Fish and Me

Oy. If I’d known a simple pair of fish would be this hard, I would have thought twice about insisting on them.

When my ex and I moved into our apartment, I thought it would be nice to get some plants for the balcony and some fish to make it homey. We moved in at the end of 2004. Flash forward to Christmas 2006. He got me an aquarium and a gift card to get some fish. Awesome.

We bought two swordtails, and a fiddler crab. Hokaido (seen above) and Honshu and Mr. Crab. Only a couple of months in, during a routine tank cleaning, Hokaido was feeling harassed by Honshu in the bowl that we’d put them in and jumped out. Four feet down to the carpet. Sigh. The ex wouldn’t touch Hokaido. I had to fill a glass with water and come save him. In fact, the ex wouldn’t do almost anything involving the fish. Wouldn’t reach his hand into the tank to fix an escaped plant, wouldn’t help the later-bought Shikoku when she got stuck in the pirate ship, and, when we returned from dinner to find that the recently felled Hokaido was being eaten by Mr. Crab, had me save the body so we could bury it.

I cried. I know. It’s ridiculous to cry for a fish that I’d only had for a month or two. But the experience was pretty traumatic.

So traumatic that I still dream about fish that are able to ‘fly’ and escape from their aquariums. Ugh.

We didn’t want Honshu to be lonely, so we bought Shikoku (these fish are like $3), a female. At some point we also bought Ms Crab, but she died after not too long. Then Mr. Crab died. Then Shikoku had babies. Oy. What a morning that was. I was late to work ‘cause I had to save all the babies by putting them into the net. Then she had another batch of babies, so we let the old babies out and put the new babies in. The old babies got sucked into the filter or eaten. There was only one of that batch that survived. We named it Rocky. It turned out to be a girl.

Then we broke up and I wound up with the fish because I asked if he wanted any of them (lots of babies) and he said, “Don't think I can take care of a fish tank right now”. Whatever that means.

Anyway, I got rid of some of the babies by giving them away to a reluctant fish store. I hung onto a few because when talking about them with my landlord she said that she and her son might be interested in them.

In February, right before leaving on a trip to Vegas, I noticed that Honshu had something black on his lungs and wasn’t eating. Blurg. I warned my roommate that he may not make it through the weekend, and sure enough, the call came on Monday morning. I buried him with my friend in the plants outside my apartment.

I gave away more babies later to a different reluctant fish tank when they started to get big. But I kept six females, three for me and three for my landlord’s son. It turned out one of them was a male that just hadn’t matured so it looked like a female. Blurg. So eventually, once they had set everything up, I gave them two females.

Here’s where things ramp into high drama. One of those fish was pregnant from her sneaky brother. She had babies. She and her sister started to eat the babies. The nine year old son was horrified. I said I would come and collect the babies. But in the meantime, my landlord had put the two fish in an open plastic container. Of course, one of them jumped out while no one was home and ‘drowned’. So we quickly replaced it with my last ‘un-named’ fish (Shikoku and Rocky are mine).

The following week I got a call in the middle of improv class that the two fish were freaking out and probably gonna die. By the time I call her back they’re dead. They died at the same time. Weird.

So I gave the kid all but four of the babies. That’s the last I heard about them.

My own four babies escaped their net and only one has survived. That fish is the new Rocky. I’m waiting to see what gender it is before I name it, ‘cause if it’s a boy, I have to give it away.

About a month ago they gave me two goldfish they’d won at a fair to keep because they’d put them in the tank with the babies and they’d tried to eat them. So they went in my tank and lasted maybe a week. I only found one of them.

Ew. I still haven’t told them. Maybe they’ve forgotten.

Then my fish had more babies, thanks to that sneaky brother, and I was like ‘That’s it’ and took him to the reluctant store to give him away. I never named him for that reason.

So now I’ve got three main fish and then a ton of anonymous babies. I cleaned their tank on Monday, which always stresses them out, and Shikoku doesn’t seem to have gotten over the shock. She won’t eat. Although I did switch fish foods . . . so now I’m thinking:

Do I have a picky fish?

Ugh. Seriously. Who knew. The problem comes from the fact that they don’t breath air. A cat is easier than all I’ve gone through. Probably more expensive, and not allowed in most apartments, and the new bf is allergic to them. But oy. What an ordeal. Don’t do it. Don’t get fish.