We had an incident at out house, an incident I am calling "The Great Fish Debacle of 2011". (I am calling it that so it will not be confused with incidents resulting from fish occuring in other years, both past and future.)
We have what is known in the biz as an "Easy Hatch Aquarium". That is somewhat of a misnomer, because from my experience, nothing about this aquarium is easy.
I bought it actually for Christmas, but then realized that it cost a bunch of extra money for them to mail me the fish eggs in cold weather. It was a tight Christmas to begin with, and I really didn't have $25 extra bucks for fish eggs. So, the aquarium sat on the shelf in the laundry room until just a few weeks ago.
Being the amazing homeschooling mother that I am (*snort*), I figured it would make an interesting little science project. So, I ordered the fish eggs (now in the warm weather, they only cost $8) and anxiously awaited their arrival.
When they came, they came with a half-page of instructions, typed single spaced in super tiny font.
Here is what I did not realize, but should have: the fish have to be fed.
What do you feed hatchling fish? you may ask. Why, they eat brine shrimp, of course. Brine shrimp that I have to grow from scratch, in a little tiny bowl that was (convieniently) included with the aquarium kit. And, I have to suck said brine shrimp out of the bowl with an eye dropper (also conviniently included) and feed them to the teeny-tiny fishies. Each fish requires 2-4 brine shrimp. Have you ever seen brine shrimp? They are like microscopic wiggling dots. Also, brine shrimp do not live long, so I (actually Mike) have to whip up a new batch every other day or so.
So far, not so easy.
We ended up with 4 tiny little fish. An average turn out, according to the literature. They amazingly stayed alive UNTIL...
...an inquisitve child (who shall remain nameless) was "looking" at it, and spilled it all over the carpet and piano.
"You need to put more water in the aquarium", I am informed.
Um, what? Why?
"Because I spilled it".
There was a tiny bit of dirt/fish egg goo/fish poo(?) on the bottom with a little bit of water left. Ewww, and my carpet is all wet, and I can imagine the tiny fish gasping for air as they are getting ground into my carpet.
Well, after the dirt (or whatever was on the bottom) settled, I saw signs of life!!
As of this writing, we have two, possibly three fish babies still alive. Who knows, they may die of PTSD later, but you never know.
I gave them some extra brine shrimp as a reward for living through their experience.
I love you Juli! You should write a book about life and parenthood (seriously, you should!). Your writing is so real and conversational. I'm pretty sure you could sell a million copies!
Posted by: Adriane | 27 August 2011 at 18:01