Friday, March 26, 2010

Now that's a better fish tank

There's a bit of "fish tank" culture here at my work. i.e. There are lots of offices and labs in the building that have tanks. It's wonderful to see! And I guess it's easier to look after them in a building of scientific research since there are taps and sinks and ph measuring tools and lots of very smart and dedicated people.

I got my first fish tank a long time ago. Let's see, I've been here ten years, so I probably got my tank 9½ years ago! It held guppies then. Caught from a tank upstairs. Probably very inbred.

When I went on maternity leave to have Elora I put the tank away. Sent the fish to another happy home upstairs and packed the tank in a box. I came back to work to find out that my office was being taken over by an instrument (a multi-million dollar very large magnet, to be exact) so I didn't set up my tank again, deciding to wait until I was properly set up in my new space.

So I moved office in Sept '08. And finally, at the start of this year, I got around to setting up my tank. We visited our friend's fish farm in late January and I came away with 5 goldfish. Only once I'd caught them (how cool to fish for your own gold fish!) did we work out where the tropical fish were kept but I was happy to keep my guys.

Over three weeks I lost three of the 5 fish. Can you believe it? They had lice! I've had enough of lice with my kids, and then to see them on my fish was extremely icky.

But now the population (of two) has stabilised and the goldfish are fat and happy.

Today I installed the final touch. Some bits of Lego, of course. Needed some trickery to keep them down (did you know Lego floats? I didn't!) but in the end I think it looks great!

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