Hayden Aquarium 2012

Last Friday, while sitting at breakfast, I noticed that Flo looked a little too float-y.  She was still alive, you could see her breathing through her gills and every once in a while she would try to wiggle her way around the tank.  Our other fish, Rita...which is actually a boy, but we didn't find out until months after we had already named him/her.  So, just like the mother bird, named Kevin in the movie Up, we just stuck with the name!   ...anyway....Rita was swimming along just fine, so we took Flo out of the aquarium and put her into the bowl we use during tank cleaning time. 

The next day Flo was still hanging in there, albeit upside down, but still alive-ish.  Sophie and I were having a hard time being serious about Flo's condition, but tried to keep it together in front of the other kids. "Maybe we should've named it Bob after all"  ....bahaha!   ...okay, sorry, back to serious.  

 Flo lingered until Sunday evening before she flo-ted her last.  Since we had a bit of chaos with Ethan's sneezing escapade that night also we didn't actually deal with her dead-ness until Monday.  Monday, however, she went on a long ride down the porcelain express.  No fanfare or ceremony, just flushing.


After we flushed Flo, Rita seemed lonely.  She wasn't sulking or anything, but she looked pretty lonely in that tank all by herself.  So, Tuesday evening, Sophie, Emily and I went on an errand to our neighborhood Meijer store to find some new friends for Rita.  After looking at all of the fine fish specimens that they had to offer, we found ourselves picking three new friends from the 19 cent tank.  After all, 3 years ago we picked out Rita from the same tank.   Technically, the 19 cent-ers are supposed to be feeder fish, I think or just your basic cheap goldfish.  Just our fortune that there are some sloppy Meijer employees that put some of the wrong types of fish into that tank.  Fast forward to Tuesday when lo and behold, as we examined the 19 cent tank fish...there was a little fella just darting in and out among the cheap-o's.  So, when they asked which one I wanted...and I pointed to "Turbo".  It was pretty funny to watch  poor Mr. Meijer employee who was stuck with tank duty try to chase him around and catch him, but after several minutes, his net prevailed. 

Obviously, we named him "Turbo" because of how fast he darts around. Emily chose the name "Abraham" for the orange one for whatever reason, and Sophie came up with the name "Chuck" for the white and orange fish. 
Now Rita has some new friends to get to know.  I don't know how things work for fish, but it seems like they like each other enough...or rather the new fish are large enough that Rita can't eat them.  Whatever the reason, all of us are happy about the new fish recruits. 


This may have been a little more than you really ever wanted to know about our fish tank capers, but that's just what floats our boat!