Way back in September my friend Molly calls and says, "Hey, could you use an aquarium for your classroom?" "Sure!" I'd love to get a little aquarium into my room.
Her brother was going to move from MN to CA to follow the Love of His Life across the country. According to CA law renters can't have aquariums due to earthquakes.
The next week we got the call that the aquarium was in route. Molly and Brian drove to Rochester on a Sunday night to get us the aquarium. In the mean time we thought about keeping it at our house instead of taking it to school, since we have fish scattered around the house in various homes anyway.
The time table of their arrival kept expanding and expanding as the night went on. (Remember, I'm totally psycho in September!) At 10pm they still weren't here.
I jokingly texted Molly, "Sorry, it's too late. It's all yours." Ha! They were right around the corner.
She stood on my stoop with a 2 gallon tank with five huge fish in it. "That's it?!" I exclaimed!
Oh hell no! A FIFTY-FIVE gallon tank and wrought iron stand were still in the Jeep. Along with chemicals, equipment we'd never seen, a large plastic bin to keep it all in, a huge syphon and a five gallon bucket.
I was overwhelmed.
The tank was within inches of not fitting anywhere in my entire house it is so giagantic. Absolutely huge. I took notes on how to take care of it and the three year old fish as I watched Mark H. pouring gallons and gallons and gallons of water into it. The transition lasted past midnight - but really not that long considering the water needed to adjust to a specific temperature, the fish needed to aclimate, plus we needed to figure out how in the world we were supposed to take care of this bad boy.
When it was all set we actaully woke Victoria up after midnight and recorded her reaction. She was shocked and delighted to see this enormous tank in our livingroom. She was amazed and then went straight back to bed.
The next morning, before anyone was up I raced out to check on it. . .only to find four huge dead fish at the bottom. Little did I know this tank was so deep, to get to the bottom I had to go shoulder deep to fish those fish out. They were so huge it was disgusting. However, I didn't want the kids to see them so I did what I had to do.
After school we went to the pet shop to buy more fish. You can't mix certain types of fish so if the last fish survived the day we had to buy specific types of fish. If it didn't make it, we could buy whatever we wanted. I didn't think of this until the kids and I were actually standing in the store. I had Mark race home to check.
Dead.
The only positive thing about killing all of Mark H.'s three year old fish was that at least we could start fresh.
Apparently you're only supposed to get five at a time so the water blah blah blah (I still don't understand all the fish talk) can balance. That means we were there five times in eight days purchasing (and returning one corpse). I was actually calling the Fish Guys by first names.
We finally got it all dialed in.
We all love to feed the fish. Especially, Sucky, the sucker fsh.
After all that, we have the best aquarium ever!! We ALL love it!! It's huge. It's bright. It's
more work than I expected some work. But we love it!
See how it barely fits!!
We love it and so appreciate Mark H. would give it to us.
