Today, S is here:
Scenic Les Diablerets, Switzerland! What a lovely place for an academic conference, with free time scheduled in for hiking and biking. When the conference ends, S will spend several days biking from Les Diablerets to Bavaria, where he'll spend a week visiting his mom. Fifteen days from now, he'll fly home.
The timing could thus not be any better for The Great Fish Tank Crisis of 2018 to commence.
Yesterday, E and I noticed that the fish tank filter spray bar was making a lot of noise. This happens when enough water evaporates that the spray bar is no longer under water, creating a fountain as the filtered water returns to the tank; and it was odd, given that S had recently replenished the tank.
This morning, as E and I were rushing out the door, we noticed the noise was even louder. How odd that another inch of water could have evaporated so quickly out of the 45-gallon tank. Then we noticed the water seeping out of the bottom of the tank, meandering down--a drip here, a rivulet there--into the expanding puddle on the floor below. I looked at the fish; the fish looked at me. And then, with fingers crossed that the tank would not burst in the next 20 minutes, E drove us to his job (he's still 8 practice hours and 2.5 months away from getting his driver's license) while I texted S in a panic.
The fish tank and its accompanying geekery are S's deal. I know about as much about maintaining the tank as he knows about making pottery--which is to say, usually enough, but not much when the clock is ticking. For example, I know how to feed the fish, and how to add tea-tree oil if someone takes a bite out of someone else's tail, and how to pull out and rinse off the filter, just as S knows how to appreciate a form and fill a handmade bowl with salad, and how to blow into a chickarina butt to make music. He doesn't know how to throw a pot or load a kiln under time pressure, just as I don't know how to stop a tank from emptying out onto the floor or how to set up a hospital tank and relocate 25 living fish into it. (Yes, S guided me through the Great 2010 Fish Tank Catastrophe over the telephone--at 3 a.m., Germany time--but in that case there were, alas, but two survivors to relocate, and the tank wasn't threatening to burst.)
Thankfully, our neighbor R was available and came to the rescue, with S checking in periodically by phone from his scenic bike ride near Les Diablerets. (The above photos were taken at each phone-call stop.) All fish have been transferred to the hospital tank in the kitchen, including the powerful giant plecostomus that resisted netting and that R consequently carried by its tail through the dining room; all plants have been transferred to a second spare tank and bucket; and enough tank water was salvaged to keep everyone healthy and happy through a water change or two. So that E and I don't have to enjoy the scent of decaying fish poop for two weeks, R and I scooped all the gravel out of the tank, carried it outside, rinsed it off, and spread it on cardboard on the porch to dry, and then we carried the tank outside and R rinsed that too. Then we pulled the fish tank stand away from the living room wall, so the floorboards will have a chance to dry out and hopefully unbuckle.
And then peace descended upon the house once more. When S returns, he can repair and reassemble the tank, and it will be ready for a brand new crisis the next time he goes out of town.
From less troubled times:
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