I wish....I wish I was a fish....

So recently something's been very fishy in our house. I found Mr. Limpet at Walmart awhile back and made Rick watch it with me. I have fond memories of this movie growing up-my Dad really liked this movie, too. For those who have never had the pleasure of watching Don Knotts in this movie, it is about a man who loves fish and then turns into one. He goes on to help the US find U-boats in true patriot style.

Also, Rick and I decided to buy a larger fishtank. Our aquarium was a small, 10 gallon tank, but we have a plecostomus that was given to us and was quite large then, and we thought he deserved a larger tank to swim about in. We thought we just wanted a 27 or 30 gallon tank, but when we went to PetSmart, we ended up getting a 47 gallon tank! We wanted a tank that was taller rather than longer, since our pleco seems to like swimming up and down, and that was the tank that fit our needs and price-range.

Once we got it set up, we realized that the bunch of cords behind it are really unsightly, so I found an Etsy seller (WilsonGraphics) who is making a custom vinyl aquarium background from one of the pictures I've taken. Apparently nobody'd ever requested that from him before, but he was really excited about the idea. I'll take a picture of the tank when it gets here.

We only had 3 other fish to fill the tank with, so we went in search of more fish to keep them company. So we went to a pet shop on the south side of town (which I will not publicly name for reasons about to become obvious) in search of some different kinds of freshwater fish. The owner had a sign on their door that said they'd be back in 5 minutes, so we waited. While we were there, an older-looking fellow who was rather on the skinny side and another gentleman with numerous tattoos and a shaved head pulled up and waited, too. Neither of these sirs looked like they were interested in pets. When the owner finally pulled up on his squeeky new motorcycle, reeking of a particular, sweet smelling herb, he let us into the store. Rick and I went to the side of the store with the freshwater fishtanks that were covered in algae, with prices scribbled on the tanks that looked like they'd been there years. On top of that, the entire store reeked like it hadn't been cleaned in aeons. I tried not to notice as the owner pulled two brown baggies out from underneath the counter and gave them to the other 'customers'. They then pulled out their cash and handed it to the storekeeper, who put it into his pocket, not the register.

Rick and I were out of there a.s.a.p. What kind of world is this that we live in where you can't even take your family out to what should be a family-oriented petshop without running into negative element? All we wanted were some fish, and instead we got an eyefull of more than we'd bargained for.

For those curious, we went back to PetSmart and bought 4 guppies, two gold-skirted tetras (to school with our black-skirted tetra), 4 raspburas, and 3 bleeding heart tetras. We already had two zebra danyos and the black skirt tetra as well as the plecostomus, so that makes 14 fish (most of them small) in our gigantic fish tank.

Hmm...maybe we should get some more fish.