The bus ride home was pretty bumpy. I did my best to secure him, but I did end up with some water on my pants by the end of the ride. During the ride, Benson stayed as close to me as possible and stared at me most of the time; by now it is more than obvious that he takes comfort in receiving affection and attention. Once I started to get off the bus, my bus driver, the sassmaster, who somehow hadn't noticed that I was carrying a fish tank when I got on the bus, yelled at me for having Benson with me. Apparently, it is illegal to have fish on the bus, though I have the feeling she just didn't get hugged enough as a child. Regardless of whatever traumatic past the bus driver may have experienced, I ended up having to arrange for a ride on Monday morning. The transportation issue was kind of a hassle, but I enjoyed being able to spend more time observing Benson over the weekend.
By the time I set Benson's tank down inside of my house, his "furniture" and plants had been knocked around, so I rearranged everything to keep my family from judging me and to make him as comfortable as possible. He was very excited to meet everyone. Whenever I approached his tank with a new family member (parents, three siblings, three cats, and two dogs), he rushed to the front of the tank and swam excitedly from left to right, looking at me and then swimming as closely as possible to the family member(s) to stare at them. My parents' initial reaction when they first saw the tank was to change the water, but I did not bring dechlorinator, so I had to dramatically jump in front of my tank in slow motion to prevent them from doing so. After I saved his life, you'd think he'd want to repay me by showing off his cool tricks and NOT make me seem like a chump, but instead, when I stuck my finger into the water for him to follow, he stared blankly at it. But fortunately, after a couple seconds of being the little tease that he sometimes is, he ended up chasing my finger and doing his cute little happy dance under the watchful and amazed eyes of my family. In addition to winning the hearts of my family, he seems to share my love for cats (he fluttered to the front of the tank every time I approached him with one of my fur-babies), which fortunately made no attempts to eat him over the duration of the weekend.
Harley, Benson's "brother"
In class on Monday, I decided that even though my water was not in terrible condition, I should change it since I had to pour most of it out on Friday. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I had already thoroughly cleaned all of the gravel that I realized that I was disturbing the bacterial ecosystem in his tank. I ended up having to add more bacterial supplement to his water in order to make up for the mistake I had made.
On the bright side, the ammonia and nitrate levels dropped back down to 0 ppm, and Benson was clearly happy to be in cleaner water. After being placed back into his "renovated" home, he swam with a great deal of energy all around the tank. I am at least happy that he was appreciative of his clean tank, and next time I'll know not to mess with the gravel.
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