Change Change Terrible Change

A few weeks ago, I decided I was done with the fish. Pretty much just like that.

It's true I'd been waffling on them pretty much since I moved in here. Eric was right when he told me initially to get a big tank. The smaller tank needed to be cleaned twice as often, and the hang-on-back filter was much noisier than the canister filters that came with the big one. And what I always found so interesting was the interaction between the cichlids, how the hierarchy was formed and maintained. I couldn't have enough fish in this tank for them to do anything interesting.

Hard to let go of them though. I've gotten used to having them around and like the look of the tank on the counter where it is, the big burst of light, shimmery and green and brown.

Then I got home from California to that noise, that goddamn running water

allthetimeallthetime

the moment I walked into the house and heard it, I thought -I'm done.

This afternoon, I posted a note to the local aquarium society - For Free: cichlids, otos, loaches - at 3:30. At 5:30, E.L.K. was in my living room, his cooler half full of tank water, watching me try to catch the squiggly loaches.

It had taken me nearly two weeks to actually post the message. I was hoping for a few days to get used to the idea of them being gone. But I felt a bit foolish telling ELK that I needed time to say goodbye.

Now the filter is unplugged, the tank is dark. I'm mourning, strangely. Though I think I did the right thing, I miss them, the thirty finny slippy gallons of space they took up in my life.