Happy endings

I only had two fish left in my fishtank, and the algae is out of control. On a practical level, you can move fish from one tank to another easily, and you can move empty tanks from one place to another fairly easily, but doing both at the same time is a herculean effort. On a spiritual level, I really felt like this tank (meaning the community of living things in it more than the physical tank) was of this apartment and should not make the upcoming move.* But I felt really guilty, because these were living things that I had pledged to take care of that I was throwing away because they were inconvenient.

So I spent an hour and a half catching the two remaining fish and driving to the fish store, rehearsing the half truth I was going to tell them because "too lazy to move fish" sounded terrible. But when I gave them to the employee, he looked super happy and said:

"This looks like a mixed set pair. You said two years old? They should be ready to breed about now. You got them here? We used to breed them ourselves, but our breeders stopped laying. These are probably their kids."

So now my fish get to go hang out with their family and have babies.


*No house yet, but it's coming at some point