Guppies

The boys have been asking to get some pet fish for a few weeks now, and we’ve been promising to let them. We eventually checked out tanks and fish, and this past weekend, we got the equipment and fish. We’re starting out with a very small set up, to see how it all works out.

The tank is just 2 gallons, and it sits nicely on the shelf between the den and kitchen. It has an air pump and filter, white rocks on the bottom, and a treasure chest (picked out by Calfgrit7) with gold spilling out. If the boys continue to show interest, and the fish survive, we’ll get something bigger.

A few years ago, when our oldest was only 3 years old, before we even had the youngest, we had a similar set up with two goldfish. Calfgrit-then-3 named the fish Spot and Oranger. We went through two Spots and three Orangers within a few months. The poor things kept dying.

Having researched fish a little better, I now think the fish were just too big for the small tank (or the tank was too small for the fish). This time we got two guppies — much smaller than the goldfish. Both boys picked out a “Fancy Guppy” — Calfgrit7 picked out one with an orange tail fin with black spots, and Calfgrit3 picked out one with a yellow tail fin with black spots. They’re named “Max” and “Calfgrit3 Fish” [no apostrophe s] respectively.

Young kids can pick some interesting names, or lame names, depending on your perspective. I’ll tell you about their stuffed animals’ names in another post.

There was a tiny, tiny little baby guppy with them, unknowingly scooped up with them, but I think I lost him when I poured out some of the water down a sink to put the fish in their new tank. I didn’t realize anyone would miss the near-microscopic baby, but I learned after the incident that Cowgrit and the Calfgrits had been talking about watching the tyke grow up. I explained that it probably would have been eaten anyway, or otherwise just not survived, but that didn’t make anyone happy. Fortunately, I think the baby has been forgotten by now.

So far, the FAGs have survived two days in their new home. I presume the “FAG” written on the bag stands for “Fancy Guppies.” The pet store worker wrote it on the bag for me to take to the check out. (I originally titled this post “A Couple of FAGs” because I thought it funny, but I changed the title after thinking that some folks might not appreciate the humor.)

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com