The Joy's of Owning a Fish Tank

Since I was a teenager I have almost always had some sort of aquarium or fish tank.  When I lived at home, I had one in my bedroom, then later moved it out to the kitchen.  

When John and I moved into our first apartment together, I brought my aquarium with me, and had one at nearly each of the locations we lived thereafter.  

Fast forward to our current residence.  

I again had a large aquarium and stand (that was given to us for free), and decided to set it up with fish, as its been a while since I've had a set up. Initially, I wanted fancy goldfish, mostly because they're easy to care for, you don't need a heater because they're cold water fish, they're not expensive and they're pretty.  A friend of mine reminded me that goldfish are always looking for food, and will constantly disrupt the gravel making a mess.  Okay, so I reluctantly went the tropical fish route.  

I chose lots of little fish, tiger barbs, etc, and John wanted to pick a fish or two also, so he chose a tiny little Oscar. (uh-oh). 

Loved the set up we had, and wow, did that Oscar grow fast!  Some of the fish I had in my tank I referred to as "Fishing Lure" fish, due to the fact they were little, shiny and resembled a fishing lure.  

One day we came home from work, and I was looking at my fish, and huh...seemed like there was a fish missing...maybe I'm wrong, or maybe he's hiding.  Whatever.  

Few days later, I am again admiring my fish and upon closer inspection, another fishing lure fish was missing. I checked the floor around the aquarium, to make sure there were no jumpers...nope.  I checked the filter, in case he got sucked into it. Nope. Weird. 

THEN I looked a little closer at my Oscar, it looked like there was something stuck in his mouth...OMG. What I was seeing in the Oscar's mouth was the tail of one of my fishing lure fish! DAMMIT!! 

Ok, so our plan of attack was to try and get larger fishing lure fish and feed the oscar more.  

By the end of the year, all my fishing lure fish were gone, and all I had in the tank was one super large (FAT) oscar, a algae sucker guy, and another white oscar. 

Eventually, I gave the oscars and the algae sucker fish away on craigslist for free and got rid of the fish set up. 

The only fish I have now is a little blue betta in a fish bowl. 

While I'd love to have another aquarium set up, my avaiary really takes up a lot of my time and money, so am going to forgo fish for birds, but I do miss the cute little swimmy fishing lure fish. The oscar? Not so much.