Fishy Fishy in a Dishy

So by now all my readers should be wondering if I had a pet. Well not my family. They lived twith me. They know.

But all the rest of my faithful followers are hanging on with the question burning deep inside. Or not.

Either way, I'm going to tell you.

I'm allergic to cats, or their dander, and perhaps their attitude too. I like dogs alright, but my mom was allergic to them. (And now I have five kids. Who needs a dog too.)

As I child I had no pets. But my dad had fish living in a tank that looked kind of like this one --

He bought fairly inexpensive fish to put in it, which I didn't really get because the other ones were much prettier. He said the pretty ones were too much work. The whole thing looked like a lot of work to me, even with small, cheap fish, but whatever.

My favorite two things about owning fish (my dad owning them. I didn't do enough to help to actually be able to claim ownership.) was buying new fish and cleaning the tank. You thought I'd say feeding huh? Feeding is mostly boring. How many times can a girl get excited about fish darting the the top of the tank for dried out stinky flakes of food. Okay I liked that too.

But I loved buying fish. They were so pretty at the pet store. Mostly we got --

Black Mollies

and Swordtails

and Catfish

Catfish, not because they are particularly pretty, but because they helped to keep the tank cleaner. I loved cleaning the tank, but I don't think my dad did, because it didn't happen very often. But when it did, it was a production. The filter and all that mechanical stuff was removed. All the fish were scooped out of the tank and put into a large pan of room temperature water. Probably it was water that came out of the tank, but I can't remember. I didn't actually do much besides get in the way.

More water was removed from the tank. The rest of the decorations in the tank came out. Then if enough water was out, Dad poured as much of the rest of it as possible down the sink. Then he rinsed the rocks, but never with soap because that might kill the fish. He scraped down and rinsed any algae on the tank sides, and he cleaned the decorations off with water and rubbing.

Then some new water and the decorations went back into the tank. Sometimes we even changed up the decorations or BOUGHT a new one. More water and the filter were restored. Sometimes some fancy chemical stuff got put into the seemingly clean water. Then we waited for a bit and finally scooped the fish back into the tank. If we were lucky they lived. If we were more lucky, we got to go and buy new fish.

One Christmas the black mollies had babies. That was pretty amazing to watch. I know Dad tried to save them from death by cannibalism via the bigger fish. I can't remember if he succeeded.

When I was older Dad got two bigger fish. They were Oscars. One ate the other, and then he lived a long, lonely life in the basement.

I was kind of grossed out by Oscar. He actually looked like something you might catch and eat. Catching fish is yucky. And I hate eating fish too (unless it is salmon in Seattle, then it is okay.)