Cleaning the Fish Tank - The Hidden Filth Within

This morning I had a light schedule at church, so I decided to free my fish from their murky waters and stop pretending that the visitors to my office "didn't mind'' looking through sweet-tea colored water to admire my golden lovelies.

I had attacked the small tank yesterday. Simple bucket-and-syphon tactics to replace 40%-ish of their water and a paper towel to the inside glass did the trick for those guys... no problem. And today was the 20 gallon job.

I wish now that I'd taken pictures.

Allow me to paint the scene:
Me - grey dress pants and a startlingly white polo shirt
The tank - the color and (light) scent of an accidental pond-puddle that swells up in your backyard this time of year. Especially here in Ohio... oh wait, that's just the pool that's been too wet to properly collapse and put away.

Same approach - a couple of buckets worth of water out, taking things down to 65% full or so, swipe the sides pretty thouroughly, and check the filter for gunk...

Bucket fills - check
Wall cleaning - check
Filter maintenace - ... oh my goodness gracious!

As I pulled the carbon filter up from the basin, it became apparent that there was a LOT of gunk. Enough that one of the ladies here in the office said, "I think they're growing that stuff for alternate energy sources now, you should give someone a call." It was quite a harvest.
But not the strung together sea-weedy kind, no this was like old green paint.

(I'll take this moment to remind you of my "startlingly white polo shirt"... yeah.)

Needless to say, the job took a slight bit longer than initially anticipated - but amazingly, the shirt remained clean.

The deep thought for today; How could I have known that there was that much gunk, when the water only looked a 'little'* bad???

* little being a relative term

I've had opportunity to talk to some of the little ones as well as the new members here about sin recently. And I think that my fishtank holds a good illustration for this.

You look at yourself and see some algae on the walls, maybe the water is murkier today than yesterday, but you can generally convince people that "I'm not that bad, really."
But open up your heart - where everything flows through - and on our own there is just an unimaginable amount of gunk. Sin. Grossness that cannot be removed without some major intervention.
So you get in touch with some guy in a white shirt... except unlike me, He does a really thourough job and gets every speck out of the water, the filter and he even scrubs the plastic plants clean (which is annoyingly difficult, and never undertaken by me personally... I contract that out to snails when they're in town.). He puts in the effort for you to clean things up, and wouldn't you know - His shirt doesn't stay clean. He has to go home wearing YOUR gunk... and you're left with crystal clear water.

Heeeere Fishy, Fishy, Fishy!

I was surprised and saddened this last weekend, when I used an illustration from Sesame Street and none of the kids who'd come forward for the children's message were familiar with it.

Oh they knew who Bert and Ernie were, but they'd never seen this...

(Please pardon my abuse of YouTube videos over these last two posts now...

I'm trying to keep things interesting - but my life is too busy to be interesting.)

I used this "fish calling" to illustrate the strange and uncomfortable way that calls often happen in our lives. Jonah was our reading from the Old Testament for the day... not a comfortable calling (for Jonah or the Ninevites). The calling of the first disciples from their boats was our Gospel lesson... though followed more willingly, probably no more comfortable.

Times aren't always comfortable for us either, and God's call often seems to come at the most awkward of times and in the least comfortable situations.

Its not always a LARGE call... more often than not He speaks in a still, small voice that just tugs at our heartstrings until we listen. Then again, sometimes He lands a whale in our laps!

Personally, I've got a whale knocking on my office door. (Not to go anywhere else, move, or change MY "Call" in any way... in case you were worried.) But at least for now this whale is knocking politely and waiting for his appointment.

I shared a little of this large and somewhat uncomfortable calling with the congregation this Sunday - because it takes a village to deal with a whale properly!

[I wonder how many people are going to stumble on this posting when they're looking into all those terrible things happening in the world regarding the whaling industry...?]

Anyhow, I'm taking comfort in the fact that even Bert can call a fish... and even Jonah can be effectively used by God...

...bring on the work, Lord!

Caesar's Internet Debut

This new camera-phone thing is going to be dangerous...

(no, none of the fish actually died - the caption is just for comedic effect.)

moar funny pictures

...

The fish and their hibernating (?) snail friend

Sorry for the long recess... getting back into the swing of things is more time consuming than I anticipated.

Plus, we got a Wii - more on that later.

I'm sitting here in wintry Cleveland. Outside the window is snow that has me considering a cancellation of meetings tonight. The roads are messy and the air is cold.

But inside, my thoughts are repeatedly drawn back to my fish tank sitting on the desk...

The life of a snail has me utterly transfixed.

And by 'transfixed', I mean in the long-term sense where I am able to get things done, yet glance in his direction at least a few times per day.

The story goes that I bought a snail for the little tank because its filter is a little sub-par and I wanted to at least keep the grime off the walls, and he did that job beautifully! Then, as snails have done for me in the past, he got pretty quiet after a couple weeks. (None of my snails have actually been 'loud', but you know what I mean by this... very little activity.)

I hesitated in taking him out for the trip to the porcelain depository primarily because he never 'relaxed'. All the other snails that I've had die on me always would be hanging out of their shell a bit and begin to float... definitive signs of departing from this life.

Instead, this little guy had merely huddled up next to my Toucan Sam submarine and stayed put.

And stayed.

And Stayed.

And STAYED...

It was a good two weeks before I saw any notable change in his position, and even then I wondered if the fish had just sort-of been pecking at him.

Then one day he was stuck on the side of the tank wall doing his thing again!

The next day, back behind the submarine for another week.

This rotation has been happening for about two months now. It makes me wonder what I can do to make life worth living for him... or if he just thinks that he's part of the submariner corps on some Red October sort of hunt.

Today, for instance, it seems like he's gotten himself into a nice pattern of making his rounds...

1. Start by the sub.
2. Pick a direction.
3. Go that direction till you hit a wall.
4. Climb the wall briefly to test.
5. Return to sub.
6. Act like nothing happened.

A brilliant existence!

(The snail is the dark one next to the sub. The lighter shell in the foreground is hollow. The apparently giant fish is the stand up fish... he's not THAT big.)

...

Moving the Fish

I've accomplished half of my mission, and there the enthusiasm has lagged.

The plan was, way back a couple months ago, to 'trade' fish tanks from home to office and office to home. This because Ben got his 'new' room and therefore had a little space for a fish tank (as opposed to the BIG space the larger tank and its table were using)... so I was commissioned to perform the switch.

I managed to get the larger tank to work along with its table... and my classically large goldfish are quite happy in the office. But when it comes to moving the little guys, I've not shown any progress for some time.

Here's what I think: (Can you hear the "Excuse Train" a comin'?)

The fish need careful transport, obviously.
They need water and a 'low slosh' means of conveyance.
- these things are not hard to accomplish

But they also need a willing and energetic mover - preferably an expert in aquatic relocation - to get them and their belongings from point 'A' to point 'B' with minimal 'death' as a result.
- I meet said qualifications... for the most part.

Its that 'willing and energetic' portion that gets me. After a day of work, the fish are tired and hungry, and they really just want me to feed them and see to it that I make it home to see the family. They'd rather not be bothered by travel - and yet, the prospect is alluring to them... for some other time, perhaps.

In all honesty, I think that I'm afraid that I'll fail.
I've been really lucky on most occasions of fishy comings and goings, but I've already broken my #1 rule with both current tanks of fish...

I've become attached!

...and therefore I actually care if I have to replace them.

[sniff]

I just need to get over it, move these fish, and get on with life!

(please record your sympathies when the post entitled "Flushing the Fish" comes up, as it will certainly do, now that I've completely jinxed the situation.)

...

Cats and Fish

We're swapping the fish.

My "stand up fish" and his little friends are moving to the house, and the gigantor fish from home are going to come to work with me. (More on, "Bring your fish to work day" later.)

This isn't so much of a big deal, really. Two for two... except the tanks are going with them. I'm going from a 2.5 gallon here at the office, to a 15 gallon. Needless to say, its not going to sit on my desk anymore. My son will become the heir-apparent of the "stand up fish" as they will reside in his bedroom.

And as I write this less-than-newsworthy idea out, it occurs to me that I've yet to mention anything about the cat. My cat (well, my son's cat technically, but you know how those things go... it was part of his first birthday presents). Meghan and I just needed a cat again, and now Caesar sits around the house, without a single blog reference made. How sad!

I think that its because I'm becoming more allergic to him. And this disturbs me on a few levels.

First of all, I must share about our first cat, Opie. Opie and I were buds! We got him before children, I was in school (and therefore home a lot doing work), and as an added bonus; he was weird! Loved licking condensation off water bottles and sharing your apple as you ate it. (Seriously, you could put a can of tuna in front of him and he'd look at you completely non-plussed. But you slice a piece of fruit on the other end of the house and he's running to claim some for himself!) We had fun. Sadly, Opie died of a blood-clot a few weeks after we found out that we were expecting our son.

So now we have Caesar, weird in his own right, to be sure. And very friendly, etc.

The problem is ME.

I'm working now, we've got our son (and soon another), and the poor guy gets about as much attention as the fish. Which has given my body time to get used to "not being around" cats - so it thinks. This, combined with the end-of-summer allergens makes it impossible to so much as pet him without having itchy eyes for the rest of the night.

I'm lucky I guess. Its not a REAL cat allergy.

But it concerns me that I'm not home enough to tolerate my own cat's dander.

At least Caesar and the fish all still like me.

one stand-up fish

As part of my workspace-beautification project, I have a couple of goldfish on my desk. They reside in their little tank, somewhat greener around the edges than I'd care to admit, and are generally happy. They're small enough to assist conversation as people swing by for the first time;
"Are there fish in there? Oh yes, there they are!"

They do not have names, because when you name them... they die.

But we have a mutual admiration-thing going nonetheless.
- I feed them
- They like me

Both of the fish seem to like watching me work. They're probably just hoping and praying that 'feed the fish' is next on my agenda, but its encouraging in a way as well.

But when they get bored, that's when things get interesting for me as an observer.

I'll casually glance over from time to time and regularly observe my fantail doing a little bit of fishy acrobatics - aquabatics, perhaps? He likes to hang out with his nose either straight down - or, just as common, with is face looking straight up. Sometimes the process of going from one position to the other causes an exhibition of a full underwater somersault!

There have been many goldfish in my life over the years - hence the discovery of the
"don't name them or they'll die" rule - but even my other fantails (who wind up with those wonderfully googly eyes) never put on such a show.

I do believe that I'm just going to be distracted for the rest of this fish's life!

...maybe I should give him a name.