Two Cockatoos

We (OK, mostly DH ), in the process of cleaning up and shuffling things around in the shed, decided to dig out and clean up the old fish tank. It still scrubs up OK, even after all this time sitting in dust. Using the waste water that we redirected from the reverse osmosis filter (i.e. pretty much perfectly clean, previously just sent down the drain - I really have to post about that some time) the tank was filled, the old heater and light were checked and installed (they still work!), new gravel/stones and plants were added. Finally, on the weekend, DH took the boys to the pet store, and they came home with the new residents. We now have four pacific blue-eye fish, and two little catfish to help with the “housekeeping”

Master D has adopted them and is taking the feeding of them very seriously. He has decided that it’s his job. I guess he’s happy that we finally acquired some sort of “pet” - they asked for a baby sister, then a dog…

When Master A was sick in hospital, there was an aquarium in the common room, and the boys loved visiting the fish. We’ve been told that watching fish swim lowers your stress level and heart rate, so now that I’ve given up on getting a clear photo, I may just try that out.

Apologies for the quality of the photo; apparently fish don’t like to pose, and these guys are quick, not to mention the light reflecting off the glass! If you want a good photo, check out the link I included above. This is really just to show the eye of the one on the right - if you look closely, you can’t see the pupil; I’m not sure if it’s blind in that eye, but it seems to like checking out the fish that keeps looking at it in the glass.

Master D has already named three of them:
“Camera Shy” is the catfish that hides under the wood and in the pebble “caves”, or scoots around cleaning the glass at the back of the fish tank;
“Gardener” is the catfish that likes hanging out around the plants;
“Bung-eye” is the pacific blue-eye with some sort of deformity of its right eye (as mentioned above) - DH said “that one has a bung eye” and it stuck (I also suggested “Dudley”, as a play on “Dud-eye”, but he didn’t like that so much - however, today he told me that he was using both names… so complicated!) [I realise that we’re verging heavily into the realm of political incorrectness, but I assure you we don’t talk about people this way.]

The other three look far too alike at this point, but I suspect we’re going to see some personalities developing (yes, I know, they’re fish, but we’ve already seen some behaviours unique to some of them, so…) We’ll see…