The History of Seth's Fish


It all started when I lived a little outside of Philly. My father bought this 20 gallon tank and some tropical fish. My father, being new to aquariums proved his inexperience on numerous occassions. No fish survived more than a few months in the tank of death. I swear every other day we had one sucked up in the filter, eaten by one of their 'pals'' or decided to go for a walk and ended up on our linoleum, stiff as a board. This process repeated itself in cycles until we moved down to Florida. I estimate over 100 casualties during this time period and several MIA's.

After our move to Florida, my father decided to take a break from his manslaughter ways......it took a few years until I bought this little 1.5 gallon display tank. My luck was a bit better, with no goldfish suicides. I think all the goldfish I bought harbored some sort of rare fish disease that was incureable. About once a month, I find one of my goldfish doing the death back-stroke or playing dead. This was somewhat disheartening at the time. Maybe I had a bad batch of goldfish food....

Meanwhile, midway through my junior year in high school, I was enrolled in a marine biology course where we were required to maintain fish tanks as part of our grade. Of course, being the fish expert as I was, I was group leader. We had this beautifully decorated tank.....however no fish. All semester, I bullshitted the teacher on why we didnt have any, such as "I think the alkaline and ammonia levels arent quite suitable yet" To this day I am amazed at how she bought that story weekin and week out. However a stroke of luck came, when one of the other groups left after the semester......so we arrived early to school and amazingly that same day he had 3 baby Oscar fish in our tank! It was a miracle!

As the semster progressed, our dime-sized fish grew into quarters. With about a month left in the term, we decided to resort to sabotage and betrayal tactics to better feed our fish. We would arrive early to school and I would take the Oscars out of our tank and put them into other groups tanks. While the Oscars had an all-you-can eat buffet, we would place wagers on how many guppies or goldfish these monsters could suck down. Then we'd take them back out and put them into our tank. These other groups always wondered what the hell happened to their fish....meanwhile, ours got pretty big. With the semester over, I brought them home and revived the tank of death.

After a month at home, these Oscars weighed about a pound each. I fed them everything. They really like my fathers cooking better than my mom's, though nothing beat a taco bell soft taco. Eventually, a coup occurred in the tank, resulting in the losing fish being ingested. So now I was down to two Oscars- Moby Dick and the Captain.

When i left for FAU, the fish weighed in at about 3 pounds a piece. Unfortunenatly I didnt take them with me, so my father alias Genghis Khan had to take care of them. I dont really know what happened to the Captain...he passed away around Xmas break. A full investigation yielded no results. Moby decided to goto the fridge and get some icecream one night and my father found him about 100 feet from the tank in the other part of the house. I was quite impressed with his Olympic trial slalom.

Meanwhile at FAU, my roomate saved a goldfish from his bio lab. Me being the fish expert unwisely placed the goldfish in a cup of Boca water. The goldfish never knew what hit him....

So his then girlfriend at the time bought him a Betta fighting fish which he named Brother Casey Jones. (after the grateful dead song). This fish suffered like no other.
Over xmas break, I left the fish with one of my fraternity brothers. I figured since he was a vegetarian ,he'd take good care of him. I even bought a gallon of spring water so he could change the water. When I returned this fish was swimming in what appeared to a be putrid color muck. I could have plastered the walls with it. However the little guy was still alive! A Xmas miracle! However Brother Casey Jones (he was an official Beta mascot, and all the pledges had to call him brother) had enough of life and one day jumped into an ashtray full of lit cigarettes. My roomies were so high that they didnt even notice.

Two years later, one of my pledge sons brillantly buys me another Betta fish...and his food was called Betta bits. I kid you not! Anyways, me being the always creative one did not have a tank, sooooo...the fish was placed in a empty bottle of Lahaina Rum...hence her name -Lahaina. This fish lived in a rum bottle, what a great thing. I was jealous. I used to carry her around in the bottle. I once was stopped by a cop driving to Ft Myers and had to explain that it was really a fish tank. After numerous complaints, I finally put Lahaina into a 1 gallon tank. She was really much happier. Ms Lahaina passed away about 1 and half  years later.....however she was the Beta mascot and received full benefits. I later found out that Lahaina was really a guy and this might have led to her identity crisis. This may explain the calls to Dr. Kevorkian for "special treatments."

While the FAU campus mourned, (I still have the original Lahaina bottle) I pulled myself together. When I moved up to UF, this friend of mine who was a stripper with a big fake rack gave me a fish tank..about 4 and 1/2 gallon display tank...Its nice. Anyways.......I bought two fancy goldfish, named Sir Lancelot and Lady Guinevere......a tragic love story in itself. Well tese fish are currently alive and living in my bathroom temporarily till I go back to UF. I transported these lovebirds in a Lemon-Lime Powerade bottle!!!!!

Well thats it for now, stay tuned for other Seth history lessons!!!!
Please forward this to anyone who you think might enjoy this......
and also to Fred DeLaPena and Scott Barton.

Till then, Seth is out like trout!