It was four years ago today I lauded my legendary red eye tetra Cedric and his tankmates for their survival despite my astoundingly poor job of taking care of them and the aquarium.
Cedric, as you know, lived in my tank for an astounding four years and seven months, right up until about 23 months ago he swam off to fishy heaven. Nonetheless, his spirit lives on, that spectacular little fish who hung on to an admittedly boring life inside a little five-gallon aquarium, for such a long time. None of my other fish have done that!
Or, actually…
My serpae tetra Ash is about to beat that record! Cedric lived in my tank for 4 years and 214 days, the exact same amount of time it has been since my sister brought me Ash on my birthday in 2006, along with other serpae tetras Quigley and Templeton, plus sunset molly Pyro. Pyro died only a couple months later. Lost Quigley sometime last year. Last February, when the big ass Superbowl weekend blizzard knocked out our electricity for 30 hours, this meant my house went that long without heat, and as such the fish tank got really cold, killing my algae eater Stripe, and nearly killing Ash and Templeton, though once the heat was back on, they were fine again after a bit. Except Templeton died a few weeks later. Ash was all alone until May when I got another algae eater, Aurelius. So now it’s just the two of them.
Congrats, Ash! For your resilience under the care of someone like me, who should probably never ever be in charge of any living thing.
