When it comes to pets, I’ve never understood wanting pet fish. I think the problem is that I can’t play with them or pet them like my other pets. Instead, I stare at fish, they stare at me, I pucker up my mouth to make a fish-face, they open and close their mouth in return. And that’s about it.
But I married someone who likes fish in tanks and I’ve therefore had a fish tank in my house ever since a co-worker gave us one in the late 1990s. The co-worker donated tank sprung a leak on Valentine’s Day about 10 years ago, which sent Mark into a tizzy that he addressed by buying a new, bigger tank.
This tank has housed several kinds of tetras, and they’ve all been quite happy, I think, until this summer, when Mark decided that we needed discus fish. Here’s what I know about discus fish: they’re sort of discus-shaped and have fins for mobility. They come in numerous pretty colors. And they can come from several places.
Our first two discus fish were blue and came from a local pet store. Here’s what they looked like when they were first put into the tank. Pretty nifty, huh?
Unfortunately, the biggest tetras didn’t like the discus fish and picked on them. Soon the discus fish went into hiding.
Having his new fish picked on by the old fish put Mark into a bit of a tizzy and when the tizzy was over, he’d solved the problem by buying this:
Mark then purchased a reverse osmosis filter to remove impurities in our water. Our tap water. The water that I drink daily and shower and cook with? Hm. After the new tank was all filled up with reverse osmosis-ized water, we spent 20 quality minutes together netting the big, bad tetras and moving them into their new tank.
All was well in Fishville again except for the fact that, gee whiz, the bigger, older tank was kind of big and empty with only two discus fish in it, and well, we needed to get more, Mark said. A few days later, a Styrofoam container arrived containing five discus fish from New Jersey. The fact that fish can be shipped cross country is really quite amazing to me and the fact that they all survived, borderline too bad. The new fish included several orange fish and a blue fish with vertical lines. They were added to the big fish tank, and all was well in Fishville again for several weeks. In fact, I began to appreciate the splash of color in our living room and the way the discus fish came to the side of the tank when I showed up to stare at them.
Then one day, about a week ago, I noticed one of the original blue discus hovering near the surface. Within 24 hours, it was dead. Mark also discovered that one of the orange fish had some white spots on it and small chunks missing out of its tail. Well, one dead discus and one sick discus put Mark into a tizzy, and he solved this by researching discus fish online, participating in chat rooms, calling pet stores and buying nasty chemicals. He also set up a “hospital tank,” which is a small tank set up to treat sick fish. After being treated, the sick fish is put into a baggie inside the big tank to re-acclimate to the big tank.
The sick fish was released into the big tank and the good news is that it appears it is recovering from its white scaly problem. But while watching the sick fish in the big tank, Mark soon discovered that the reason the sick, orange fish had a few chunks missing from its tail was because another orange discus fish was picking on him. Well, that put Mark into another tizzy and he solved this problem by putting the bad, orange discus in with the big, bad tetras.
The sick orange discus is still not out of the woods, but I am confident Mark is on top of the situation. In fact, the condition of the sick fish was the first thing he reported on when I returned from work on Thursday and Friday. Mark also reminded me that his birthday is coming up and suggested that perhaps I could get him a book on how to take care of discus fish. With my luck, the book will recommend that one keep one’s discus fish in separate aquariums.