Fish Tank Failure

Purchasing a fish tank for each child’s room was my idea and clearly not my brightest. It's funny how if an "h" is accidentally added to the word tanks, you end up with the word thanks. I'm still waiting for mine. My only experience with fish in captivity was a single goldfish I won at a carnival. I spent a wonderful 45 minutes with him until he did a suicide triple axle out of the inappropriate cereal bowl he was put in, water too cold, on to my dad's kitchen floor and promptly died. Clearly not a great aquatic resume for me or the fish.

My little Guppy, Remi

A second grade written seahorse project for Remi prompted a request for her own tank of seahorses. We settled on a ten-gallon tank of fancy goldfish and decided to get each child “something to take care of.”  The initial setup complete, the fish inspecting their new environs, I was as content as a kitten with a ball of yarn. That lasted for one day as I inadvertently started getting strangled by the ball of yarn.

No one at the fish store informed me that keeping fish alive and tanks stable was akin to deep thalamus brain surgery combined with a Harvard degree in chemistry. Fish don't just live in tanks and tank water doesn't just sustain the fish. Fish are delicate creatures. Feed them too much they die. Water too high in alkaline, they die. Water too hot, they die. Water too cold, they die. Water too clean, they can die. Fish are like fragile, early Crocus flowers hinting at the first of spring until March yields a nasty snow storm and silences their bloom. I have yet to get it right for the sake of the fish.

The uptick here is that I am no longer averse to handling slimy dead fish. I can easily return them with a water sample to the pet store using my bare hands to try again. Fish are now added to the tanks with fingers crossed and a wish on a star. Please live.

Slowly, the enormity of tank management is coming into focus like a color by number picture yields a beautiful butterfly if shaded properly, but I've been using blue instead of pink and my picture is less than pretty or inspiring. I have unknowingly walked straight into needing a degree in marine biology. Apparently my BA in English isn't an effective tool when it comes to fish or their tanks. Fish don't respond particularly well to my reading them Catcher in the Rye. Now, on the list of daily responsibilities is fish-tank supervision, water reading, feeding, temperature monitoring, check-ins with the fish folk at the fish store and a ton of praying. A lot of science and maybe a little bit of luck and the fish will live until tomorrow.

Keeping fish alive is harder than raising children. Don't believe it? Give it a go.

At least my kids recognize my effort and determination and reward me with encouragement. Fortunately, they see my passion for preservation instead of my perfection at pillaging any form of fish life in their tanks. Dylan, Chad's buddy has two fancy goldfish in a tank on his dresser. Every three weeks his mom and dad lovingly do a partial water change, spiff up the gravel and coo at Murdock fish and Melville fish who are now each respectively five thriving pounds. They also happen to be six years old which is something like eight gagillion years older than any goldfish is supposed to be. They may possibly be the longest living suburban goldfish and they're right here in Suffolk County! Dylan's mom swears she has motioned through the same routine every three weeks for six years and added that they live in perpetual fear of doing anything differently that might tip the scales towards the fishes' demise.

So in twenty minutes or so my odyssey begins, not with 20,000 leagues but a couple of ten gallon tanks. This morning's fish patrol turned up a single upside down floating guppy. Poor fella, it wasn't anything he did or said. He sacrificed himself for the greater good of Chad's tank. But apparently it's not about to get any easier because a cautionary tale told to me by my mom just resurfaced from the murky depths of my brain:

Years ago, a much younger Barbara, my mom, had a fish tank of her very own. It was a thriving aquatic habitat for black mollies and neon fish and guppies. Except what Barbara didn't know and I obviously didn't remember at the time of my purchase is that happy healthy guppies reproduce more easily than the Teen Moms on MTV. Barbara's did and she was so excited until she realized that adult guppies eat their fry because in a tank, the fry have no where to hide and ultimately thrive... 

Fortunately for our tanks, we've never achieved this type of fish longevity or had to bare witness to this raw form of survival of the fittest. Maybe I'm doing something right after all.