Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Everyone is Tanked

Let me tell you how I spent last Monday evening. - Elbow deep in fish CRAP!
We got a new fish tank for our enormous Oscar Fish (compliments of "Uncle" Eddie). It came complete with new stand and everything. This is also Fantastic for Lila, our Red Eared Slider, because this means she gets to move into Oscars old 30 gallon tank.Lots more room for her to swim. This is great since someone told Kyle that a turtle will grow bigger in a bigger environment. - Makes sense.

Gary was off to work for the night, so it was mom and the kids left home to do the big switcharoo...Yikes. Draining the 30 gallon tank wasn't too difficult, and thanks to Kyle's "braveness", our pan - frying - sized fish made it safely to the holding bucket (not before splashing water all over kyle and the wall first). Unfortunately I could not get all the water out before moving it - it was just impossible. - So... here I was trying to carry a 30 gallon fish tank with about 5 gallons of water still in it, along with about 20 lbs of gross pebbles and poop, out the kitchen door and across the lawn to dump behind the apple tree.....In the snow....with Gary's Big slippers on.I'm pretty sure I hurt myself. I wished I had access to Jennifer's Guy that moves heavy things.
Once that part was over, it was all about filling the new fish tank with 45 gallons of water. Kyle and I had a great system going of alternating filling pitchers of water at the kitchen sink and shuffling them to the tank to empty. Finally we were fish ready. - Kyle was up to bat again- this time he made sure to close his mouth when the fish started splashing! phew... The fish part was over. Then I had to scrub the old tank to get rid of the fish germs and make it turtle ready. I hope Lila is tolerant to Vinegar - it was the only non chemical glass cleaner I could think of. We set up the tank in Kyle's room and introduced Lila to her new home. She took off swimming right away. Kyle and Viv think she loves it now. Next order of business was a shower.. For ME!! yuck!

2 comments:

Jennifer W said...

You know, my doctor has a white oscar named ralphie. He is in a HUGE tank 100 g? He chases you when you walk by the tank. He is bigger than my head, and I think he likely kills anything they try to give him for companionship. Maybe your oscar will get big enough to give you dolphin rides?

Allison said...

they are definately a weird fish - He follows kyle around in the tank too. We could never give him a friend - sometimes we put in feeder fish and they daisappear in minutes. - He is a big meanie.