The Thanks We Get!

It was Monday. Spooky was quietly swimming in the aquarium. I saw him. Then I took another glance at him. Something was definitely wrong! He is a yellow-tailed blue damsel fish, but looked more "see-through" as the kids said, at the moment! Yes, he was rapidly losing his color as he skimmed the surface of the tank. I quickly noticed that the water level had depleted to the point of raising the salinity level to a dangerous place.

I quickly remedied this by adding RO water to the tank and rechecking the salt level. Then I fed Spooky. It was only a matter of an hour or so until his color returned to normal and he was swimming contentedly all over the tank. Whew! We had saved his life!

Then came Thursday. Mind you, we had carefully changed out a portion of the water earlier in the week as instructed by owners of such aquariums and workers at the pet store. All had seemed very well. The crabs and baby snail were letting us know they were thankful for the attention.

Spooky, on the other hand, decided to "give up the ghost". One minute he was swimming normally, and eating, and within ten minutes, he lay belly-up under the coral...dead! THIS IS THE THANKS WE GET!

The truth is, Spooky may have died anyway, given that we did not know how old he was in the first place, and that his previous owner stated he might not survive the move anyway. But, it is sad.

The plan now is to have the tank checked, go over the instructions on everything, and THEN get two more damsels...and try again. This time, we can know a little more about the fish, and they will come from the same tank in the store. If they survive for 2 months, we may get a clown fish to join them. But that is all our little tank can handle.

Learning about marine life, even from an aquarium, is interesting. We got to go to the homeschool class at the Science Center last week. The topic was on ocean life. They have a much bigger aquarium with sea stars, snails, live coral, and other creatures, some of which were available to touch and hold. Handsome declined that opportunity, but observed them very closely.

We are learning about the facts of life as well...the fact that life begins and ends in the animal world. That life is unpredictable...that life is delicate.

The true thanks we get is knowledge. Sometimes that comes, not just by studying books, but by trial and error also. And we get the joy of observing life...from the tiny crabs to humans...we are all wonderfully made! Enjoy!