I believe it was last Thursday that my little Princess first mentioned the eyes to my wife. "Mommy? You know the white fish? Well, there are eyes in its mouth." Color the Queen skeptical. She took a quick look, didn't see anything and dismissed the little girl's observation. It is not as if she makes stuff up or speaks untruths. In fact her account of thing is usually quite balanced.

Just a few weeks ago on vacation, she told her brothers that she saw some camels in the fields as we traveled down 287 a few miles west of Wichita Falls. They laughed and scoffed and within a few minutes had convinced her that she was mistaken. That was until we came over the next rise and saw another field filled with humped beasts, and I'm not talking about Bramas.

So two days later, she shared her fishy observation with her brother. He was curious enough to look for himself and swore that he too saw eyes inside the fish's mouth...looking out at the world. The whole family spent some time observing and after finally seeing what the Princess first saw, we consulted the internet for more information.

It turns out that the African Cichlids that we have (Lake Malawi - to be even more precise) are indeed mouth brooders. Immediately after laying their eggs, the females gather the eggs into their mouths and keep them there. They are fertilized there, will hatch there, and the young will remain there for several weeks.

Since the tank is full of large cichlids, the babies would not stand a chance. Thus, Saturday evening was spent setting up a separate tank for the young'uns. Momma was successfully moved over and seemed to adapt pretty well. Her mouth was extremely large and sometimes you could see it ripple as the babies within moved around. In contrast, her belly was very small. Females do not eat during the 4 week brooding process.

Everyone was spending extra time watching momma and wondering when the babies would emerge. The web said to expect between 10 and 25, but the mother is the smallest fish we have, maybe 2" long. I personally had very low expectations as far as numbers. My engineering mind could only fit 2 to 4 tiny fish inside her mouth.

Last night, two fish emerged, if only for a few brief moments. They were larger than expected, maybe 1.2 cm long, a lovely orange color with faint stripes. Almost immediately, momma hunted them down and violently sucked them back into her protective mouth. (They did not seem very willing to return to the snug confines of her mouth.)

Then this morning, they all emerged. All 12 of them (talk about being packed like sardines). Actually, we moved momma back over to the adult tank before #12 came out. She started eating so we thought she was done. Fortunately, I managed to net the baby before the big fish noticed and he is now swimming with the fishes (in a good sense).

The Architect has been raising brine shrimp to feed the babies, and even though we can't see them once they are added to the tank, we can definitely see the tiny fish chasing and eating something.

It is been a very educational week!