The Newest Addition to Our Home

Our newest adventure within the last few days has been to acquire, set up and care for... an aquarium! Ok it's really more of just a fish tank than an aquarium. Aquarium kinda carries a not of glamor and it's not real glamorous. It's not really that big of a deal, I mean it's not like we got a dog we actually have to potty-train and play with and take for walks, but we're low-maintenance kind of people and this is our kind of pet. =] Not only that, they don't shed and poop all over the place. That means I don't have to clean it up. Yay!


We had actually been thinking about getting fish since last summer, but we knew we were going to be gone for several weeks and decided that it probably wasn't the best time to try and keep pets alive. So, we decided that maybe after we got back we'd look into it again. Well, we didn't. AJ had brought it up and that got me thinking that maybe I could do that for his birthday next month. When he brought it up I told him my thoughts for a birthday present. We decided to look around and see what we could find. (I got my birthday present last year a month early, so it's fair game to call it a birthday present.) Since I'll be in my third trimester of pregnancy this summer we won't be going very far from home, so we decided that maybe we'd check it out. We got to looking around and found a tank, stand, and a few other accessories for $20. We thought this was quite the steal after we did some research and found out how much a new aquarium costs!


Well, we bought the tank and then went to the Dollar Tree to find little ornaments for the fishies to play with. We got two buildings and a hammerhead shark figurine. It was fun trying to come up with ideas and ways to make things work. AJ commented more than once on what dorks we are. And it's true, but at least we can be dorks together.


We got everything home and AJ started tinkering with it all. He figured it out... but also figured out there were a few "accessories" that weren't in great shape. One of the outlets was plugged on the air filter, the diffuser bulbs were gross and didn't work real well, some of the tubing was faulty, things like that. He figured out what we needed and we headed off to our local Petco. We decided that maybe Wal-Mart would be cheaper... it was. We got the replacement accessories we needed there, as well as some fish food and plants. The fish, however, were cheaper and Petco... so back we went. We got 18 little feeder goldfish (figured we better start with something cheap, in case we killed them all) and went back home.

AJ spent hours cleaning gravel, washing up the tank, getting all the filters and tubes and hoses connected like they should be, and setting up the tank the way he wanted it. We ended up making a quick run back to Wal-Mart at 11:00pm so we weren't breaking the Sabbath and got a few things AJ found we still needed.


By the time 1:00am rolled around we finally had a fishtank full of water! And there were even fish in it! We fed them, watched them eat and then decided to call it a night and went to bed. We got up the next morning and all 18 fish were still alive. Yay! We have only had 2 casualties thus far, but it's about what we expected (if not better than expected) with feeder fish. We even named a few of them... the ones that looked different enough we can tell them apart from all the other fish. And, happily, none of our named fishies have died.

It's been a lot of fun watching our little fishies swimming in ther new home. And when they do die, its ok. We just flush them down the toilet. And as a wise fish once said, "all drains lead to the ocean." (-Finding Nemo) Every fish's dream right? Whether dead or alive.