We got a couple of new fish for the tank at work. We have a couple of zebra danios in there. I remember when I was a kid with a ten-gallon tank, I had a few zebra danios of my own.
They're easy fish to care for, except I noticed mine had a problem. They tended to die on me in a very peculiar fashion. I'd find them dead stuck against the filter. Same place, same position. Although I guess fish don't really have all that many positions, so that part shouldn't come as a shock.
I had a difficult time figuring out why this was happening. It didn't happen to any of the other fish. Just the zebra danios. Were they a depressed kind of fish? Were they committing suicide?
And then I saw it. Because I had another fish in there. A black molly. I saw her deliberately murder a zebra danio against the filter. I was told that these fish were supposed to get along together, and here was evidence to the contrary.
And yes, I know the black molly was a she because she gave birth to a lot of little black mollys . . . and then started eating them. I didn't buy her pregnant. It turns out that they can mate with green swordtail fish, and I had one of those in there. Whoops.
I had one zebra danio left in there, so I decided to separate the black molly from it before she could commit the crime again. I put her in her own tank. She lived a long time on her own, and she never killed another fish. That zebra danio also lasted a while.
The baby black mollys didn't. I guess I fucked that one up. If we had the internet back then I could have looked up how to keep them alive, but all I had to go by was the advice of the pet shop worker, and that didn't work out all that well.
I also had two angelfish at one point. One turned out to be a bully and ate the fins off the other. But that's a story for another day.
No it's not. That's the story. And I told it today in its entirety.
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