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Possibly all five of our new fish: a marigold platy and four neon tetras.

When our family decided to take on the responsibility of a pet (or more accurately, multiple pets), we agreed we wouldn’t do it unless we could do it “right.”

Heh.

Turns out “right” is more elusive to the beginner than I thought. Although my son initially wanted a betta, we steered him in the direction of a tropical fish tank because a betta in a little bowl is a sad betta.

We thought we waited for our tank’s nitrogen cycle to complete, but we lost three of four fish. We thought we were feeding our fish appropriately, but we were feeding them too much. We wanted happy fish, but began with one male and one stressed-out female platy, and four neon tetras that needed more buddies to form a shoal. We were overwhelmed by advice online.

Believe it or not, I’m not here to focus on what we’ve gotten wrong. I’m actually celebrating what we’ve learned along the way. Because as I type, 11 fish swim placidly behind me: our two platys have a new female friend to divide the, um, affection of the male; and our four tetras are now eight.

We understand the nitrogen cycle, and have gotten pretty good at regular partial water changes. We are now feeding our fish much less than we had been—the substrate and water are cleaner for it, and our fish are healthier (yay!). We also hope we’ve achieved a happy environment for all of the inhabitants of our tank.

As a fabulous bonus, we’re happy, too. So happy, in fact, that while at the pet store purchasing our new fish, we priced out larger tanks! Our son would like one for his birthday—which gives us a few months to work on our skills, and consult sources we’re coming to trust—and we’ve picked out a spot for a 30-gallon tank.

Our fish are as perfect a fit for our family as we could have hoped. My son and I handle the maintenance, my husband is mastering feedings. The kids like to check in on their tropical friends, know each by name (as far as they can tell)—my daughter even tells her preschool friends about our platys and tetras. We must be doing something right.

“The Last Kid on the Block” is a continuing series following the Knudsen family’s progress selecting and caring for their first pets. Andrea Knudsen lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two children.

The cloudiness of our fish tank, however slight, was a little alarming. We have every intention of providing our tropical fish a clean and comfortable habitat.

I must confess that I’ve been feeling like an expert pet owner: we’ve kept our fish alive for six weeks (apparently I’m easily impressed). I’m happy to report we still have two platys and four neon tetras, all of which seem active and, dare I say, happy.

The blessing and curse of pet fish is, they are low-maintenance. My son and I change 15-20% of the water in the tank every week, and we all take turns feeding the fish every evening. The status quo makes it easy to feel confident!

Until, that is, the water in our tank began looking cloudy two days ago, as if tiny particles were floating throughout the aquarium. Eh, nothing a water change can’t fix, I thought. But vacuuming/siphoning the gravel in the process of changing the water may have made matters worse.

I thought we’d mastered this pet thing! I panicked a little, expecting the worst. But according to the Internet, cloudy water is a common symptom, the causes of which range from continued nitrogen cycling to overfeeding.

In our case, overfeeding seems like the most likely cause: while we know one flake per fish is a good ratio, we were coming to the end of the introductory packet of fish food that came with our tank, and had been using piles of the tiny crumbs at the bottom of said packet. We were trying not to waste, you know? What I suspect, though, is that many of the tiny flakes intended as fish food landed among the substrate and became food for hungry-turned-happy bacteria. A case of our eyes being bigger than our fish’s stomachs.

The solution, I hope, is switching to a fresh container of whole fish food flakes, and monitoring that each fish is able to eat its fill without leaving leftovers at the bottom of the tank. General consensus among the fish-loving online community is that fish should eat what they need within two minutes. Unfortunately tonight I think we still overshot our goal, uneaten flakes littering the gravel once again. Hopefully we’ll do better tomorrow.

I am proud of my problem-solving skills… assuming I solve the problem. Time will tell. We had intended to add more fish to the tank, but now we’ll wait until the water returns to crystal clear before messing with the bio load. Our 10-gallon tank should support four additional fish (for a total of 10), and my son has his eye on two more neon tetras and two fancy guppies. Hopefully they’ll join our little community before long!

“The Last Kid on the Block” is a continuing series following the Knudsen family’s progress selecting and caring for their first pets. Andrea Knudsen lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two children.

With the initial nitrogen cycle of our aquarium behind us, we added four new neon tetras, as well as a platy friend for Indy.

It’s been six weeks since we embarked on the journey of pet ownership. I admit it hasn’t exactly followed the itinerary I’d planned (you know, the buy-fish-and-live-happily-ever-after plan), but somehow we’ve ended up in a good place. Ah, if only I could guarantee this was the final destination!

Only one of our four fish—Indy—survived our aquarium’s first nitrogen cycle, and he continues to thrive. We’d been testing the ammonia level in the tank, and since it had remained low enough we decided to visit the pet shop again.

The shop’s test of our water sample confirmed that ammonia is all but gone, and a member of the staff advised us that we were ready to add fish. Quite honestly, I was thinking that one new fish would be plenty, but when the salesperson suggested three or four, my family and I got carried away. My son picked out a female sunset platy (for Indy) and three teeny neon tetras. Four tetras swam into the net, and suddenly we had five new fish.

I’m caught between the excitement of building our aquarium again and the fear that maybe this isn’t wise… I’ve managed to justify it because the tank has cycled and the tetras truly are teeny, thus I’m hoping they won’t create much of an additional biological load.

Indy, for one, seems to be liking his new lady friend, whose name is either Lillia II or Rose, depending on my daughter’s mood. I think he’s smitten, but I’m not so sure she’s interested.

The neon tetras are too small for us to tell apart, so they’ve been named Michigan, Fishigan, Wishigan and Tishigan. I know tetras are happiest in larger numbers, and I hope adding a few at a time isn’t too stressful on the little guys (or girls—I’ve only had an anatomy lesson with respect to platys).

With all of this excitement also came the necessity of our first weekly 25% water change. Our new gravel vacuum worked so well, I wasn’t able to clean all of the gravel before it had siphoned out enough water, but the water looks crystal clear. We also realized, rather sheepishly, that the tank’s filter is much quieter if we slightly increase the water level. (Yes, it took us six weeks.)

It’s truly a pleasure to have several fish in the aquarium again, and we’re all enjoying watching as they adapt to their new home. I’m hopeful, despite my misgivings, that our pets will continue to thrive. We’ll see where this journey takes us.

“The Last Kid on the Block” is a continuing series following the Knudsen family’s progress selecting and caring for their first pets. Andrea Knudsen lives in suburban Chicago with her husband and two children.