As if I don’t have enough to do what with the child rearing and house maintaining and such, I went and bought a fish tank for Áine’s room a few months ago. I had read that the sound of a bubbling fish tank could help soothe her and help her sleep, so I thought why not. We started out with four minnows and a very handsome bright red betta, who we named Fishes 1-4 and Mr. Fish, respectively. Thinking I was being a responsible fish mom, I cleaned their little tank every week.
The first fish tragedy occurred when one of the minnows committed fishy suicide while I was cleaning his tank. Mid-clean, I looked into the bowl where I was keeping them in the meantime – one fish, two fish, three fish…WHERE THE FUCK IS FISH #4?? Well fish #4 was on the fucking floor. He had jumped out of the bowl and plunged to his doom. RIP Fish #4.
A week or so later, Mr. Fish started looking not so hot. His color dulled and his fins started to look kind of shredded. I kept an eye on him, kind of concerned, and then one day I looked in on him and he was covered head to tail in white fuzz. ”Well that,” I told myself, “CAN’T be good”.
I poked around online and was bombarded with a dizzying amount of information on fish diseases. I thought, screw this, and went back to the store where we bought him and asked what was up. I told the guy how I’d been religiously cleaning the tank and he told me that was exactly the wrong thing to do. Apparently when you’re first setting up a tank, you have to let it get good and dirty (to an acceptable degree) to let good bacteria build up that will process fishy waste. If you clean the tank too often, you don’t let the bacteria build up and basically your fish are eaten alive by toxins that would normally have been digested by bacteria. By the time I learned this, it was too late for Mr. Fish and he died a horrible HORRIBLE fishy death.
I was wracked with guilt. I’m usually not one to feel too badly for fish, but he was my pet and by trying to do what I thought was the right thing, I caused him to die and die painfully. I think Mr. Fish will haunt me the rest of my days.
But that didn’t stop me from going out and buying another fish. This time I did it right and waited for a month – didn’t clean the tank (the three remaining minnows didn’t seem to mind) to make sure all the good bacteria were built up – and I bought a lovely fantail goldfish, named Fatty Bo-Batty:
I brought him home and put him in the little one and a half gallon tank with the three minnows and all seemed happy as can be.
Then I started poking around online to find information on caring for fantail goldfish and everywhere I read that at a minimum fantail goldfish need to be in a ten gallon tank in order to be healthy and happy. Usually I would have been like, whatever, it’s a fucking fish. But I was still suffering from Mr. Fish Guilt and was convinced that if I left Fatty in the little tank that he would be miserable. So I went out and bought a goddamn ten gallon tank. I put the minnows in it for three weeks to get it “ready” for Fatty while he stayed in the little tank by himself.
Today was the day and Fatty moved into his new home. Áine and I also took a trip back to the fish store and bought him a little calico girlfriend (or maybe a boyfriend? It’s hard to tell with fish). Turns out Fatty is kind of a douchebag and has been relentlessly chasing his new buddy all over the tank. I figure they’ll work it out. Here’s a photo of Fatty in pursuit of Gato (named in honor of the cat that Pepe Le Peu was always chasing):
We also got a little freshwater eel (named Pinky) to hang out on the bottom. He’s camera shy though, so no pics of him.
The overall moral to this story? I am a sucker. I guess it’s worth it though:
