A fishy tale

My kids have been dying for a pet for a long time, and with the diagnosis of Alex being allergic to cats and dogs we were only left with one option, fish.  I told them that once we got moved and settled in that we would go ahead and get them some fish.

So, after putting it off for as long as possible, I finally caved and took them to get fish.  Of course, several days before hand we set up the tank and made sure that we took a sample of the water with us for testing before buying any fish.  The water came back perfect so we went ahead and picked our fishy friends.  The kids decided on Glow Tetras.  We ended up with eight of them altogether; 2 purple (for Haley), 2 orange (for Cory), 2 green (for Alex) and 2 pink (for Emily).

The fish were doing great in their new home, but about two weeks after their arrival, one of the green ones went MIA.  I mean, we looked everywhere in that tank and could not find a dead fish or any remains anywhere.  Alex was super upset.  I told him that after Christmas we would look into getting him another one, but that I wanted to wait and make sure that the others continued to do well first.

Fast forward a couple more weeks and woke up to two more dead fish.  That same afternoon two more died.  So now we're down to 1 purple, 1 orange and a pink.  Well, we took a sample of the water in and found out that the ammonia was too high.  Most likely caused by my kids overfeeding the fish.  :-(  The last remaining pink fish was having a super hard time swimming in the tank before we left and actually went stiff at one point, so I grabbed the net to fish him out, prepared to flush him because I thought he was dead, but as the net reached the top of the tank he began moving again.  I left him in the net at the top of the tank, just below the surface of the water since that seemed to be helping him.  I feared that by the time we got back, he would be dead as well.  But, to our amazement, he was still fighting.  We had purchased some special ammonia neutralizer that changes the ammonia from a harmful state to a non harmful state.  So we added it to the tank and crossed our fingers that it would help.  We left the pink fish in the net overnight praying that he would be better in the morning.  The purple and orange fish were still hanging tough, but the orange one had started to swim on his side once we had returned from the pet store.

By the next morning, the purple and orange fish were doing much better.  The pink one was still hanging tough, but you could see that he was definitely still struggling to stay alive.  I would let him out of the net for a bit to see how he was doing, but he was really struggling so I placed him back in the net at the top of the tank.  He stayed up there for another 24 hours.

The next morning, he was doing much better, so we let him out of the net.  That's when we saw it, half of his tail fin was missing!  He was swimming much better than he had been in the days prior, but you could tell that he was still having a hard time.  We kept an eye on him though and he kept on fighting.  A few hours later my kids came downstairs and told me that they were checking on him and noticed that the other half of his tail fin was missing.  But somehow, he was still swimming.

This little fish has inspired us.  Even though he was on the brink of death and even though he is completely missing his tail fin, he is still fighting, still living.  Watching him in the tank we also noticed that the purple fish was assisting him with getting to the top of the tank to get food. 

We decided it was time to name the remaining fish.  So, the kids named the purple one "Spaz" because when you turn the tank light on he spazzes out.  The orange one is the smallest of the three, so they named him "Pip" (short for Pip Squeak).  The pink one has been named "Winter" after the dolphin from the movie.  Cory even asked if they could make him a prosthetic like the one in the movie, but for our fish.  I told him that would be awesome, but that would be a really small prosthetic.

Today, we added one new green fish (for Alex) and he named him "Fin".  We also added a Plecostomus that the kids named "Sucker". 

 This is "Fin"

 This is "Spaz"

This is "Winter"

 This is "Pip"

 This is "Sucker"

 

We are so inspired by the determination of Winter.  He really is showing us how overcome the most impossible of situations.  It's like Dory says, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming."  Well Winter, just keep swimming little buddy!  -- I've been reading up on fish a lot lately and I'm inspired by the knowledge that our little Winter should have no issues re-growing his tail fin.  :-)