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We have three fish. That is present tense-we have previously had many more, but I am a fish killer. Part of it is because it took me awhile to figure out the delicate balance of passive vs. aggressive fish. The other part of it is because one of our fish is a bully. That fish is affectionately known as Pudge.

Pudge received his name when he was a scrawny feeder goldfish that I won at the State Fair. I won 3 fish at that time, but two of them could not stand to be in my care and died within 24 hours. I was so excited that Pudge managed to live that I immediately went out and bought him a 10 gallon tank. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one feeder goldfish in a 10 gallon tank before, but trust me, it looks ridiculous. So, I went out and bought more fish.

None of them are still alive.

I have gone through quite a few fish, all with Disney names. (Pudge is from Lilo and Stitch. “Pudge controls the weather.” Nemo is from, you guessed it, Finding Nemo. Although, he is so large that he is not hard to find. And Lighting is from Cars. I named him Lighting because we were running out of name options and Lighting is red.)

We now have a 20 gallon tank, and I keep trying to talk Dan into buying a 10 gallon one as a quarantine tank for when we are cleaning the big one. He says no, because he is convinced that I will put Pudge in his own tank and then we will have to buy more fish to fill the 20 gallon one. He’s right.

This past weekend, we rolled up our sleeves and did a deep clean of the fish tank. We managed to get a brown algae infestation that would not die, no matter how many different chemicals we attacked it with. This convinced Dan to let me buy new decorations. While we were there, we decided to buy a new filter too, just in case the old one was the cause of the problem. This also led to brand new gravel.

The waterwheel moved from the air bubbles. It was way cool. And you can also see the brown algae attacking the aquarium glass right under Pudge’s mouth.

Our new tank decor, pre-fish. Dan laughed at me because I made the back column balance on the rocks, and then I wiggled the tank so it would fall naturally. Martha would be proud. They seem happy. It gives them more swimming space.

I lucked out and caught them all swimming nearish to each other. Normally Lighting avoids the other two and Pudge bullies Nemo into hiding. This way you can see how different they are in size.