Our class has an aquarium.
An aquarium is a fancy word for a fish tank. A fish tank is a home for fish.
In our fishtank we have a fat Buddha statue. It is an important symbol in Chinese and Eastern culture. In China, people rub the Buddha’s belly for luck like we cross our fingers. But don’t stick your hand in the fishtank!
Our biggest fish are called Dalmatian Mollies, because they are a kind of fish named Mollies. They have black and white spots like dalmatians!
There are three Mollies: Dot, Spot, and Molly the Molly.
You can also see our Black Skirted Platies Tetras. They are white with black stripes, and it looks like they are wearing a little black skirt.
Sylvia thought these were called Platies, and so she named them the letters that spell the word Platy. P, L, A, T, Y.
But these are actually called Tetras, which are a different kinda of fish. So now we have 5 Tetras named PLATY.
We don’t know what the little orange fish are called yet! Maybe one of us will be a scientist and find out what they are called. We have 5 little orange fish. They are named Mary, Barry, Larry, Carrie, and Jerry.
Do you notice something about those names? They rhyme. That means the ends of the words sound the same, like CAT and SAT and MAT.
In the corner of our aquarium is an air stone. It makes bubbles for the fish to swim in and makes the water better. Plus they look pretty!
Fish do not breathe air like you and me. People have lungs that take the air we breathe and get out the oxygen for our bodies.
Fish need oxygen too, but they breathe water using gills, not lungs. Gills get the oxygen out of the water for the fish.
There are a few more pets in our aquarium. This is August. He is a plecostomus:
A plecostomus (or a suckerfish) does an important job: it cleans! The pleco sticks to the side and sucks and sucks. It eats lots of things that grow in the fishtank.
The plecostomus does not like to come out during the day. He hides in the back of the tank because he does not like the light. The plecostomus is nocturnal. Nocturnal means he comes out mostly in the nighttime.
The plecostomus may look boring and slow in the day, but at night he is very fast!
We also have frogs in our aquarium:
These frogs live in the water, but they breathe air like we do! They hide under plants or rocks until they need to take a breath. Then they swim up to the top and get a breath of air really fast!
* * *
One of our girl Mollies is especially big. We think she may be getting ready to have babies. We hope we have lots of little baby fish soon!
There is something else special about our aquarium! It is PINK!
PINK is a color made by mixing RED and WHITE.
Our pink aquarium is very special to us. We have a Pink Aquarium Book in which we write stories.
Come visit in the morning before school, or stay after school, and watch us feed the fish!
"How Beautiful You Are" 