55g stocking sanity check

[jjohnwm]

So...you paid for, and thought you had bought, a completely different fish than the one you actually received? This situation sounds vaguely familiar...

My wife insists that this happens when one allows one's karmic burden to increase to such a horrendous level that the universe simply cannot wait for you to die so that it can reincarnate you as a garden slug or a planarian...so it therefore takes out a partial payment in the form of the wrong fish for your tank.

I'm not ready to believe this...personally, I live my life as such an exemplary human being that it makes no sense for this to happen to me, yet it did indeed happen.

I think that there was likely some sort of snafu in the Karmic Accounting Department; hopefully this explanation can easy the suffering within your soul at least a little bit...

 

[Conchonius]

Well, perhaps your disappointment in getting the wrong fish is offset by its enjoyment of the good care it receives in your tanks. If you hadn't bought that bumblebee cat, it might've gone to an owner that keeps it in a 5g with neon tetras, a betta, and plans to upgrade to a bigger tank "hopefully very soon".

Buddhists believe that even being a Buddha is a form of suffering, after all: They are people who have reached a sufficient level of enlightenment to release themselves from the cycle of reincarnation, yet continue to endure it so that they can help others break free. Maybe you've been such a good fishkeeper that the universe has assigned you to save fish from a worse fate?

In other news, the next project with the 55g will probably be moving the cories to a breeding tank. Some of the fish are so gravid that they look about to burst, but any eggs that are laid get eaten immediately, and I would like to eventually breed the "not-eques" cories. They're almost certainly a color variant bred to look like the real species, but they are still rather handsome animals.