Our Finned Friend

Anyone who has known me since I was a child knows that before tarantulas, before academic decathlon, before computers, was the great obsession in my life: fish! (ok, this was after dinosaurs, just for full disclosure purposes)

It all began when I was 18 months old or something and my mother used to sit around with me watching the family fish for hours. But that's a different story, and honestly you have to ask someone who was old enough at the time to know about it now.

Although that hobby has sort of exited its active phase, it's still been coursing through my veins, latent, for many years. Once I get a real house, I'm also getting a fish tank. So far as a single man I have avoided starting up with the fish again. That's how much self control I have.

But then I married into a fish. Ashley had just recently bought this little betta before we were married. It's named flotsam. When I married her it was sitting around in one of those glass bowls that's actually a flower vase withthese marble-rocks being sad. Why was it sad? It was sad because it was breathing its own ammonia and nitrates and getting really sick. and there wasn't much oxygen in there. Frequently it would hurle itself against the glass in a way that made us get out of bed and wonder what the heck just went bump.

Anyway we were at walmart and we totally found this fish tank with a filter, hood, light, etc. $10. So we bought it. Contrary to popular opinion, the primary purpose of undergravel filters is not to trap particles that float around in the water in the gravel (which ours totally does not do because our substrate is so...course), it's to push water continuously past a solid surface. When a solid surface, such as the surfaces of our pebbles, has water pushed continuously past it, colonies of bacteria grow on the surface which eat ammonia and nitrates and keep your fish healthy. People who have bettas and they always die are probably killing them with ammonia poisoning. The bubbles associated with this kind of filter and other bubblers add oxygen to the water. They don't do so directly despite popular opinion, but by stirring up the surface of the water, which is where the oxygen is mostly absorbed.

Anyway, our little fish tank is ammonia free with a nice bit of bacteria working its magic and well oxygenated. Flotsam doesn't do kamakazi moves against the glass any more and to our eyes seems to be a pretty content little fish. Such a good investment. Thank you walmart.

We were so happy with the whole setup that we bought a little tankmate: a dwarf african frog. You can see it up in the front corner of the tank at the top. So cute!

Little things like this just somehow mean so much to our little family. Our little two bedroom life is so small in some ways, and yet so perfect.