Hahahaha! I totally got you, right?!
You clicked here thinking it was going to be me revealing that my husband and I are going to have a baby. That is so NOT the case. There is no baby. There will be no baby for quite a while, if I have anything to say about it, and I happen to think that I do.
Wait, don’t leave!
While we are not expecting, that doesn’t mean that our family hasn’t grown a bit since our weddings…I believe I’ve mentioned my husband’s love of fish before, haven’t I?
Please don’t get the impression that I don’t like fish – they are quiet, clean, and lower maintenance than a cat or dog would be. Besides, I have one of my own!
That’s right. One of the owners of the fish store where my husband usually gets his fish gifted me with a little white betta fish, which is miraculously still alive after a couple of months. I’ve actually grown quite attached to the little guy, because we’re so similar.
My little buddy. Now taking suggestions for names (in the running are Casper, Betty White, and Ghostface Killah).
How am I similar to a fish, you might ask? We are both really white. We are both foreigners (betta fish are not native to China). It hangs out at the top of its little tank near the light, perhaps trying to change its colour. I like to spend time outside trying to get even the tiniest hint of a suntan. And perhaps the greatest similarity – we both get stared at by Chinese people a lot (my husband sits and watches this little fish when he sits on our sofa).
Anyway, back to my husband. His fish finally made the move to a brand-new, nearly-big-enough-for-me-to-sleep-in tank in our house. One dragon fish and six tiger fish made the journey over a couple of days, and settled into their new surroundings. My husband doted on them, checking filters and aerators, tossing them little treats, and just sitting and watching them swim.
One of the tiger fish - they are probably the size of my hand.
Which made it all the more surprising when I got a call from said husband one Friday morning telling me that he was coming home over his lunch break and that I should make myself presentable because someone was coming to look at his dragon fish because they were interested in buying it. Come he did, and he left with not only the dragon fish, but a couple of tiger fish as well.
My husband was heartbroken and moped around for about a week after the transaction. “Why are you so upset?” I asked. “You could have just not sold it.”
“It was a very good price,” he answered.
But this being my husband we’re talking about, he didn’t stay upset for long. He brought himself out of his funk by making plans to get another dragon fish – a baby one to raise like he did the last one. New fish has now arrived, much to my husband’s delight and the relief of the remaining tiger fish, who were decidedly lost without a dominant, fearless leader in the tank. Everyone is back into their routine, especially my husband, who comes home and changes some of the water each night before feeding them.
New dragon fish, annoyed with me for taking his photo.
Oh, the feeding. What do you feed medium sized fish in order for them to grow big and strong? Why, small feeder fish, of course! Which means that, at any one time, in addition to the large tank, there are also small fish in several other locations in our house. Sometimes they are dumped unceremoniously into the tank, where the fish can eat them as they please. Sometimes they are frozen in one of my freezer compartments, so they can be doled out a few at a time. But one evening, these little fish were in neither of these places, leading me to ask a question I never dreamed I would have to ask:
“Why are there live fish in my toilet?”
Let me explain. I had just returned home from work, and my husband was waiting with dinner. As we ate, we chatted about our day. Being the considerate guy he is, he also decided to warn me that there were fish in the toilet, but that he was going to take care of them after we finished eating. Of course. Why wouldn’t there be?
After some confused questions, we established the problem. When my husband says “toilet,” I assume he means the actual bowl, but what he really means is the room containing the toilet. As it turns out, the fish were merely in a bucket in the bathroom, not “eating the poo” in my toilet, as my husband cheekily told me.
My one condition for having this massive tank in our apartment was that I be required to do absolutely nothing to take care of it – no cleaning, no feeding. All that’s gone out the window this week though, as my husband is away and I have been left with a set of instructions for caring for “our little ones.” Wish me luck – I might need it!
HAHAHA!!! Sounds like the last dog we got, which I did NOT want, nor was I going to have anything to do with him. Alas, guess who’s dog he ended up being??!
Kudos to Tom….sounds like a smart guy, getting you your own fish! He knows what he is doing!
Ringo?! How could you not want/love Ringo?!?!
We also used to tease Mom about Dudley being ‘her’ dog…which was actually true because on the vet paper she wrote her name under Owner, so…
I have accepted that the fish are here (it makes him happy, so I’m happy about that), but other than when he is away and I must, I intend to have little to do with them but look. Partly because I don’t know what I’m doing and don’t want to end up being responsible for some very expensive fish dying.
So who would win in a ghostface killah vs dragonfish deathmatch??
What kind of deathmatch are we talking here…cage match? Ladders and chairs?? Straight up street fight? Jell-O wrestling??
I’m (wo)man enough to admit that my fish would lose miserably against his dragon fish. Especially when you consider that his is probably 10 times the size of mine.
If it was me I’d probably just wrap ghostface-killah in electrified barbed wire and let him at dragon fish!
Somehow I think fish-loving hubby would take issue with that!
I am not familiar with betta fish but that little fellow looks like a white guppy to me. Perhaps you could just call it 小白 xiao bai little white. That arowana looks great. My 二哥 second brother used to keep dragon fish too at one time and he used to feed them grasshoppers. They can grow to great size and look magnificent and menacing at the same time. But I loved them too. But maintaining an aquarium is not an easy job. There are a lot of things to look into if you want to keep the fish healthy and thriving. But it can be rewarding too, not just in the aesthetical but also the financial sense. Happy aquarium keeping!
I’ve heard betta fish also called Siamese fighting fish” and when I’ve seen them before, they are often blue or purple-ish. I’ve had guppies before, and this fish is bigger than a guppy, so I don’t think it’s the same. I’m sure my husband will be proud that you like the arowana – he takes very good care of them (I, on the other hand, am just hoping to not kill it or make it sick before he gets back!). He even caught a cicada from the trees outside one day to feed to his previous fish. Ewwwww!
Fighting fish I am familiar with but I have never seen a white one, so it fooled me. But the fish does look like a fighting fish. When we were kids my brothers and I used to go the the lotus ponds in our grandfather’s small vegetable plot to catch them. We would wade into the shallow ponds and scoop up the fish using a rattan basket. The best fishing fish were the red and dark blue ones and when we did manage to get them we would whoop for joy. Those were the carefree days and I do miss them a lot.
Wow, how cool that you grew up where they were wild (I’ve honestly only seen them in fish shops/aquariums). What a fun memory!!
Oh man, this brings back the memories…I never quite understand why young married asian men like aquariums. My dad insisted on having one when I was a baby, and my mom had the same attitude as you.. “Don’t wanna touch, Dun’t wanna know”. I have vague memory of it because ever since I could remember about the aquarium, it was always empty. No fish in it. From what my parents told me (I honestly don’t remember this part) – apparently I was quite a fisherman when I was toddler. I would scoop fish out of the aquarium as if I was a hungry cat. GOD KNOWS what I did with it.
But I do have a taste for sushi for a long time…..
Haha! For now there are fish in it. I’m slowly warming to the idea of having them here. It makes him happy, and he’s done a lot to make our home comfortable for me, so he deserves it!
Hi Kelly, I have heard somewhere that the color pertains to gender of the betta fish. I have no idea if this is actually true or not, but supposedly the females are lighter and whiter than the males. I guess its something to look into. And I vote for Betty White as the name, I used to have a Dorothy (a specked fantail) who everyso often would swim upside down, we would scoop her outta the pond put her in a bowl assuming she was dying, until we accidentally squeezed her tummy one day and about 6 feet of poop came out and she swam normal again lol. She was just constipated. Ahhh the memories
If your colour theory is true, Joni, then my fish and I have another thing in common – we’re both girls!
As for the rest of your comment, my official response is Ewwwww! Hahaha!