This year, the Greater Seattle Aquarium Society’s annual writing contest focused on our early personal experiences in the hobby. That was the extent of the rules... No length or other subject requirement. We received nine entries, which were judged by the esteemed Lee Finley during his visit and lecture in June. The winner received a year subscription to Tropical Fish Hobbyist magazine. This has been the most entertaining writing contest yet, between the participation level, and the variety of experiences shared. Anyway, without further ado, the entries...
Things were pretty good growing up. Living on a dairy I had a vast expanse of animals to discover and play with. Mom was really good with them all. She let me cart tadpoles back from a lake and didn’t complain when they turned in frogs, escaping to our front ivy and croaking by our bedroom windows for the next fifteen years. She helped dig the pond for all the crawfish I brought back, and made homes for the turtles, both water and land that lived in our bathroom and outside. Horned toads, doves, pigeons, ducks, pigs, lambs, chickens all lived in one corner of our house at one time. Now, when I found a local garter snake in our garden, she drew a line there.
I am not sure why we couldn’t have fish tanks. We had so many other things, I have some vague childhood memory of my sisters trying before me; perhaps that had changed things. When I was little I remember my sisters having a tank, hearing of fish dying and water turning green. (They were 5 and 10 years older than me, so often they set precedents I can’t quite remember.) The tank would then end up is some corner covered with dust, or be turned into a nursery for baby chicks. Now, I loved fish. I would spend the day pretending I was a fish, staying in the pool all day. My family would have to drag me away from the beach or lakes. Any fish store I saw I had to go into. On my limited budget, I would ogle all the fish, dream of those gorgeous salt water tanks, wonder what all the other colored fish were, and barely count my pennies to see if I could afford guppies and feeder goldfish. The answer was always "No Tank" and I would leave the store with nothing. I even tried bringing some local sea anemones back and wanted to keep them, that was a definite no. It was explained to me they needed very specific conditions and I couldn’t just add table salt to the water. Then I was terrified they would die and had to call all the local fish stores I could find to see if they would take them and explaining my folly. I remember it was the third store that said yes, and they explained that usually they don’t take wild things because they worry about disease, but that I could bring these in. I was so relieved to find a home for them. I never brought home creature from the sea after that.
We had a mountain cabin on a lake, I was always fishing up there from the time I could walk. I would be out at sunrise, and they would come pull me off the lake at sunset. Besides catching trout and catfish, I pulled out frogs, tadpole, blue- gill, anything aquatic I could get my hands on. I would lay on a paddle board watching the lakeweed with fish below for hours. I had brought frogs home on the 3 hour trip but never fishyet.
It all changed with this School Teacher. She had tons of tanks including guppies. One day she asked if we wanted fish, she would send us home with some. Well I came home with a pair of fish and Anacharis. I didn’t need a heater, just had to do water changes, and leave the plant in. At that point mom didn’t say no. We pulled out the old tank, washed it and set it up in my bedroom window. I would watch them play in the greenery. They were so cute.
One day, the male died. That was okay because I had the female, who looked quite pregnant with a huge belly. Then, I found her lying on the surface as well, still alive with a tail hanging out of her belly. She wasn’t swimming. I had seen animals die giving birth and thought my fish was going to as well. Tried pulling the little tail to no avail. Devastated, I decided I couldn’t watch my fish die and took it out to the horse water trough and dumped it in. I figured it would die, but at least I wouldn’t have to see it! I thought certainly the water was too cold, and it wouldn’t be long before she was gone. A month later I was catching horses to ride and decided to clean the algae off the tank surface. After the first scoop I realized the tank was full of guppies!!! She had survived, and now I had a school of fish! Well if they could survive there I thought others could as well.
Soon from our mountain lake I was dragging home buckets of bluegill, and catfish. I would fill up our 200 gallon cow water troughs with fish. I had about 10 big cow troughs, and about 5 80 gallon troughs. I would vary what I put into each. Some would be catfish only, others bluegill and catfish. Then I would go to the local fish store and get feeder goldfish and add them too. It was incredible one day seeing in my catfish tank, a mother leading around 50 baby catfish.
Some tanks did better than others with spawns. In other troughs the fish would grow old and die. In some tanks, the ones with wood slats on one end, the fish would just disappear. There would be a few that would survive but no bodies. I thought the cows were drinking them, but no it was the Black Crows! One day Dad saw the Black Crows fishing. They would line themselves up on the board and wait, when someone swam under, bam, they got him! I just kept add- ing fish and let natural selection take place. After awhile I had a small colony in that tank that made it.
There were many summer days spent, counting fish, cleaning algae, and walking the 80 acres of cow corrals to see how were my tanks doing. I must have been 8 or 10 years old when it all started. I miss those long lazy days in the sun and water. Soon I hit high school, played sports and went to college. It was almost 15 years later when I finally returned to those fishy ways....a love found in childhood returned.
It’s like looking into a different land as I gaze into my new aquarium.
My aunt and uncle came to visit us here on our Texas farm. They came from the city with a fish tank and all the stuff that makes it work, including fish. There were six fish in all, including a pair of Kribs and four Rummy Nose Tetras, who are all friends, the always swim together which I’m told is called schooling.
The tank is the greatest night light. When my friends come to stay the night, we talk about how cool it is to watch the fish. Mom and Dad even stay longer when they come to say goodnight; Dad says it makes him feel peaceful watching the fish swim. The hum of the motor lulls me to sleep.
Henry, my big black and white cat, likes the fish. Henry’s got one eye that crosses and he’s kind of slow, never gets to catch birds and grasshoppers like the other cats, so having the fish that don’t fly away is a treat for him. Except for oncewe heard something break, Henry came tearing down the stairs soaking wet! I ran to check my fish; broken glass from the top lid lay on the gravel and cat hairs were floating everywhere. It was lucky he didn’t eat my fish. It took Henry about six months after that before he had enough courage to venture near the tank again. He sits next to it now and bats the side with his paw pretending he’s hunting.
Cleaning is fun. I suck the tube so the water flows out into the bucket. Water sometimes gets into my mouthI fount out why we have to drain the water outuke! Vacuuming the gravel with the tube sure gets the crud out!
I didn’t realize how important it was to clean the tank regularly. I came home from school one day to find my Rummy Nose Tetras deadI sure cried. I was like losing my friends and it was bad to think it was because I had forgotten to clean the water.
A couple weeks later, I had enough allowance to buy five Guppies. I was excited to get them home but when I put them in, the Kribs refused to come out of hiding. They didn’t like the new guys, and mom said she never realized fish could be prejudiced. The Guppies were like rowdy kids swimming on top. I never could see them because they swam next to the top metal edge. It was summer and warm enough in the cow water troughs for them, so they got a bigger place to swim. A week later they were missing, Dad said the cows probably sucked them upnot a great thought.
I saved my money hoping I could replace the Rummy Nose Tetras.
Mom came home from one of her trips to Fort Worth with five Silver Tip Tetras. The Kribs liked them, but the Silver Tips fought among themselves and were always chasing one of their group off. It was like watching arguments in my tank all the same time, so we passed them on to the Doctor’s office tank.
We tried black Mollies.
As we cleaned the tank we took the end of the filter off to scrub. When mom dumped the bucket of water in the toilet, she forgot about it being in there, and it went down too. A couple days later a Molly was missing, and then another... We searched the tank for them, and found they’d been sucked into the filter tube. We buried them in the garden. My little sister, who said they were hers, cried. Since the Kribs weren’t too fond of the remaining two Mollies, we gave them to the Doctors office too. Mom said each tank is different; mine is peaceful with its brown rocks and huge Java Fern and castle. The Doctor’s tank has blue rocks and all different kinds of fish and small plantsmom calls it a crazy tank.
I named my Kribs Lucky and Luckier because they had survived.
We can’t find Rummy Nose Tetras around here to buy, so the closest thing we found were Lamp Eye Tetras, and they are just about as neat. They school and get along, and the Kribs tolerate them.
It’s been almost a year now that I’ve had my tank, and wonder of wonders as I looked in at Lucky and Luckier there were hundreds of little babies swimming all around them! All my family came up to see. I called my aunt and uncle and they told me that my Kribs had spawned. It seemed like a miracle, but as the days went by the numbers dwindled. My aunt had warned me that not all the babies make it. They guarded their children fiercely from the other fish, but the survivors dropped to six. I prayed some would make it; it seemed like a dangerous world for them in my tank. Two have survived!
In one of the issues of Northwest Aquaria a comic showed a bored store owner reacting to a customer whose fish died I was almost speechless and said to mom "Do they think that’s funny that my fish died?" She told me no, it’s just some- thing that happens to everyone who keeps fish. It’s just a part of having them. It made me feel kind of good to think of it that way, I wasn’t the only one. I am proud to report no further losses!
[Author’s note: I have told this story as I saw it through my son’s eyes. Greg is eight and this first year of owning fish has taught him some valuable lessons, responsibility, consequences and rewards. His aquarium has been a joy for the whole family and opened a world of the aquatic appreciation for us all.]
Sometimes I yearn for the hustle and bustle of yesteryear, packed into a windowed box with dozens of my brethren, barely space for us to move, let alone have the chance of being alone with that pretty young thing. Waiting for the inev- itable feedings of flakes and bloodworms dropped in from time to time, cold, cold, cooooollllld! Pausing between trips from one side to the other to glance at the oversized heads on the outside and to puzzle over the strange markings:
I remember how the great green monster chased us; I escaped several times, but it eventually captured me. Couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t move! Spit me into some dirty water with nowhere to hide, except behind my equally-frightened companion. Or we could fight. More loud noises from all sides. Finally, it stopped and we were in another window box all by ourselves.
I think someone wanted to cheer us up, because they got us a pair of humans for us to watch. Most of the time, they hide behind the door at the other side of the room, but we can sometimes coax them out and get them to come near the glass by doing a little dance. It’s really fun to see the expression on "cutie pie’s" face. When we really want to see them color up, we’ll lay some eggs just out of reach of their vision. "Schlumpy" will crane his neck trying to find them. Then we’ll eat the eggs and watch their reactions.
The sad thing is, it’s been months and they’ve yet to spawn. We’ve tried every trick we know... I had heard that stressing their environment is good, so we refused food for a few days, even pretended to be sick. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure we have a pair. It’s hard to tell with the species, though my mate insists they are. I’m wondering if maybe we should flush one of them down the garbage disposal, or trade him in for a replacement at the store.
Oh well, we’re fine anyway, and we like our new humans. Even if they don’t spawn, their fun to watch. I highly rec- ommend the species.
It all started when I was working for a Pet Store. At first the fish department overwhelmed me, so I spent a lot of time with the birds and small pocket pets. I quickly realized I should get to know at least the basics. So I got my first tank, a 10-gallon with a heater, bright green gravel, plastic plants, and an AquaClear 200. I learned almost right away that I couldn’t have neon tetras or asian dwarf frogs because they got sucked up in the filter. So I switched to platties, mollies and gouramies. Eventually, I got bored and switched to African cichlids. I enjoyed their colors and personalities, all except for one fish. That fish was my red zebra ("Devil"). He beat up all my favorites and killed one also. So I flushed him. I kind of feel bad, but heck! Anyway, after I finished college, moved out, got married, and had a baby, I got back into the hobby with the encouragement of my husband. Don’t worry, no more flushing!
My first aquarium experience started as far back as I can remember. My dad had a 20 gallon show tank. It was a steel- framed thing, real tall, wide, and only about eight inches deep. He kept it up pretty well, with plastic plants, a gro-lux lamp, and an underwater floss filter. I remember he used to change the floss, and warn me not to touch it because it was fiberglass! He had aenus cats, black mollies, and neon tetras. Our cat used to watch the catfish swim back and forth and would ignore the other fish. I don’t know why.
The mollies bred, and I watched, fascinated, as the female got plumper and plumper. I came home from school, and couldn’t wait until Dad got home: the mollie was squirting out little babies! Of course, they were all gone by the time he got home (eaten). I was traumatized.
The tank was changed to an underground filter system, and the cleaning of the gravel became the thing that sticks out in my mind. My dad used a "vacuum gravel cleaner". This was a lift tube (for sticking into the gravel bed), a bulb that provided suction, a loop of one inch tubing, and a tie-on cotton bag. The bulb was squeezed, the water (and mulm) was sucked up the lift tube, pumped through the tubing, the gunk was filtered in the bag, and the water was allowed to drip right back into the tank! No muss, no fuss, no problem with nitrates (ignorance was bliss).
I don’t remember what happened to this tank. I think it just got ignored until it went away.
When I was about ten, I kept pond water and various denizens in jars and plastic boxes. Solar heating and cooking of a tub of tadpoles I left on the windowsill convinced me to abandon that style of aquaria (I can still remember that stench!).
When I had a steady income from paper routes at age twelve, I bought a ten gallon aquarium. I already knew that I wanted as natural an aquascaping as I was capable of achieving with my limited experience. So I scorned plastic plants and went for live; river gravel instead of bright colored plastic; understated air-powered ornaments like the treasure chest that opened in a burst of bubbles to reveal the cache of shiny baubles (hey, I was only twelve!). The cheerful bubbling of the undergravel filters, the humming drone of the air pump, and the occasional burp of the treasure chest filled my nights with a nice serenade that sent me to aquatic slumber.
I peopled this tank with aenus cats, neon tetras, hatchet fish, white cloud mountain minnows, and other miscellaneous fish, generally by the dozen. Since I couldn’t drive, my friends and I would walk to the local fish store that had the best price, even if it was a couple miles away. A twenty minute walk with a dozen neons in the fall meant a bag of stunned fish by the time I got home. No matter, pop the bag in the tank, let the soothing warm water revive them. I only lost a couple that time. As natural selection favored the hardier beasts, I would replace their dead bretheren with other exotic critters like half-beaks and frogs. With the bio-load, I had a virtual Mexico City in that tank.
The plants ranged from duckweed to Hygrophila to water sprite to Valisneria, All of which grew for about two weeks, and then would join the legacy of death this tank seemed to have. A lot of trees were cut to make the papers that were sold to give me the money to buy the plants that went into that death trap. The grim reaper had nothing on me. I wonder if there was a subconscious urge to repay that cannabilistic mollie?
By the time I was in high school, I specialized in tetras, my friend specialized in livebearers, and my other friend spe- cialized in pirhana. We all had better tanks than the other. It was kind of a competition.
By the time I reached my twenties, I had a 29 gal tank, was reasonably succesful at keeping fish alive (when I was motivated to clean and feed regularly), and could keep certain plants alive indefinitely. I still have a giant hygro (nomaphila stricta) that is a cutting from a plant that I originally bought fourteen years ago. I suspect that if I stretched out all the cuttings from end to end, it would reach some point between the earth and the moon. Probably closer to the earth, though.
Now after all this long and great experience I have had with aquariums, I can safely say I have learned ten times as much in the last eighteen months from the Internet and magazines than all the time before. The crucial test will be when I get to fill my new, 75 gal system that I now have. It will be a high-tech, heavily planted community tank. If I have successfully learned my lesson, then I will be able to trade in my scythe and hooded robe for pruning snips and fertilizer.
As a curious four year old I discovered the fish department at the local F.W. Woolworth store. Gazing up at what seemed like a huge tank with exquisite jewels swimming around, I was transfixed. My life’s avocation was decided at that moment.
Over the next few years we had a few unfortunate gold fish, kept in one gallon drum bowls. Surely they were overfed, and water changes were a rare occasion. Most importantly, they were mom’s fish. I longed for the day when a proper aquarium would grace my room.
Just as my eighth grade year was starting, some new neighbors moved in down the street. They had four tanks and offered to let me borrow a two gallon tank with pump, box filter, heater and light. I was ecstatic! Visions of breeding neon tetras, angelfish, and guppies danced in my head. I found a copy of William T. Innes book, Exotic Tropical Fish, in the school library which just fueled the fire. For a week I stayed up late reading and studying the pictures. But when the loaner tank was brought home my parents were less than thrilled. What was the problem? Just as my dream was about to become reality they burst my bubble. My birthday was approaching and it didn’t occur to me that they were planning a big surprise. Clothes, books, and similar less than exciting gifts were expected but when I tore open the rather large heavy box, there it was, a gleaming stainless steel framed fifteen gallon tank with a complete setup. Wow! I couldn’t believe it. Immediately I got to work assembling everything . Bubbling over with excitement, I used the gar- den hose to fill the tank. Within a few minutes the brand new aquatic paradise began to leak. Can you imagine my disappointment? After such a long wait, to be taken to the brink and then total frustration. Bummed-out doesn’t even begin to express how I felt. Not having a clue how to remedy the situation, I siphoned out the water in a state of despair. My dad said that he knew a guy who used to keep fish and he would ask him about it. The next day he returned from work with a tube of black goop that was supposed to do the trick. I carefully spread the stuff along the inside seams and began the long wait for it to cure. The directions said to allow 48 hours, an eternity. School attendance for the next two days was in body only, as my mind was busy fantasizing about the hundreds of cool fish that could be kept in my new tank. Finally the time to refill the tank arrived. With much trepidation, vigilant for leaks, I slowly poured in the water. It held! Then it dawned on me that the stores were closed so I’d have to wait until the next day to get my fish.
As I waited at the door for the shop to open my mind was racing. Should it be a school of neons flashing their red and blue? How about guppies, I could make a fortune selling the babies. Bettas? But you can only keep one in a tank. Pirhanas? Too mean. Angels? Very tempting. Then I glanced toward a tank of swords, huge brick red beauties, yellow sabers edged in black. Females so plump you could see the eyes of babies through the translucent gravid spot. That was it, swordtails were to be my first fish.
When I was about 9 years old my dad had a friend, Mr. Gifford, that he worked with at Boeing and who lived at the end of a dead-end street a few blocks away from us. He was a fascinating man who built boats, raised homeing pigeons, collected antiques, had a collection of preserved marine organisms, and kept tropical fish. He also owned an actual shrunken head, a weird gravestone, and some other stuff that has nothing to do with this story. I don’t remember his first name because everyone always called him Oddy, presumably because he was a bit odd. Sometimes I would tag along when my dad went to visit Mr. Gifford. They would go to the basement and play pool. The pool table was made of plywood and sometimes I tired of the deafening roar of the balls rolling down the table as these two men demon- strated the fine arts of: a) hiding from their wives , b) mercilessly running the table on 9 year old boys, and c) Oregon pool (which also has nothing to do with this story).
During these times I would occasionally leave the house in a huff since I never beat my dad at pool until I was 16. I would sit at the edge of Mr. Gifford’s fish pond and watch the fish. I was fascinated by aquatic life and had practically memorized the book "An Aquarium Book for Boys and Girls" that I repeatedly checked out of the White Center Library. One spring day I reached into the pond and lifted out some of the plants. I saw something on the plants that I assumed were a type of snail egg. I took a sprig of the plant and put it in the cellophane wrapper of an empty cigarette pack that was nearby.
When we got home I took the plant sprig out of my pocket and put it in a dish of water in my room. Days later, to my surprise, tiny fish were swimming around in the dish. I was very excited by this and ran off to show my mom. She responsed to this amazing discovery by telling me that I had taken someone else’s property and that I was to immedi- ately return the plant sprig and the baby fish to Mr. Gifford with a sincere apology.
Instead of the tongue-lashing I had expected Mr. Gifford was quite excited and for asked my help in collecting more of the eggs. Within the month he had a half dozen tanks full of baby goldfish. He told me that if I ever got a fish tank I should stop by and he would give me some of his guppies so I could try my hand at raising tropical fish. A few months later I turned ten. My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday.
It was all downstream after that.
Little Bastard:
When I was growing up in the 1970’s, I got my first exposure to fish: my dad kept two 10 gallon tanks. At first, they were metal-framed and slate-bottomed, with corner floss-n-carbon filters, driven by noisy airpumps. One of the tanks sat on the bar between the kitchen and rec room, and was incredibly tall and thin; it looked like a 20-gallon tank with its back half sliced off. (I’ve tried, but have never been able to find something that ridiculous in a store today.) Both tanks used incandescent bulbs for lighting. Sometimes for parties, we’d put in multicolored green & red & blue bulbs. I think my dad would also dump in malachite green for decoration (when not using it for medication). There were the occasional live plants, usually anacharis, which always turned into algae-coated goo pretty quickly.
Every six months to a year, he’d buy some fish. Then they’d die & he’d lose interest in the following months. One tank would always have livebearers (a pair of mollies, a pair of platties, and a pair of red swordtails), and maybe some neons, and always a pl*co, which would always be the first to die. I don’t think it took kindly to the petrified driftwood in the tank. We had a livebearer breeding trap, and I think we once got mollies to drop young. I don’t think they survived.
The other tank, the ridiculously thin one, housed a motley progression of fish, once even including an oscar. The only reason I remember the oscar was that it was the one fish that survived for over a year entirely on the algae that grew in the tank after we stopped feeding it or turning the light on. It never grew any bigger than about 3", so I always thought that’s how big they always were.
The water change ritual was a classic one. We used a metal pan to take out a gallon at a time. We didn’t have a gravel vac, just a siphon with a narrow tube. Make-up water was stored in gallon jugs in the garage, and had to be "aged" for the chlorine to escape. We didn’t use de-chlorinators.
I think when I was in mid-teens, my sisters and I took on one or two of the bi-annual tank re-populations ourselves, since Dad had completely lost interest. The metal-framed tanks had long since been replaced by newfangled siliconed all glass "Metaframe" models. We replaced the box filter with an undergravel unit, bought a fluorescent retrofit kit for the lights and a new crew of mollies, platties and swordtails. Then we lost interest too, and the tanks once again turned into algae and mush.
The summer before my senior year in college (1988), my parents moved and I took one of my Dad’s tanks back to school with me on a whim, and set it up. I decided to keep mollies, platties and swordtails, and got some anacharis as a live plant. I even killed my first pl*co too. Bought $20 worth of medications to try and save $10 worth of fish from ich (they all died within days of the medications). I also learned that I actually had a 10-gallon tank, not a 20 as I had been dosing for. In fact, hmm, as soon as I stopped medicating the tank altogether, suddenly the fish started surviving! And breeding! I had dozens of baby platties cavorting around the tank, many of which I sold off to other people in the dorm (so they could kill them off instead of me).
Propelled by the success of my first tank, I went back to my parents and picked up the other 10-gallon, the silly-looking one. Into this one, I put, of course, an oscar. Okay, stop snickering, it gets better. At the store, I asked if it would be lonely in that little 10 gallon tank all by itself, and the storekeeper said "why yes, why don’t you buy a cute little African Cichlid to keep it company!" Those of you who have never kept either of these fish may wish to envision a tuna in a 10-gallon tank with a baby piranha. Suffice it to say, I learned quickly how to construct a plexiglas barrier, as well as purchase a replacement oscar ("The Big Dork"). In the meantime, "Little Bastard" (Pseudotropheus destructus var. "blue") spent a year confined to a 6"x6" column of water, which again if you’ve never kept these fish, you might imagine the equivalent of keeping a maturing male gorilla in a cage at a mall. I fed both fish frozen beef heart, which is of course, the perfect diet for the algae-grazing Malawian cichlid.
At the end of college, I sold both the African (now of breeding age) and the oscar back to the store. It amazes me, thinking back, that the store gave me credit at all. Back then, I expected they should, after all, they were going to sell it for $10, why couldn’t they give me $10 for them? The guy was remarkably patient, and gave me a couple cans of food. With the tanks in drydock, I managed to stay completely out of the hobby for an entire year until seeing a pretty 20-gallon acrylic tank in a thrift store... but that is a topic for another time.
Working at a fish store in the less-than-desirable neighborhood of Chinatown, I’ve had to deal with some real scary people, dregs of society and other various 9-1-1 call required cases. Just this evening I had a real nasty close encounter that’s had me in a sour mood for the last four hours or so. It’s times like this that I try to remember why it is that I do what I do--- I remember that I love fish, I love keeping fish and I want to help other people gain the same sort of joy I have found from the aquaria keeping hobby.
Almost one year ago, when I was just in training at the store, I sold my first fish to a woman I’ll call "Beth."
Beth is an alcoholic, and at least schizophrenic, if not more on top of that. She lives on the streets sometimes, or at a shelter, occasionally she’ll live in one of the residential hotels in the neighborhood. The afternoon that she came into the store, she was living in a hotel.
Beth came into the store that day, in order to buy a fish. She told me that she needed a new fish because "Charlie", who she claimed was her best buddy, had died. I was able ascertain from Beth’s ramblings that Charlie was a betta.
I felt very disturbed thinking that Beth, who probably wasn’t capable of caring for herself, would be wasting her money buying "friends" like Charlie, only to have them die through her inadvertent neglect.
This is one of the times that all people who sell fish have to face, the time where they have to decide whether it would be right or wrong to take a persons money and in exchange allow them to kill a fish.
Luckily for me while I was mulling over the morality of the situation, Beth continued rambling on about Charlie.
"Just how long have you had Charlie?" I asked her
"I got Charlie for my birthday two years ago but now he’s dead!" Beth wailed in distress. "He was my bestest buddy an I always knew he was my friend! I fed him every day and changed his water when it got dirty an took real good care of him and I don’t know why he’s dead now but I miss him so much I just gotta get a new fish! Please lady, can I have a new fish? I promise to take real good care of him just like I did with Charlie!"
I felt suddenly ashamed for judging this poor woman unable to care for her fish, and almost refusing to sell her a fish thinking that I would be doing her a favor. Beth was the sort of person who was able to receive tremendous joy from keeping her "little buddy". I’m sure that she felt great pride in keeping her fish so well, and I’m sure that when there was little else that Beth had to rely on in this world, knowing that her fish was always there for her, gave her a sense of well-being and happiness.
After some more assurances about how good she would be to her new friend, Beth had picked out her second fish, another Red betta just like Charlie. "I’m gonna call him Fred, do you think he’ll like that? Do you think it will be okay?"
"I think he will love being called Fred" I assured her. We picked out a new bowl for him and some nice gravel for the bowl and with some trepidation, I finally gave in to Beth’s request and went ahead and put Fred in his new bowl with his pretty gravel, and simply rubber-banded the plastic bag over the top of the bowl.
After paying for Fred and his new home, and thanking me repeatedly, Beth was on her way and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy about just how happy I had made Beth. I decided that I was going to love selling fish.
Then, disaster struck. Not two minutes after leaving the store, Beth had run to catch a bus and forgotten that Fred was in his new glass home and she had accidentally broken the bowl.
She came running into the store panicking and apologizing and saying "Fred is dying! Oh God I killed him! I didn’t mean to really you gotta believe I didn’t mean it!".
After a few minute of calming her down I was able to extricate Fred from the wet gravel and broken glass. He was a little scraped up but nothing serious, and I assured Beth that he would be fine. Beth, still quite agitated from the whole episode asked if it would be okay if she took a different fish and left Fred at the store to get better. I told her that would be fine, and then she timidly asked in a quiet voice "Could I get a blue one instead?"
Suddenly the disaster was forgotten and a new blue betta (who I later learned had also been named Fred) was going home with Beth.
Beth came into the store a few more times in the following weeks looking for some plants to decorate Fred’s home with, and to assure me that she was taking real good care of him.
I frequently think back on this event as epitomizing all the best and the worst aspects of being in the fish business--- Sharing in both the successes and failures of my customers, overcoming the fear of taking on too much of a challenge, or making the wrong decisions out of ignorance. Most importantly, remembering this episode with Beth reminds me why being in this business is so worthwhile --I feel like I am actually doing something to help improve the quality of peoples lives by helping them be successful in keeping their fish, making both the fish and the fish keepers, healthy and happy.