Here, fishy, fishy!

Will had been asking for a pet for a while, but never seriously enough to put it on his "list," be it for his birthday or Christmas... until this year. Neither he nor Ellie are particularly comfortable around animals, so a fish was his pet of choice. It sounded good to us: having never had a pet of our own, we wanted to start with something easy. We ruled out a betta fish because they don't really *do* anything, and decided to go all the way with a 10-gallon aquarium for tropical fish.

We began with four fish, two neon yellow zebra danios and two sunset platys, named Michigan, Fishigan, Lillia and Indy, respectively. Very unfortunately, only Indy has survived the initial few weeks of cycling the tank. Will didn't take the losses well—so much for easy. We're hopeful Indy will hang on while beneficial bacteria continues to colonize to support fish waste and respiration. Fingers crossed!