My life with fish

Today is a historic day: for the first time in many, many months, I bought more fish food because we actually fed all the of the previous can to the fish. Usually we have to buy more whenever one of the kids dumps it out. In honor of this historic event, today I shall blog about my life as a fish owner.

The first fish I remember having were when I was around 4 or 5 years old. We got bettas, usually male bettas, although we did have a female betta for awhile, too. We would have two at a time and keep them on opposite sides of a clear divider so that we could watch them flare at each other (and so that they wouldn't kill each other). The arrangement was fine so long as the fish on both sides were the same gender, but when we had our female betta opposite a male, we unwittingly allowed her mating hormones to fire (to the point of mate or die), and so the poor thing met her end, despite her best efforts to leap over the divider to find a mate. We named that pair Mr. Limpet and Lady Fish, after the Mr. Limpet movie; he was red, she was yellow, and except for the names they bore no resemblance to their Hollywood counterparts. The other bettas usually got named after original series Star Trek characters; guess who started out young on the Trekkie path . . .

We moved between kindergarten and first grade (and several other times, but that's another story), and our new location apparently didn't have the same selection of bettas, as we switched over to goldfish at that point. I remember we had a calico goldfish, along with some more traditional colors, and that one of the fish was named Sam. I also remember that one of them managed to get stuck and die on an artificial plant, and that none of them lasted more than a year, if that long.

We had several years of fishlessness after that, but around the end of junior high/beginning of high school, I started keeping fish again, this time boldy putting a female betta with some goldfish. The betta, Georgette, got along famously with the longest lived of the goldfish, Tri-spot, to the point that I was convinced she was sad when he passed away during a summer road trip. The same could not be said for her relationship with every fish, though, as could be testified by Azure, another female betta (whom we rescued in time) and Pumpkin, a goldfish who did not survive the wrath of Georgette.

After the Georgette set had pretty much died out, I decided to go for some serious fish keeping, i.e. my first 10 gallon tank, which I initially filled with 8 goldfish, one white one, the others orange or gold. I called them Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I never got around to figuring which dwarf was which, though, since that batch of goldfish was gone within a week or two. I then turned to tropical fish and got a fun little mix of tetras, zebra danios, and platys. I also got a male betta for color and an algae eater for help keeping the tank looking nice. More adventures came: the tetras had it in for the betta; the platys had babies but ate them; we went through several algae eaters before one finally lived more than a couple of weeks. High school ended and I went off to college. I took the betta with me (we rescued him from the tetras in time), but he only lasted about a week at my apartment at college. Interestingly enough, though, two fish back home lasted quite a bit longer, a lone zebra danio and Algernon, the last algae eater, who grew to be about six inches long and had to be fed algae pellets since he was too efficient at getting the tank algae. Not sure how long they could have lived had I not come home and shocked their systems by actually cleaning their tank.

Another year or two passed with no new fish. I got married and while we waited for kids, we got ourselves some fish. We started with goldfish, but by the end of two weeks (or less) they were no more. We went back to a good old fashioned betta (Dragon), and he made it through two moves. His successor, Pearl, made it through a major move, too. And then we retired the fish tank; it was, after all, the same fish tank that I'd used for Georgette and company way back when and it was getting a bit aged. So ended our fish ownership . . . for a little while . . .

We picked up some kids over the years, and eventually the oldest one got big enough to want a pet. We went to the pet store, where she saw the fish, and in a soft-hearted moment we got her two of them. That's it. Two goldfish, 26 cents worth of fish after tax. After our previous gold fish attempt we figured they'd probably live about as long as our small child could possibly be interested in them, so why bother spending money on all the gear. We put them in a fat vase and fed them cereal crumbs. We named them Bi-spot and Frank. Frank died after we'd had them about three weeks, and Bi-spot looked like he was headed for the great pond in the sky as well.

I took put Bi-spot in a bowl of fresh water to live out his last few crooked-swimming hours, but when morning came, there he was still alive and looking just about good as new. Seems there was just a chemical imbalance in the old water or something like that. We got another friend for Bi-spot, another 12 cent goldfish named Stripe, and after awhile I felt that fish with such stamina deserved real fish food and a proper home. We upgraded them to a bowl, and I wanted to put them in a tank, but the first tank we got turned out to be unsuitable for them: it had a filter with a motor that operated in the water. The motor produced just enough heat to make the goldfish uncomfortable. So, back to the bowl went the goldfish and we got some dalmatian mollies, whose story has been told previously on this blog. I eventually got a 10 gallon tank for Bi-spot and Stripe and also a couple of new goldfish friends, two fat fancy little fish that we called Coal (Black Moor) and Cheesy (orange fantail). After several months, Stripe began to look pooched out, and only became more so over time. After awhile, it was hard to tell Cheesy from Stripe (except that Cheesy's tail was quite a bit different). To make a long story short, over a year had passed since we got our last two goldfish and we still had four goldfish alive, all over a year old.

I also got a female betta in there somewhere, Georgiana (and no, I don't know what's up with me and "George" names for female bettas). She lived in various places from the master bedroom to the kitchen until finally moving in to the big tank with the goldfish. She did fine there for awhile, but then she started hiding all day in her little castle. I thought she was dead on more than one occasion, but she was always still breathing. Now, though, it's been quite some time since I've seen her, despite moving stuff around in the tank and even removing her castle (after Cheesy hurt himself trying to squeeze his fat fishy self through). I think there's a good chance she's gone the way of all the world and, um, been recycled; the goldfish have pretty big mouths . . .

So, aside from the lethargic betta and the swollen Stripe stuff, our fish were basically in excellent condition. Until I went out of town to defend my thesis, that is. The fish tank is in the kids' room, on top of the tallest dresser. Sometimes Jared would climb up there and stick his hand in the tank (usually trying to take rocks out), but thus far the fish had survived his terrorism. While I was gone, however, SOMEBODY decided to put our part-time two-year old in the room at the same time as Jared for so-called nap time. One restless two-year-old was one thing; two of them resulted in fish on the floor. Yeah. Not exactly a happy welcome home gift for me to say the least.

Oddly enough, though, only one fish died: Stripe, the one with the mysterious swelling. The other affected fish, Cheesy, swam crookedly for a couple of weeks, but he recovered with a little help from Jared not getting naps and with our all-purpose fish medicine drops. He's still alive now, after the castle incident mentioned above, despite having scraped off his scales in a couple of places. The only fish who died was the one who probably wouldn't have lived much longer anyway. Here's to little miracles!

We've decided it must be something about the local water supply that keeps our fish alive, since we really haven't done anything different compared to our other fish ownership experiences. If you live in the area, you should come see our three amazing goldfish, especially Bi-spot, who is about three times bigger than when we brought him home. If you ask nicely, maybe we'll even let you feed the fish with our latest container of fish food.