Electricity, Fish and Mistaken Identities

 I have mentioned before that I have an aquarium with cichlids in it.  I love my fish, but they keep having babies and the tank is too small for them all.  I rounded up some of the baby fish to sell to the pet store but they only wanted to give me a few dollars for them, because they are just silver colored.  The father fish is a beautiful color, but the mother is small and silver- nothing to look at.  Well, the father fish is a little aggressive.  He is always shaking his tail at the other fish, trying to make more babies and chasing them around the tank.  So, I decided that to solve the overcrowded tank problem I would sell him to the pet store.   
Well, as my daughter and I were trying to capture him, we were getting shocked by the tank!  

 Turns out, the light was getting wet and giving a charge to the water in the fish tank.  So, we unplugged the light, made a huge mess trying to get this fish, finally catch him and get him in a bucket to take him to the fish store.  Guess what happened when we got all the way there!  Yup, we had the WRONG fish!  I have a feeling those fish are all sitting in there laughing at me.

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The Fish Murderess

My fish are all staring at me as I sit here on the couch- they are all looking at me accusingly with their little fishy eyes.  

And every time I get up, they all swim and hide as fast as they can.  You see, they know that I murdered one of their fishy friends.  I didn't mean to, honestly.  I take good care of them.  I was cleaning the tank and one of the coral pieces shifted.  I didn't pay attention to it.  The next day the fish were acting kind of weird- giving me the "hey lady look" and everything.  All of a sudden I noticed one of the fish swimming  to nowhere under one of the coral pieces.  I quickly reached in and lifted it up, and he swam away, but it was too late- he was pretty flat in the middle.  

Then he disappeared for a day, and I started to think that maybe he plumped up again and was doing fine.  But the fish all kept giving me the "hey lady look" so I did what anyone would do- made my kid scoop out the dead fish with the net.  Yup, I made my kid do the dirty work- I am so not making mom of the year this year! 

fish fight

I have an awesome fish tank with African Cichlid fish in it set up in my living room.  I spend a lot of time arranging the tank with coral so that there are lots of hiding spots for the fish (about 15 of them). Cichlids are known to be aggressive, but mine usually aren't.  There is one that swims around to the other fish and shakes his tail in there face, then darts off.  I researched this and found that it some sort of mating thing.  Can't you just see running up to some guy, shaking your butt at him and running off?  Well, I guess it is working out well for her because we have had a few baby fish appear in the tank, and I assume that they are getting there from all that tail-shaking. The other night, I was watching the fish, and getting ready to feed them, when all of a sudden two of the fish were locked jaw to jaw and splashing all around- a fish fight!  How do you break up a fish fight?!  I jumped up and banged on the glass, and they let each other go and swam away.  They seem to have left each other alone since then.  I wonder if all the other fish were yelling, "fight!" (in fish talk) and swimming in a circle around them like they do in middle school.  I didn't notice.