Fishy Problems

We went to Shipley Garden Centre for my fishy bits, I got a pump and filter for my small tank + a proper breeding net doo dah that stays in the main tank, I say proper because I'd always used makeshift but very successful contraptions with my goldfish [who have got rather large and so are now living in a pond].
I thought I'd give the breeding net a go first, I put them all in and lobbed the overfed snail back in the main tank.

As a result I spent almost the entire day [I was meant to be working] fishing babies out of the tank and putting them in the net, I was up to about 30 fish but I still couldn't see many in the breeding net, I had suspected earlier that they were going straight through it but thought [hoped] it was too fine a mesh, I was wrong.
As quick as I was putting them in, they were making their escape, stupid bloody fish!
At 11.30 last night I decided to set up the other tank and transferred the babies into that, there were 6 survivors and I've caught 3 more this morning.

Not to mention that if I were a cat I'd probably used up at least two of my remaining nine lives in the last three days.
The tank is incorporated into the bottom of a coffee table and to get to the fish I had to take the glass top off, so this meant I had to balance the lamp on the edge of the table to see what I was doing.



Yes - it was stupid, after five minutes the lamp did a nose dive into the tank and I caught it just as the bulb hit the water and went pop. 'Oh s**t' was my first thought, 'have I killed all the tank inhabitants?' Meanwhile my other half was telling me off about water and electricity not mixing, blah blah blah.

All the fish were OK, the bulb was changed by the aforementioned muttering electrician, it didn't even blow the fuse but now I had to fish out the glass from the bottom of the tank and skim off the powdered stuff from the top. Why do I get into these scrapes?

Later on, I was holding firmly onto the lamp - haven't let go of it since whilst searching for babies, when I dropped my high-tech fishing instrument on the floor, OK, it's a jug. I leaned down to pick it up without thinking and found myself being told off again as the lamp was about a centimetre away from being dipped into the tank with yours truly holding on to it for grim death so that it didn't fall in.

That was when I decided to move them into the other tank, not for their safety, but for the peace of mind of my grumpy old man. I agree though, I should have known better.



Oh yes, during the transfer between tanks I tried to slice my toes off - no shoes or slippers on as usual - on the glass table top as it was leaning against the sofa and I walked straight into the edge of it. This is a problem of mine, although I can and do regularly multi-task with the best of the female species, if I'm on a mission I've got a one-track mind and I'm totally oblivious to everything else, surroundings, safety etc. I did, more than once step back off a stepladder whilst up it painting fish [I like fish] on the spare bedroom walls, fortunately I wasn't too high at the time.

After all this I had a whisky to calm his nerves, he doesn't really drink but I'm more than happy to stand in ...