Unplanned pregnancies and new parenthood

Ok, so we're not really the parents, but I'm as worried as a new mother, almost. Did we ever mention that we have an aquarium? I bought the tank probably a year ago, then hemmed and hawed for another six months before getting fish. It took a while, and a few tragic deaths, for us to get it right, but for several months now our tank has been a lovely little ecosystem. We have (had) four platy (puh-la-teej in Konglish), two algae eaters (al-gi-ta), and one shrimp (shu-rim-puh). We also noticed a tiny little snail or two.


Until yesterday, that is, when we discovered that our fish had had babies! They're a little hard to count, and a little hard to photograph seeing as they are the length of my pinky finger and really skinny. They look like tiny white tadpoles with enormous black eyes. They're practically all eye! My best counts tallies seven.


Now here's why I'm worried: as soon as I discovered the babies, I went to the trusty Internet and learned that a) platys give birth to live fry (not relevant but cool) and that b) platys favorite food is their baby fish (cue Jaws music in background here). We have seven little tiny babies, helpless and defenseless, swimming amongst four enormous, vicious, infanticidal, cannibalistic, bloodthirsty predators!

Their only hope of survival is foliage. We have a plant in the tank that needs constant weeding. It grows so fast that you can almost sit there and watch it sprout. Until those little ones get to be bigger than a mouthful, we're going to let that plant grow so that they have somewhere to hide.

I'm so worried!

Let me know if you need any fish for your aquarium and you happen to live in Busan. We might have a few to spare!