A fish out of water

My friend Jennilee says I absolutely must take a break from blogging about Adam to tell you the following story:

On Saturday, when my mom arrived to help us care for Adam (see, I have to get him in the story somehow!), she asked to see our new fish tank. I took her into the den and turned on the aquarium light. But there were only four fish in the tank. There had been five the night before. The fancy fin platy was missing!

I looked for the fishie in all of the nooks and crannies of the aquarium with no success. I knew that she must be dead. I was ready to open up the filter and skim out a dead fish, when I remembered that we had not installed the back cover of the aquarium lid. I groaned, knowing that the fish must had jumped out. And of course, it had to be the most expensive one of the lot!

Karl grabbed a flashlight and found her behind the TV cabinet. He started to reach for her, when I reminded him that breakfast was ready. So we left the dead fishie there to eat our french toast casserole.

After breakfast, Karl returned to the task of cleaning up the fish. I told him it would probably be easier to wait until she was good and dry, but he wanted to take care of it right then. Good thing he did!

As he grasped the fish, it jumped out of his hand! He got it again and tossed it back into the tank.

She sank to the bottom at first and sat in a corner. We stood there gaping. The poor thing had carpet fuzzies on her, and was unable to operate one of her side fins. Her talk looked a little worse for wear, too. But she was alive.

We turned of the filter for a while, since she had trouble swimming against the current. But now, three days later, she seems to be as good as new! We have no idea how long she was out of the tank. It was at least 45 minutes, which is about the time it took us to eat breakfast. But it could have been up to 10 hours, which was the last time we saw her in the tank.

So Karl no longer tells people that we have five fish. He says we have four fish and an amphibian.

Our New Pets

Since leaving our little pond behind in Philadelphia, Karl and I have desired to set up an aquarium in our new home. My dad bought us a 10-gallon aquarium and filter a few years ago, to keep our pond goldfish in over the winter. So last week we bought a lid, light, heater, and thermometer to fit it. After getting the water circulating and dechlorinated, we went to PetSmart to pick out some tropical fish.

We decided to start with a pair of red-wag platys. We didn't want to buy too many, in case the aquarium water was not as good as we thought. The platys were the cheapest fish available at $1.49 each, and Karl liked their orange-red color. So we purchased a male and a female. I also picked out a live plant called a wendtii red.

the pair of red-wag platys


a crisper shot of the female platy


the wendtii red plant

They seemed to thrive through the week, but last night I noticed that the male was being rather aggressive to the female. He was nipping at her tail and she was spending most of her time hiding in the plant. So I researched platys online and found out that they are happiest in small groups of at least two males and three females. So today I went by another PetSmart and bought three more platys. This time I chose a pair of Sunburst-wag platys, a male and a female, and a female fancy-fin platy. The fancy fin platy is solid yellow with a large, frilly dorsal fin. I also bought some stems of a frilly green plant called wisteria. The fish seem to be calmer in this bigger group.

a sunburst-wag platy


the central yellow fish is the fancy fin platy, but she has her fin tucked away!

I had trouble getting good pictures of the fish because they move so quickly. They also associate me with getting fed, so as I approach the aquarium they rise to the top and dart around looking for food. After about 10 minutes of standing still with the camera, waiting for the fish to wsim into my view, and about 40 pictures, this was the best I could do:

a sunburst platy swimming by the wisteria plants