Fish Funeral

He doesn't look too good, does he? While nursing Alder in the middle of the night, I caught a glimpse of this flailing, silver flash of light in our fish tank. By morning, he was gone. It is a sad day in our home. You see, we've had fish for a long time. We've had THIS fish for a long time. He lived in our 72 gallon tank with lots of his buddies, who unfortunately have been biting the dust one-by-one over the last month or so. But this was the first BIG fish to go. And I do mean BIG.

That is him measuring a cool 10 inches and weighing 9 ounces. That doesn't sound very big, but I promise you, put it in a fish tank in your home, and that is HUGE! This was a tinfoil barb, and we do have one more in the tank still who is a tiny bit smaller. Unfortunately he is showing the same disease this one succumbed to, and though I've dosed the tank with an anti-bacterial, I don't have much hope for him. It looks ugly. With the two largest fish in our tank gone, we are now contemplating moving the remaining fish to a smaller tank and placing it in a more central location in our home. Right now, the 72 gallon tank is in a corner, behind an exercise machine, behind baby gates. 72 gallon tanks don't get moved much (ever), so it is just sitting where we put it when I moved in the house 4 years ago. It would be nice to have the fish out where they could be seen and enjoyed more.

So I'll be watching the tank to see when the other tinfoil barb bites the dust. And for those sports fans wondering, fish of this size don't fit down the toilet.