Monday, January 12, 2009

Five Gallons of Fun?

It has been a tragic week here at the Cheeze household.  Santa gave BoyBoy a fish tank for Christmas with a gift card to the local pet store to pick out his fish.  He was so excited to set up his tank and then waited patiently for the recommended 24 hours to go get the fish.  We went to the store and he was careful not to overspend.  He picked out 4 guppies, two blue and two orange (shocker!), a small African Dwarf frog, and a snail.  We brought them home, along with some foliage and a Roman ruin tank statue and set them free in their new environment.  Names were considered - Speedy for the snail because he covered some serious ground that first day, Bounce the frog, Cavalier for one of the blue guppies, Gator for the other, Wahoo for one of the orange fish and the last one remained No Name until we could find a suitable name.  BoyBoy was careful to feed them regularly (maybe too regularly according to the fish guy at the store) and, in all his computer expertise, decided to start a blog about his aquarium.  Five Gallons of Fun was born and he was all set to document the lives of his new pets.  Then, tragedy struck...

No Name started listing on his side and quickly went to the big fish pond in the sky.  He was followed quickly by Gator.  I ran an emergency trip to the pet store where it was determined that they had died of ick and we needed to treat the tank immediately to save the rest of the fish.  Antibiotics were started and fingers were crossed.  Wahoo and Cavalier seemed to rally and we thought we had diverted a disaster.  We were wrong.  Cavalier lost his will to live the next day and Wahoo hung in there for one more after that.  

A moment of silence for our beloved fish...

So, it is with much hope and a lot of prayer that we have started over.  We restarted the tank with only Bounce and Speedy and we will wait a week and have the tank tested before we introduce any fish.  I don't know if BoyBoy will continue his blog.  He was devastated to say the least and is hesitant about getting his hopes up.  Bubba and I kept telling him that it was okay to say "This SUCKS!"  We don't normally encourage this type of language however, we felt that this situation warranted it.  Four fish dying in three days...SUCKS!  BoyBoy kept saying, "No, its ok, I don't need to say that."  And then, on day three, when he woke up to Wahoo floating on his side, he yelled at the top of his lungs, "FISH SUCK!!!!"  

Wish us luck...

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I am so sorry for your loss...where should i send my flower arrangement? will we all be gathering for food? are you serving fish?
;-)
Hope the next go round is better...crosses my fingers!

Ali said...

Oh no! We've been wanting a fish tank for years but I keep putting it off. First I need a good sturdy table to put in on in the dining room, but I need for it to match the dining table, but I really want a new dining table first,...

Lynda said...

Aww...that's really sad. Hope the next batch "take."

Swirl Girl said...

followed you here from Short Pump Preppy because you and I had the same (naughty) response to the Match Game challenge....

great minds think alike!

I am sorry for your fish - we had a gold fish that lived for a year...I cried when he died , not my kids. I am a sap that way.

Debz said...

Awww, poor BoyBoy. Fish truly are hard to tend to. It's kinda crazy. You would think something so small would be SO MUCH easier.

jill jill bo bill said...

That is terrible! And "ick" is a real diagnosis? Fish do suck. And stink if you forget to clean their bowl...