Fish are friends, not food

It turns out that marrying Maria also entailed betrothal to a tank full of tropical or maybe-not-so-tropical fish. After eight months of being together, only one of them has died, so I figure that we've been doing pretty well in the fish-raising department, and Maria and I have been talking about upgrading and getting something that requires a little more attention and care. We've felt that we were ready for, you know, the next step. Perhaps a tortoise, or a sloth, if they are legal to own in this country. Four fish remained, at the end of those eight months, and the tank looked really empty, so we went off and purchased two more, a danio (some kind of fish) and a guppy (some kind of fish that is better known). Now, we already had a danio in the tank, as well as a guppy, and we figured that they could both use a companion. I picked out this new guppy, not because I don't trust my wife's choice in fish, but because it had this really large tail fin, which, when it caught the morning light, pretty much just dazzled. It reminds of Liza Minelli's eye-shadow.

(In which Maria interrupts: The fish have names. The new danio is Herculaneum and the new guppy is Pompeii. Volcanoes erupted in both of those cities.)

When we dumped, quite unceremoniously (as though the word "dumped" could indicate anything ceremonious or graceful), the new danio and the new guppy into the tank after letting thier home/baggie of PetsMart tank water acclimate, the fish immediately paired up with their respective species or genus or whatever. This led me to wonder just how a danio recognizes a fellow danio. I don't think that our danio has ever seen itself. We don't allow mirrors around our fish because we don't want them to develop any kind of body-image issues. I speculate that there must be some sort of secret sign among the species or genus or whatever, some intricate, arcane, combination of fin wiggling. I don't know. If there is anyone who is a member of some esoteric fish-fact club, please comment something useful. 

Anyway, back to the story that I haven't really started yet, a few days after introducing the new fish to the little glass microcosm, we began noticing that the new guppy, the one with the glittering tail that always made my day, was losing little bits of that magnificent endpiece. Days passed, and the tail-mass diminished more and more. I began to suspect foul play. I have my suspicions. The new danio must be the one with the sweet tooth, a logical deduction which makes me feel sort of clever, since this aquatic cannablism episode began when he came to the neighborhood. This shocked me; I don't remember seeing anything like this in "Finding Nemo." I can come up with only three possible motives for the new danio's unnatural appetite for my guppy's tail: 1) He is jealous that his dorky, whispy, little grey tail doensn't attract any admiring glances, sort of like Joseph's brothers each time he paraded past in his techni-color dreamcoat, 2) Maria and I just aren't feeding the things enough, 3) Maybe tails just taste good. Or maybe he's just auditioniong for some stage play based on the Donner party and he's pupil to Stanislavski and this is just method acting. 

I have since been contemplating a possible solution. We could continue to allow the new danio to eat my guppy's tail, until it is nothing more than a finless body that floats around the tank according to the current generated by the water filter. We could start sprinkling in more fish food, in hopes that the increase will satiate the new danio, like it is some vengeful pagan deity and we are the superstitious villagers that leave it offereings. I've considered picking up some instructional self-defense-for-fish videos, but Billy Blanks has yet to expand his franchise to that  particular market. 

Late at night when the shadows swathe my face and all I hear is the tick-tock, tick-tock of the midnight clock, I have considered clipping off one of the new danio's sidefins, to see how it enjoys only swimming in circles.    

UPDATE: The old guppy, the one who didn't have a spectacular tail but seemed to have a very temperate personality, has since perished. His tail, also, appears to have been nibbled at.

UPDATED UPDATE: Maria and I have just arrived home from our skydiving lessons and have discovered that my new guppy has also kicked it. The new danio swims around, and, if that fish had lips, I swear it'd be smiling.   

UPDATE TO THE UPDATED UPDATE: The taxidermist called and he said he can't do it, they're too small.