We set up an aquarium when we lived in Missouri, and we loved watching our fish. We skipped the aquarium in Germany because I don't know what I would've done if the fish had lived longer than our stay there. And now that we're staying put for a while, we started the aquarium up again. We bought nine tropical fish, three of each type of tetra, and named them 1st, 2nd, and 3rd squad of our "tank" platoon (hardy har). And we loved them dearly...for eight days.
Yesterday, our tank turned into Lord of the Flies.
It started as a silly joke: "Man down in 2nd squad! Medic!" But the joke stopped being funny when the fish wouldn't stop dying. We lost six of them in 24 hours, including one who died during the night and was reduced to a pulpy spine by morning. Today, the fish who had been so happily schooling together for a week were all spread out around the tank, eyeing each other warily.
I went back to the store with all the corpses to ask which circle of hell my aquarium had morphed into. The girl told me that we had way too many fish in the aquarium, which sucks because it's the exact opposite information that a different girl told me when we came in to pick them out. I will go back tomorrow with a water sample to test it out, and if all checks out, I will buy two more fish. Five instead of nine. No more squads, but I guess that's OK.
Oh, and I bought the fish on my credit card, so I had a great sob story for the checkout girl: Not only did five of my fish die, but I bought them on a credit card that's now been cancelled for fraud. And how has your day been?
Posted by Sarah at January 29, 2007 02:38 PM | TrackBackI also want my own aquarium so much!!
Posted by: Nik at January 31, 2007 10:28 PM