I like fish. My parents had a large aquarium as I was growing up and I always enjoyed watching the fish. As I remember, we had a few neon tetra's, some tiger barbs, an angelfish or two, and a kuhli loach. There was a brief (and disastrous) flirtation with a small brood of fiddler crabs, but they always ended up getting out. We found one in the toilet once. It was amazing that it made it that far!
But I digress....
I have a betta that I have had for a little over 18 months. A couple of months ago I decided it would be good to bring him to work and make a "proper home" for him: I bought a real aquarium. It isn't anything fancy, just a five-gallon hexagonal aquarium with a small filter and a cover with a light. I'm sure to Sammy (the fish) it seems like moving up from a shack to the penthouse suite. He is definitely a lot more active than he ever was in his cold little fishbowl.
-Sammy in his natural environment (sorry for the reflections)
Problem: the tank grows algae and the rocks are dirty with uneaten food.
Solution: Get a snail (for the algae) and a frog (for the uneaten food). Problem solved!
So a funny thing happened today in the tank. The snail (as yet unnamed) has been quite listless since I got him a couple of days ago. I was beginning to wonder if Frogger (the frog, duh) had killed him, as he likes to poke at him whenever he comes out of his shell. So the snail was kind of half hanging out of his shell and Frogger decided to come over and poke his head in between the snail and his shell.
Big mistake.
The snail is still very much alive and decided it did not appreciate the intrusion. He sucked down back inside his shell in a very fast manner.
Problem: Frogger's head was still inside the shell!
So now the frog is thrashing around like mad trying to get this shell and snail off his head. He thrashed all around the tank and finally succeeded in detaching the unwanted snail appendage from his snout. I thought he might be dead after all that.
Rest assured he is not, he still swims around like normal, but he has good reason to be afraid of the snail now. I need to think of a tough name for the snail, he's shown himself to be no pansy!
3 comments:
funny story. you should have caught a pic of the frog with a shell on its head, jumping around. they let you keep pets at work? and I thought betas eat other fish, and thats why you keep them by themselves...
Yeah, I can have my fish, as long as they don't bother anyone. The betta has gotten used to the frog, so it leaves him alone now, but he can be agressive. It's a big enough tank that they leave each other alone for the most part.
hahaha.
Who needs tv.
Fish are great, cleaning up after them is a pain though.
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