Thursday November 21, 2019
The thing that I cursed most today is the thing that also gave me a happy ending. Much earlier today, the Academic Senate met and I passed a consent calendar with well over 100 course updates before having to give a report on other curricular matters as they affect the campus at large, largely a redundant statement. I decided to change some water in the aquarium, and while siphoning out some water, the accident happened and finally, after at least a month of trying, I caught the Rummy Nose Tetra, and without even bothering to try to acclimate it, I dropped it into the aquarium that creates such gorgeous prisms during the summer. That aquarium has become a 1 each of a different species aquarium of survivors with a Cardinal Tetra, a Serpae Tetra, a South American Ram, the oldest fish in the aquarium that survived the heatwave last year, a Plecostomus that has plenty of algae to eat and no competition for eating it that I am hoping is in such a favorable environment that it will live for so long that I am never without the aquarium. Then there are the three Angelfish that were one by one chased from the home where they grew up: the Angelfish Abel always called the Black Swan, the Koi Angelfish female that hasn’t quite chosen between the two others, and the silver male that Abel said was labeled blue in the store where he found him.
It’s time to start the Brine Shrimp. The pair that defended their territory, the Gold Angelfish and the black lace Angelfish that Abel called Robin Hood are now alone in the 40 gallon aquarium with their third and largest and only surviving brood that were already traumatized because the glass that fell into the water crashed into the leaf they were all clustered on destroying the nursery where a wriggling mass of tadpole-like fry that had not yet started swimming. The moment I got off the ladder and I saw the damage I had done to the nursery, I knew the fry that had dispersed would only get eaten if I didn’t get that Tetra out of there immediately. The Tetra was already swimming around chomping down on all the fry that had dislodged during the accident and fallen to the bottom of the aquarium. The couple, after two attempts to raise a brood, had finally figured where to lay their eggs successfully out of reach of the Tetra and my clumsiness caused me to cuss at the glass that if it hadn’t fallen into the water would not have triggered the chain of events that I hope leads to a new family of well-fed Angelfish fry when I return from Ohio after Thanksgiving, and after gasping, up-side-down and dazed at the bottom of the other aquarium for several minutes, that wily old Rummy Nose Tetra that had been eluding the net for the past month and for a good ten minutes today is swimming again.
