Fish and Hermit Crab

I've been so worried about myself that I forgot to post that our "boardwalk fish" - a blue and red beta fish from two years ago - finally died. FINALLY. We noticed before Christmas that it had started to grow some sort of tumor on its stomach and it just grew and grew and grew and grew. Over two months this fish lived with this tumor. Finally on Thursday it took its last breath. It definitely was a trooper. Who'd have "thunk" that a fish that DinoBoy won on the boardwalk two summers ago would have survived the ride home from the beach, let alone two years in our house??

On the flip side - Twinkletoes' hermit crab kicked the bucket this week too. We noticed it last night. She wasn't too upset (like DinoBoy was about "fishy") - she just wanted to know when we could go to the pet store to get a new one. She did help Dad bury the hermit crab next to the fish -- we've got quite the pet cemetary going on in our front yard (if we put them in the back, I can only imagine which dog would dig them up and EAT them first - eggghk!)

Today, we took a break from me working after church and went for a ride to the pet store. I had my fingers crossed that they wouldn't sell hermit crabs in the middle of winter - they did. Fortunately, Twinkletoes didn't want an "army" crab (the one who looked the liveliest in the bunch was in a green and white/tan shell) so she grabbed a couple of guppies to put into DinoBoy's tank. DinoBoy got three (he calls them a "herd") neon fish (tetras) and two albino cory's (kind of like a catfish). They all survived the ride home! Which is pretty cool considering when we left for the store it was 43 degrees outside and when we got home it was in the low 30's. Brrrr. Now, three hours later, we have a happy tank once again. (for now - the fish all have a 14 day "live" guarantee - who wants to take a dead fish back to the store??)

Wish us luck - so far, they've both decided that I can continue to feed the fish in the morning when I let the dogs out - like I did with the Beta. Hopefully it will continue to be this easy but with these two, I doubt it.

Hope you all had a great weekend!