This is Dickson and Sandy

This is Eleven

They are good boys.

I grew up with bettas, but my adulthood fishkeeping started in December 2018 when a neighbor posted on Facebook that they were moving to Texas and couldn't take Han Solo with them. Han Solo was a goldfish. I said I would take him, and I renamed him Inspector Dickson.

He came in a five gallon tank and despite being two years old WAS TINY

I cannot believe this was him

(Look how low the water was 🤦🏻‍♀️)

For months, I took care of him as instructed by the neighbor, because otherwise I didn't know what I was doing. Turns out she didn't either. IT'S A MIRACLE I DIDN'T KILL THIS FISH. Once a week, say it with me, once a week, I put him in a glass vase while I emptied his ENTIRE TANK, SCRUBBED EVERYTHING WITH VINEGAR, PERFORMED A 100% WATER CHANGE, and the piece de resistance, REPLACED THE FILTER MEDIA. Yes, I crashed the tank cycle every single week for months. I also had no way of checking the water parameters. I fed him from the surface because his last owners had conditioned him to eat that way and I didn't know how bad it is for goldfish. How did he not die????

By summertime of 2019, the tank was looking like this, and I thought it was broken, but this is CLEARLY an algae bloom. *sobs* Why was I so stupid back then. Also, I had shattered the top, and at one point I slashed my hand so deep I thought I might need stitches.

Anyway, I upgraded him to a 20-gallon, and I got a gravel vacuum and realized you don't need to scrub the freaking tank, so yay.

My dad said I couldn't have my Christmas lights around the water, so I bought an aquarium light. This gave me a big algae problem, because I didn't realize the light will stimulate plant growth if it's on constantly. PetSmart suggested I buy snails to keep the algae down.

The snails were a whole other drama. I had five. I named the first one The General, but for the rest I didn't even bother. I wished they'd had more of a will to survive. The longest lasted about five months. Since they died so quickly, and were surprisingly expensive, I tried to breed them, and I joined forums where people talked about snail sex, which they called snex. But my snails were all asnexsual.

I tried to do everything right for these dang snails. One seemed sick so I made him a medbay in a separate tank in my bathroom. And another one had a cracking shell so I WENT TO THE GROCERY STORE, IN A PANDEMIC, and BOUGHT IT RAW SPINACH. But no, they all died. Snails get really soupy when they die, by the way.

One snail disappeared, and I thought it had been eaten, but actually it had crawled way deep into the pirate ship and died, which wrecked my cycle and took weeks to get back on track.

Anyway, back to Inspector Dickson. Even before the snail drama, he began to get sick. He was sick for MONTHS. At one point he was lethargic and had stopped eating. It would be too long and boring to type all this out but basically I tried two different antibiotics, aquarium salt, so much stuff before treating him for a parasite and that's what worked. He became himself again.

But almost immediately afterwards, he developed mouth rot. I took him to PetSmart, and they gave me some powder to put in the tank. That would clear it up, only for it to come back. So I called an exotic animal vet, who told me to net him out of the tank every day to treat his mouth with Povidone-Iodine. This also worked only for it to come back. This went on for MONTHS. Literally he would have pieces of flesh hanging off his mouth.

Then at one point, while netting him out to apply the iodine, I accidentally dropped him and he was lying on my carpet.

By this point, my fish care had gotten supremely good and I knew what I was doing thanks to fish forums. I did 25% water changes with the gravel vacuum every other week. I poured his food in with water so he would eat from the bottom. He had two powerful filters and an aerator/bubbler. I had a liquid testing kit. I used SeaChem Prime. So it made no sense that he was such a sick fish.

So sometime this past summer, I took him to the vet and paid for an office visit. The staff was so excited to see a fish and called him by name. Because of COVID I couldn't go in, so I spoke to the vet on the phone while he examined Dickson, and he said for it to be recurring, it must be a stress reaction. He said he was probably lonely. I said my tank was too small for a second goldfish, and he said, "No, you need ten gallons per fish."

I disagreed with this, but a trip to PetSmart and 32 cents later, Sandy the comet had joined the family.

The fish were really cute together, but Dickson was still sick. Also, I frankly disagreed with the vet regarding space because Dickson was eight inches long and had already started to outgrow the 20-gallon even by himself. It also started to get a lot dirtier.

So I bought 50-gallon plastic buckets to keep them in till my budget afforded a new aquarium. This was another disaster, because it took me four hours to set up, and then my parents wouldn't let me keep it. They said I just had to get my Christmas gift early and that it had to be a 40-gallon aquarium. So I had to undo everything I did and get my Christmas gift in like August.

However in the end it was worth it.

I don't want to jinx it, but ever since he moved in here with Sandy, Dickson hasn't been sick at all. He's looked great.

However, almost immediately afterwards, the 20-gallon tank went back into use. A family I petsit for asked if I would take their dwarf gourami. He had been attacked by the other fish in the tank, and his tail had been ripped off. I had never even heard of a gourami and I had to educate myself and buy a heater and tropical food.

When I got him, he looked like this.

In three weeks or less, his tail had grown back, and he had transformed to that first photo at the top:

When I brought him home, I was like "I'll take good care of him, but I'm a goldfish person," and now I'm like 😍😍😍😍

I named him Eleven, which is a combo Doctor Who/Stranger Things reference, and you can see from the photos that he regenerated like the Doctor.

BUT. A couple of weeks later, Eleven caused a DISASTER. The 20-gallon tank cracked during a water change and flooded my room. It ruined tons of my stuff and took me three days to clean up with the Shop-Vac. After it happened I couldn't even find Eleven because he's so tiny, and finally found him flopping in shards of glass, gasping.

After that, my dad said I couldn't get another tank. But Eleven couldn't live in a bucket for the rest of his life. Dwarf Gouramis need at least ten gallons, but because Eleven's growth is stunted and he will never get bigger, I got him a five gallon.

Immediately after THAT, Hurricane Delta came through and tore up everything. We had no power for over 24 hours, and Gouramis will freeze to death without their heaters. I had to wrap the tank in blankets and add warmer water every few hours.

Then on this very night, I thought Eleven was dead, because he had been half sucked-up in the filter. He was limp and staring at me. I felt my soul leave my body. I shook him loose and he swam away.

Those are all of my fish/snail stories and disasters. Sandy is the least eventful fish of the three. He just kind of chills out.