Fish Tank

Much to my chagrin, Pete loves fish tanks.  Our latest is a 28 gallon salt water tank.  I am just grateful he likes to take care of them and all I have to do is feed the fish every so often when he is gone.   I do LOVE how happy the darn things make Peter and Matine.  They are both constantly showing it off to friends that visit ... and our friends at home.

I think the dialog here was, "Baby like blue fish?"

Fish Tank . . . Part III

It's official. We are fish keepers! We drove to Bozeman yesterday to bring the newest members of the family home. We now have 15 fish in a 90 gallon tank in our kitchen-living area. You can add this to the 6 horses and 3 dogs that we already feed . . . Oh, and the fast approaching HUMAN child that will be making her debut in 9 weeks. Somehow however, we have a feeling that the fish might be a tad bit lower maintenance than all of the previous and impending children. Oliver alone is more maintenance than the horses put together.

After 2.5 weeks of "curing" the tank with Latoya Jackson (the gold fish) we added 13 African Cichlids and 2 plecostomi (is that plural for plecostomus? Can't find it in spell checker). African Cichlids are some of the oldest freshwater fish in the WORLD!






The fish we purchased are all "F-1" fish (before yesterday I had NO idea there was such a classification). This means that they are "first generation" fish straight out of one of 3 African Lakes that cichlids can come from: Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria. Their parents were actually swimming in these lakes in Africa - then they were born outside the lake. Now they are in Montana. If they were to be inspired by love while in our care and reproduce, those babies would be "F-2" fish. Karma is an interesting thing!




We have 2 Electric Blue Ahli's (bright blue and stripey), 3 Electric Yellows (name implies what they look like), 4 Niyeri's (will be super colorful with stripes and neon), a blue Mumbai, a Convict Cichlid (looks like it's wearing prison stripes), and 2 Yellow and Black Striped fish that like to spit rocks who I don't know the name of either. Plus the two bushy nosed suckers and we couldn't part with the our "loaner" gold fish so we kept Latoya. They are all pretty tiny right now and they will grow to be 3-5 inches or so - God willing.

Oliver is still enthralled with the tank and likes to watch it, Gaucho sleeps under it (we think the soothing sounds calms his OCD), and Pete invited friends over to see the fish last night and then after they left red his book and stared at them for hours. I think everyone is very happy with the Tank.

I awoke super early this morning panicked about what I don't have for the baby yet and I was happy to find not a single floater in the tank!

Who has some fun NAME IDEAS for the fish? Please leave your ideas in the comments section!

The Fish Tank . . . Part Two

Well, we are officially fish geeks now. Pete and I spent 1/2 of an entire day doing "fish tank" stuff. You can remember from a previous post how a small "Fish tank in the babies room" morphed into a 90 gallon fixture in the home!

Yesterday, First we met with a guy that makes his living advising, maintaining and servicing fish tanks in the Gallatin Valley - go figure. We went to his home / office and picked out fish, rocks, water treatment options, pump extras, yada yada yada.

This is Pete loading the crushed coral rock into the bottom - he actually had to take off his entire shirt and almost crawl inside the darn thing to get this stuff in the massive tank.

He had some COOOLLL stuff in his house. Peter "thinks" he almost had me convinced to go all out and go salt water instead of freshwater. While I am very excited about his tank now I was not quite ready to go the saltwater route. It just felt like a pretty big commitment (I told you we have geeked out, I can't believe I am even typing this).

So, we get home and we spend the night "designing our tank" with all the cool background rock and wood features for our fish, cleaning the rocks before putting them in the water and finalizing our pump situations.

We had a blast! I must admit - this might be another fun hobby that I can enjoy with my darling husband. He was like a kid in a candy store... Grinning ear to ear the entire night. I was too. It was fun.

So, we have a "loaner fish" to "set up the tank" and we will get our real fish in 2 weeks.

Once we had it set up, we introduced Oliver to the gold fish. Now, the real fun began... He went NUTS! He stared and barked and pawed and looked all around this tank. Very intrigued and frustrated that he couldn't play with this cool orange swimming thing. We watched the single fish and our dog watching the fish for about an hour and a half last night. No lie.

Oliver meeting the temporary fish ----

He eventually crawled up on the furniture to get a better look!

See, fun for the whole family... Just like Pete promised when this whole idea began.

The Fish Tank Story . . . Part 1

Well, it has begun. The chapter in our lives where a father will go to extreme effort and lengths for something he is certain his precious daughter MUST HAVE.
This tale began as a conversation about our new baby girl's bedroom. Peter, suggesting and begging that we get a fish tank for her room - "so that she can look at the fish while she is hanging out and the noice will be nice in the background."

"Sure" I agree... That sounds like a great idea and a little fish tank never hurt anyone....

So the quest begins - Pete doing research online on his new favorite addiction - Craigslist. What once in my mind was a small little tank or "bowl" with some goldfish in it - was now looking like a much bigger dream.

"Honey!!! check this tank out! It's an awesome 35 gallon tank!"
"35 Gallons! I am not good with numbers...HOW big is that exactly?"
Days go by....
"Honey! This is what I want.... This would hold all sorts of the cool fish I had as a kid. It's only a bit bigger - 45 gallons."
"How big would that be - give it to me in inches...."
Reluctantly I ask, "It will take up that entire wall practically? I am not sure we have that kind of space in there!"
(code for : it won't be as "cute" as I had envisioned it)
(in a very sad and pleading voice) "I haven't said ONE word about any of the baby room decorations... This is ALL I want. Just the fish tank. I really want to do this."

Gotcha... this is all true and very fair... The fish tank is a go. Gulp.

A few days later...
"Check this out!!! This is a really nice tank - it's a great deal!!"
"Wow, you are right, very nice... That looks pretty big - but cool. How big is that? 45 gallons?"
"Its 90 gallons!!! It will be over 6 feet tall! "

Deep breath, ok... Peter is REALLY excited about this .... Just go with it .... It will be fun.

SO, it is purchased through a verbal agreement on Craigslist.com and we have a date to drive to Missoula in 3 days to pick it up.

We made a fun day of it. We had just got our NEW (USED) FAMILY TRUCKSTER - A GMC YUKON XL... (this is a a WHOLE other blog about going to the dark side and being a suburban driving family now), we had beautiful clear roads and skies, planned a nice lunch with some friends in Missoula and made a stop in Butte on the way home to see our little 5 year old friend Caid play in a hockey tournament.

The new family vehicle

So, the tank is home... all 1,000 pounds of it! This thing is HUGE!!!! So big, even Peter thought it was "too big and too cool" to not be enjoyed by everyone, so it will now be in the main kitchen-living area instead of the Baby Girl room. Victory for everyone!

90 Gallons of tank (and cabinet) in all it's glory!

Miscellaneous parts and pieces that have to be rebuilt and put back together.

So, the story really just began with the obsessive searching on the internet and the drive to Missoula...

The real story begins with the multi -day, multi-stop search to rebuild all the filter and pump parts that were "handmade" by the last owner.

There were NO stock parts, no part numbers, no BRANDS to even begin finding similar pieces. Pete searched high and low, visited every plumbing, hardware and hobby shop in the the tri-county area --- with GREAT patience and persistence I might add.

We now have an ALMOST functional tank in our home... He is a like a little kid with new Legos. So excited. He keeps talking about how cool it's going to be to have little Howell-ette looking at her fish and learning all about sea life and the water!

Now that the pump research is near complete, we are now onto "live plants" for the tank and "cichlids" - the type of fish he wants to inhabit it.

Surely to be continued . . . . . .