fish Archives - Kerry Gans, Author

RIP Zippy—CoronaLife Day 551

September 16, 2021 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

The day we knew was coming arrived on Thursday. Zippy the fish expired in the night.

He was a true survivor. Bought on November 8th, 2020, as one of 3 fish, the other two succumbed to a mouth fungus within 2 days. Zippy avoided the fungus and roamed the tank at top speed, thus earning the name Zippy.

Zippy was our pandemic fish, helping my daughter navigate the isolation of quarantine and remote learning. He enjoyed being read to, especially Harry Potter, and my daughter says he was a good listener during her lonely times in the pandemic.

He developed an internal tumor, as one of our other fish had. He grew rounder, and his swimming became more difficult, but he never failed to come to the surface for his breakfast. This was a big change from when we first got him, when I didn’t see him actually eat for weeks.

As he grew in size, swimming tired him out. We would find him resting on the bottom, or on a plant leaf, or on the sponges of the filter. His favorite spot was the top of the bubbler, where he could set down and let the bubbles wash over him like a jacuzzi.

He still struggled to the surface for a single nibble of food, but then he would sink like a stone to the bottom. He spent more and more time at the bubbler, and we knew it would not be long. He showed his survivor streak, though, because he lasted several weeks longer than we thought he would.

Then Thursday morning came, and he was not in his usual spot atop the bubbler. My daughter spied him, in a front corner of the tank. True to form, he was considerate enough to die at the front of the tank, where he was easily found, instead of in amongst the plants.

My most lasting memory of him occurred about two weeks ago. The tank was having a bacteria bloom, and the water was so cloudy you couldn’t see the back (and it’s only a 5 gallon tank!). I was wondering if he was in there dead somewhere, when he came charging out of the fog toward me, with that particular wobble they get when they have a tumor, but in that moment it looked like a swagger. A little slow motion and dramatic music and he could have been a superhero fish, charging out of the mists.

RIP, Zippy, you will be missed.

Multi-faceted Fatigue – CoronaLife Day 327

February 4, 2021 By Kerry Gans 1 Comment

We all know about pandemic fatigue. Most of us have it. For me, it seems almost harder now that the vaccines are here but hard to get. It’s a “so near and yet so far” feeling, and it’s flaring my anxiety.

But January turned out to be a much more difficult month than I expected. My aunt and uncle got COVID, and my uncle died. My husband had a stroke (he is fully recovered, thankfully), and now my sister and brother-in-law have COVID. I’m suffering from crisis fatigue as well as pandemic fatigue. And remote schooling fatigue. And hunting for vaccine fatigue.

I am apparently multi-tasking my fatigue.

At any rate, my brain is not very functional, so I am not going to attempt an in-depth blog post tonight.

Zippy the fish is still alive, so he has lasted with us almost 3 months so far. I have the ammonia in the tank pretty well under control, but now am battling a strange algae we never had before in all the years we’ve had the tank. It’s gray and fuzzy and grows like wildfire. It also makes the tank stink. I think I have tamed it by limiting the tank light use to no more than 6 hours a day (I turn on another light in the room for the fish when it’s off), and turning the bubbler to the lowest level. I read that this algae thrives when the CO2 levels in the water are lower, and I hypothesize that the bubbler (part of a sponge filter system) is putting more O2 into the water and driving the CO2 levels down. I know correlation is not causation, but I didn’t start having the algae issue until after I installed the new sponge filter, so I suspect it is somehow connected.

So that’s been my life lately. Writing has been nowhere for me—I am far too exhausted. I sincerely hope your January has been better!

Making Life Manageable—CoronaLife Day 250

November 19, 2020 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

First, because I know you are all waiting breathlessly, Zippy the fish is still alive as of this writing. I’m still keeping a close eye on the ammonia levels, and changing out water a couple of times a day, but it’s fairly stable.

Second, I am deep cleaning my house. No, not because of COVID exposure–because it badly needs it. It has been bugging me for a while now, but I haven’t had the motivation to actually embark on what seemed an insurmountable project.

I am not the neatest person in the world. (My mother will snort diet Pepsi out her nose when reading that understatement.) I am MUCH neater than I was when I was younger, mostly out of necessity. (When you reach a certain age, having specific places for things cuts down on the “where-did-I-put-that” moments.) I keep up with the must-cleans—bathrooms, kitchen, laundry. You know. But the rest of my house can go a while between good scrubbings. We are far from filthy, but I will not be winning any Good Housekeeping awards. And with a child who somehow manages to leave a trail behind her everywhere she goes, it is a bit of a Sisyphean task to start with.

However, when properly motivated, I can get a lot done quickly. That motivation is usually in the form of a parental unit coming over. We are not doing a Thanksgiving gathering in the Year of COVID, but my mother-in-law will be coming up to stay with us until the New Year. (We are all quarantining for 14 days prior to her arrival.) Nothing like a visitor to make you see the dust on the unused surfaces and the stuff stashed in corners for you to sort through “later”. Well, later is now.

We got rid of several bags of stuff, with more to go. Rooms are neat, carpets are clean, surfaces are shiny. Did I get every nook and cranny? No. There’s always more to do. Every time you clean something, the thing next to it starts to look dirty. But it is miles ahead of where I was at the beginning of the week.

Decluttering and heavy cleaning has made me feel a bit better (psychologically—physically it has reminded me that I am approaching a certain milestone birthday). The one good thing about cleaning is that when you have finished a room, you have that instant gratification of a job well done. And you’d best take that gratification instantly, because the next minute someone tracks in a leaf particle or a dust bunny hops in or crumbs somehow magically appear.

I tackled this huge job by breaking it down into smaller jobs—one room a day. By making it manageable, I could break that mental barrier down and get started, get it done. I tend to do this with my writing, too. I tell myself to just do one chapter, whether it be drafting or editing. Makes it feel achievable. With the writing, I usually end up doing more than one chapter, once I start.

Not so much with the cleaning. 😉

Whatever task you are facing that seems huge this holiday season, break it into its component parts. Make each one manageable, and savor the victory of each piece completed. You’ll be done before you know it!

Fish Saga: Meet Fish 7 & 8

May 24, 2018 By Kerry Gans 1 Comment

When last we spoke, we were saying goodbye to Gem, our longest-lived fish from the original batch. We didn’t want Seashell to get too lonely or spend too much time alone in the tank, so on Monday we went out and Young Owner got two more fish—#7 & #8. She named them Glimmer and MiniSeashell.

Glimmer

She named the more orangy one Glimmer because of the way the sun shone off his body when we were driving home. And MiniSeashell is patterned like Seashell, but he is very tiny. He is also much paler than the other two. I am worried he is sickly, but Young Owner is hopeful he is just young.

MiniSeashell

Seashell took to his new tank mates much better than Gem did. There has been no vicious attacking, just some flaring fins and chasing around the tank. Perhaps because there are two new fish, so he can’t focus on one. Or perhaps because he didn’t spend almost a month alone like Gem did. Or maybe Seashell was just happy to have company—he had looked a bit forlorn all alone in the tank. Much of the day I see the three swimming around rather leisurely, and the chasing seems more playful than predatory.

The New Trio (from top): Glimmer, MiniSeashell, and Seashell 3.

MiniSeashell has already given me several heart attacks when I have turned on the light to find him on the bottom of the tank. The very first morning, I couldn’t even see him breathing. Several minutes passed before I saw an eye twitch, and a few more before the other 2 fish swam down to him—and suddenly he was swimming with them! I hope he survives and thrives in our tank.

Young Owner is ecstatic about her new fish, gushing about how much she loves them. My hope is that she gets to enjoy them for a long time.*

*Seashell 3 died unexpectedly on May 30th. Cause of death unknown.

The Fish Saga Continues: RIP Gem

May 17, 2018 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

We’ve had fish for almost 15 months now. Not the SAME fish, mind you. We started with 2 fish. We lost our first fish the very first night. We bought 3 more. Then we lost the second fish a few weeks later. Then things quieted down for a bit until we lost 2 more within a couple of days in December 2017. Then there was only one—Gem. We got him a friend in January, and after a fraught beginning the two fish settled in contentedly.

Unfortunately, Gem was not to enjoy tank life for much longer. At 16 months of age, he was getting old for a male guppy, and he succumbed to what I believe was the same type of internal tumor his tank mate Flower had died of in December, although Gem did not suffer and went quickly.

RIP Gem

On May 12th, we found Gem hidden under some seashells on the bottom of the tank, prompting the following obituary:

RIP Gem. Sometime overnight, our fish Gem passed away. Gem was the sole survivor of our first batch of 5 fish. He was the smallest, with a distinctive narrow torpedo body. He was also the peacemaker, literally putting himself between the bully fish and the ones being hassled. The Ammonia Scare of 2017 left him listless for several days, and we did not expect him to make it, but then he came roaring back.

He survived the several rounds of fin rot, that eventually took one of his tank mates, with nothing worse than a white streak on his tail. When tank mate Flower slowly succumbed to an internal tumor, Gem could be found at his friend’s side most of the time. When we got Gem a new friend, he was not very friendly at first, but after a few days he calmed down and reverted to his more laid-back personality.

Gem seems to have had the same sort of internal tumor Flower had, but he only had noticeable symptoms for a week, and was active much of the time up until yesterday, when he did not eat and stayed on the tank floor much of the day. Not even his friend Seashell 3 could entice him to chase him. So when Young Owner could not find Gem this morning, we knew what had happened. We found Gem hidden under a seashell in a corner. Young Owner said goodbye to her favorite fish and we sent Gem off to the ocean.

Gem has now joined Seashell 1, Sparkleshine, Seashell 2, and Flower in Fish Heaven, leaving Seashell 3 as sole survivor.

*****

We plan to get Seashell 3 a couple of new friends as soon as time permits a run to the fish store.

The Fish Saga continues…

Seashell 3–the sole survivor

Power Outage 2018

March 8, 2018 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

So I didn’t get a chance to put up a blog post yesterday because we lost our power in the nor’easter. It didn’t start out too badly, and I hoped we would escape the worst of it.

It started coming down heavy after noon.

My husband came home from work around 3:30. He started cooking a pizza a little after 4. Power went out 3 minutes after he put it in the oven. (He left it in the hot oven for a couple of hours and eventually deemed it cooked enough and ate it!)

The heavy snow took its toll on the trees, including ours. We are lucky the branch landed behind my husband’s car, leaving only one small scratch on a brake light.

We played some games by lantern light, read a little while, then crawled into bed a bit early. After my daughter fell asleep (after insisting she could NEVER fall asleep without her fan running for white noise), I poured hot water in the fish tank to bring the water temp back up to normal. Then I went to bed.

Around 2:30 AM something started beeping, and I was the only one who woke up, so I traipsed around the cold house with a flashlight until I found the culprit–the CO/natural gas alarm in the washroom, whose battery was running out. Replaced the battery and climbed back into bed.

3 AM the power came back on! Got up again, went downstairs to turn off the lights that were on and plug in my phone to charge. Went to my daughter’s room to turn on her salt lamp and her fan. Happy to see the heater in the fish tank was running. Dug my daughter’s head out from under the blankets so she could breathe. Went back to bed.

It was a long, chilly night. I am grateful to the power crews that got things back online so quickly. The kids will go back to school tomorrow, and things can get back to normal.

And that’s why I don’t have some pithy writing-related post ready for today!

Research, Balance, and Fish

February 9, 2017 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

As regular readers of the blog know, we got a small fish tank over Christmas. Fish were supposed to be easy pets. How hard could they be? Throw some water in a tank, plop in some fish, feed them, they’re good. Very few things in life are as easy as they appear. If we had done a little more research, we would have been more prepared for what happened next.

We’ve had a total of 5 fish, but are down to 3. We lost one (quite literally lost him) the first night, while the second leaped from the tank about a week later and never recovered. How they got out of the tank through a skinny opening in the dead of night we don’t know. But we have fixed this issue with a new cover. A little research may have saved their lives, but who knows?

RIP Seashell 1

RIP Sparkleshine

What more research WOULD have prepared us for is the difficulty of maintaining the proper chemical balance in our tank. We let the water sit and percolate for a week before adding the first 2 fish. Turns out we should have let it “cycle” for at least a month, maybe more, before adding the fish. Now we are trying to control the ammonia and nitrite cycle while fish are in the tank, which is very stressful, because a spike in either ammonia or nitrite can kill the fish in a mass extinction event (we very nearly had one a week ago).

So here we are with fish and struggling to keep them alive through this natural aquarium cycling process, when a little more research would have saved us the headache. And the same can happen when writing. A little research in the beginning can keep your manuscript from going off the rails.

Seashell 2

Some people do extensive research before writing. Some research as they go along. I am in the middle. I do broad-stroke research before I write, and fill in the details as I need them. But by doing basic research first, I know the broad restrictions I need to work within. This saves me from writing the whole book, then finding out I had a fundamental flaw which now requires me to rewrite an entire plotline. So a little research can save a lot of angst later on.

The other thing about the aquarium is that the ammonia and nitrite need to be kept at 0 ppm, or you end up with stressed and perhaps dead fish. Bacteria are supposed to eat the ammonia and the nitrite, keeping the whole thing in balance. But little things can throw the cycle off and suddenly your water is testing in the danger zone.

Gem

The writing life is like that, too—a delicate balance. Writers juggle writing and daily life, often including family and a day job. It’s not easy to keep the water balanced right. One little thing can send one part of your life spiraling into the danger zone. All we can do is keep testing the water and try to head off any problems we see. One way to do that in an aquarium is partial water changes. We can do that in life, too. If one issue is causing undue stress, can we change it up, change it out? Sometimes a small change can make a huge difference.

Research will save you headaches. Balance will save you heartaches. And fish…well, fish are cool when they’re not jumping out of the tank in the dead of night.

When do you research your manuscript? How do you maintain a healthy balance in your life?

Flower

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Inspiration: From Fish Tank to Think Tank

January 12, 2017 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

People are always asking writers where they get their ideas. Truth is, inspiration can come from anywhere. A song, a person, a place, even just mashing two disparate ideas together. Anywhere you look in the world, you can find inspiration.

Even in a fish tank.

My daughter has been begging for a pet for years. She finally realized we were not getting a dog, or a cat, so she settled on fish. She wanted fish. We acquired a free fish tank, so we decided to give it to her for Christmas. Glee!

On January 7th, we got two fish to start with. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I cannot do something as simple as buy fish without it becoming an anxiety-producing drama. So we got two fish, which my daughter named Sparkleshine and Seashell.

Sparkleshine

Seashell

She fell in love. Even ate dinner in her room so she could watch them in the tank. Went on and on about how they were friends and seemed happy in the tank. She went to bed glowing.

And the first thing I heard the next morning was, “Mom, Seashell is missing!”

Great. The fish WAS missing. Not floating at the top, not out of the tank (we have a cover, but I looked anyway). I picked up and wiggled all the in-tank decorations in case she was stuck. Nothing. Could only reach one conclusion:

Sparkleshine ate Seashell.

To my daughter’s credit, she didn’t get that upset. She fake-cried a little bit—you know that cry when you think you should cry but can’t really work up to it. Then she seemed to take it in stride. “Well, Sparkleshine does look a little fatter than yesterday.”

She took it well, but I didn’t, because I could picture exactly what had happened in the morning. My daughter woke up, remembered she had fish, hopped out of bed beaming her smile of joy that illuminates her whole face, ran eagerly to her tank…and found only one fish. The smile wiped away. The joy doused.

I hated that stupid cannibal fish.

But, after losing sleep obsessing over this hurt to my daughter, I carried on. My friends and I joked about it on Facebook. One suggested that Sparkleshine had always secretly hated Seashell, but didn’t have an opportunity to off her until she had her alone in my daughter’s tank. Too many witnesses before. A fish assassination.

My husband bought 3 more fish to add to the one remaining. So we welcomed Seashell 2, Flower, and Gem. Sparkleshine did not seem happy with the new company, although my daughter’s face lit up and she hugged her dad over and over. I went to bed that night expecting to wake up to a bloodbath.

Seashell 2

Flower

Gem

Thankfully, four fish still inhabited the tank the next day. But now I watch as Sparkleshine and Seashell 2 seem at odds, constantly harassing each other. Is this how fish play? Do fish play? I don’t know. But as I watch them scuffle, I now hear a dialogue in my head. Two Mafia members joust for top position in the fish Mafia. Back and forth. A battle of wills. Who will win? And will any byswimmers become casualties?

“If you cross me, you’ll sleep with the humans.”

Inspiration can come from anywhere.

Even a fish tank.

* While I know the fish we have are male, my daughter insists she wants them to be female, so they are all “her”.

** As of this posting, all four fish are still alive.

***Sparkleshine leaped out of the tank and died about a week after this posting.

****Seashell 2 and Flower died within two days of each other in December 2017.

*****Gem died May 12th, 2018.