Mokie, the Douchebagus maximus, that is my younger brother, begged me to take a fish tank off his hands. I believe my response was, “Eff no.” But ACWF said, “Yay fish!” so we got a fish tank. Whoopadee doo. The fishtank had somehow migrated from being my brother’s responsibility to being my dad’s responisbiility (the fishtank was at my parents house) and my dad just wanted to be rid of them so he called me up and said, “When are you coming to get these fish?”
ACWF thought she could put the fish in her classroom, so we went up there to get the fish. We had 6 fish when we left, and we had 5 fish when we got them home. Too bad, so sad. A fish got flushed.
A few weeks later two more fish had bit the dust, so we were down to 3. I actually found one of the fish half decoming in the fake plant thing in the tank. It was like Jaws in minature.
So after a while the inside of the tank started to get a bit green, then very green, then green with brown in it, then green and brown, then brown and spongy, then green again, then it started to go black. So finally, being the resonsible party that wanted the fish in the first place, ACWF said, “ACW, you need to clean that tank out.”
I believe responded politely by saying, “I think you should clean the tank since you wanted the fish,” either that or, “Fuck that. You clean the fuckin’ tank.” Regardless, it was I who cleaned the tank, and it was a ginormous pain in the ass. It took 3 hours to get the algae off of everything, including each and every one of the tiny little stones at the bottom of the tank. To ensure the future cleanliness of the tank I gave it a quick wash in a part water part bleach solution, and then rinsed it thoroughly and put the fish back in.
The 3 fish lived happily for a long time, and we changed the filters regularly until we ran out of filters. Then the tank went through its Hulk phases again until ACWF finally agreed that it was her turn to clean the fish tank. Or her turn to ask me to clean the fish tank again. Whichever.*
I figured I would shorten the whole process this time by scrubbing the tank, and then soaking the whole thing in bleach for a while. It did wonders last time. So the tank and its components soaked in bleach and water for about a day, and in the meantime I got new filters. The next day I rinsed out the tank and put everything back together and then put the fish back in.
The fish seemed happy to be back in a clean tank so I gave them some food and left them alone. I came back a little while later to see how they were doing and they were… weird. They were doing this thing where they would swin for a while, then float for a while, then go back to swimming. They would float vertically, horizontally, on their backs and on their bellies. I figured that I had put them back in the water when it was too cold, or too warm, and they were just getting used to it.
I came back to see them a few more minutes later and they were both stuck to the side of the filter pump. Stupid bastard fish didn’t even have the decency to die before I went to all the trouble of cleaning out the tank. Thanks a ton stupid fish. See you in Hell.
Anyway, the point of this post is threefold.
1) Mokie is a douchebag for foisting the fish on my dad, and the refusing to take the fish back from him, therefore foisting the fish on me by proxy.
2) ACWF is as responsible in the death of these fish as I am, if not moreso.
3) You can own a beautiful, slightly used fishtank at the low, low price of 15$! And that’s pretty much just to cover the cost of the new filters I bought. If you want a fishtank, or would like to get one as a gift for a friend this Christmas or Hannukkah season, you could do a lot worse. It holds about 3 or 4 gallons of water, or maybe 5, I don’t know. Plus it comes with the pump, filters, food, light, and just about everything else you need to make a fishtank a fishtank. You just need to supply the fish. Plus, despite all my complaining about it, it’s a really great tank if you actually change the filters from time to time. We only changed them twice since July. I’ll deliver it to you for free if you live in the Baltimore area. If I don’t hear anything soon, I’m going to put it up on Craigslist or ebay.
*She was the one who wanted the damn fish. That’s all I’m saying. Ask her in comments how many times she changed the filters. Ask her how many times she fed the little bastards. If she says a number larger than you can count on one hand, she’s lying.
