be a proper business for him as such, as I wont make him responsible for over head costs (food, electricity etc) the project offers lots more.  Its about life, death, birth, cleaning and maintaining something, responsibility and science, with water testing, how temperature is relevant to breeding etc.  So while they might only make a few dollars from it, the over all life experience will be much more beneficial, and they’ll have no idea they’re even learning. :)

This is only the 3rd week of monitoring and taking extra special care of the fish to promote breeding and we already have over 30 babies.  Now to keep them alive until they are fully grown!