lydy | I wish my subconscious would learn English

Last night, I did a water change on the 55 gallon aquarium. I'd noticed that the pl*co, Plato (I wonder how many people have named their pl*co Plato) had been having a difficult time finding places to hide from the blood parrots. Plato is tolerably long, but the parrots are mean and persistent. Thank goodness they have no teeth. I rearranged some things so that there were places small enough for him to wriggle into that the parrots couldn't manage. The picture stone in the back right corner I moved a little closer to the rear wall, and slanted it so that it created a little triangular cave.

When I fed them, the parrots went at it again in full force. When Julian, the largest of the blood parrots, showed up with a wound, I'd moved two of the other fish, a Chinese algae eater named Ming the Merciless, and a severum, to another tank. While this preserved Julian from attacks from Ming, it also destabilized the power structure within the tank. Julian became more ill, which appeared to make him even crankier. The constant bickering and pecking and actual bullying amongst the four parrots bothers me. I'm always worried one of them will be badly hurt.

I noticed that I hadn't seen he smallest of the blood parrots, Helena, for some time. Helios, the one just a bit larger than she was, had a squarish bite taken out of his tail, and looked like he was acquiring more stress marks and white spots. Jasper, the next up in size, looked just fine, and Julian was doing pretty well. The wound had healed, and he was swimming on his side far more rarely. I looked around a bit, and found Helena way at the back, behind the picture rock I'd just moved. I was a little surprised that she fit there, but amongst other things, parrots are pretty strong fish and they move stuff around.

All night long, I had weird dreams. There's now a consistent fish store in my dream-world. Usually, it's a lovely and benign place. On occasion, it's terrifying. The people there are, well, dream people which means that they're even less consistent and logical than real people. I was running back and forth from my house to the fish store throughout the dream, carrying Julian in a tupperware container, having serious discussions about whether or not he should have surgery, and what medicines he needed. I brought in Helios at one point, also, and there was much concern about his tail. From what I can remember, I had this type of dream all night long.

This morning, I noticed that Helena was still where she'd been last night. I had a flash of alarm, and reached in, moving the rock away from the back wall. She shot out, badly scraped all along her right side, less badly on her left, and her dorsal fin is clamped down and shredded. She'd been trapped against a sandstone rock all night long. My poor baby! My poor little fish. I was on my way to work, so all I could do is toss some Melafix into the water and go. Melafix is the great patent medicine of the fish world. It works on everything, and harms no one. Ok, for real, scrapes and wounds are exactly the sort of thing Melafix is for. It is an antibiotic and healing agent. It's derived from tea tree oil, oddly enough. It smells very nice.

All night long, my subconscious was trying to tell me that one of my fish was in trouble, but it couldn't even manage to tell me _which_ one. Stupid subconscious. If it'd just learn to speak English...