Write@Home
Winter 2015

Pets

Arowana - isolated on black background

Everyone has a hobby, and I love to collect ornamental fish. Today I will introduce to everyone my favorite pet fish. It's a Dragon Fish or Arowana.

I bought this fish in 2017 for $75 in a fish shop at the Chinese market in Mississauga. The fish is about 25-30 cm long, and silvery white colour. Arowana is not a common fish, so I am very excited. Especially, Asian people love the Arowana because of its beauty, its slow, leisurely, flying dragon swimming shape. We believe that Arowana fish brings good luck and wealth. Especially, there are many yellow and red Arowanas that are sold for hundreds to thousands of dollars.

I keep this fish in a rectangular aquarium about 50 gallons. The aquarium is beautifully decorated with aquatic plants, 3D decals, wooden branches and white pebbles. I change the water weekly and feed regularly twice a day. On the weekend I feed him half a shrimp. After about 3 months, it completely grew and the scales changed from silvery white to luxurious sparkling silver. Once in the middle of the night, when my mother went down to the refrigerator to get some milk for my daughter, she found the fish out of the tank lying on the floor. I thought it couldn't live anymore, but by miracle, when I put the fish in the tank, it was still alive and slowly recovered. Since then, I have loved it even more and I have been more careful.

With this transformation, the fish seems to be raised to new heights. When my friends came to visit my house, everyone admired and praised it, asking me where and how much I had bought it. When I told them the price, they didn't believe me and confirmed that this fish cost at least $1000 dollars. Even my wife asked me many times because she was afraid that I would buy expensive things but say I bought them cheap.

One day the fish suddenly died and I don't know why. It's a feeling when you lose a family member. Every day when I eat dinner, I sit down to eat, look at the empty fish tank, and I feel even more sad. The foods also don't taste yummy any more. Currently my aquarium only has golden fish.