Recently, the SP hasn't been able to go to sleep without a light on and her light of preference is the hall light; the same hall light that is positioned perfectly to shine brightly in my eyes as I try to sleep also.
To overcome that problem, I decided to buy one of those cute little electric lamps that has a little aquarium on it, like an LED light and the fake fish swim by in the bluish light all night long. It's sort of mezmerizing. The problem is that one of the fish looks like Nemo.
DH made the little mistake of asking SP if she'd like a real Nemo. Being a 3 year old, she of course said "yes!". We've never had a fish tank before so we didn't know what it would take to get a real Nemo in our home!
A few dollars later, we have a beautiful 14 gallon, 150 lb salt water tank sitting in her room in place of the LED light. I feel a little silly.
Perhaps you've never thought about it, and I never had before but did you realize that when you buy a salt water tank, you have to let it run with just the water in it for like 4-6 weeks before you can even put any coral or fish in it? So we haven't even bought the fish or coral yet, it's just a tank with some water and rocks in it right now. We're excited to buy the fish though...around Christmas.
11 backward glances:
How fun! I think that's a great idea!
What a sweet idea.
We have fish too and while lovely to look at, I sometimes think they are more trouble than they are worth...good luck with Nemo :)
we bought the boys a fish tank right after Finding Nemo came out.
After about two weeks, they were bored with it and it became just another creature for me to clean up after and feed.
They are pretty, though.
Hah! That's too funny, Amy. Yeah, talk about one reallll expensive night light, huh? But kids love fish tanks, so she should go nuts for it once you actually add some fish. :)
Amy ~
That is too funny...Kaitlin also uses her fish tank as her 'nightlight'! However, I would never take a picture of it to post...it doesn't look nearly that pretty. I have to admit...cleaning fish tanks IS NOT something I enjoy so it doesn't get done as often as it should. I am wondering though...what is a salt water tank and how is it different from a regular tank??
wow. nice lamp! Not only is it expensive, but it makes noise at night and takes lots of work to maintain!
Geezzzzzzz..... when my daughter went through that, we went with the measly dim light bulb thing. very cheap. very boring.
The good thing is that she will have something cool to watch that might help keep her awake. :)
funny post... thanks.
We also tried the fish tank as a night light. Jake was only 18 months old and Brodie was 3 months old. We figured it would help me "see" them in the night without actually using a light.
Cleaning the tank wasn't worth the work. So when we moved to Bountiful, the fish didn't come with us.
2 months was all we lasted with those stinky things.
Hope you have better luck!
Very cool. Have fun keeping it clean.
Consider a Picasso Triggerfish. They're really neat fish, look like Nemo a little, but they're also somewhat interactive. It's not uncommon for a triggerfish to follow your finger around the tank... they're like aquatic dogs... kind of. :)
Cute idea! Is she sleeping soundly now?
thanks for all your comments!
Jill: a salt water tank can accommodate tropical fish wheras a freshwater tank can have goldfish and other freshwater fish. And the guy at the store told me that saltwater tanks shouldn't necessarily be cleaned by hand, it has an auto cleaning device which is nice. In fact since the tank has to prep so long before you can even add stuff to it, i can imagine you would't want to change the water at all. So that was good news for me!
Steve: i'm going to check into the trigger fish. since it's for a kid, that might be a fun thing for her to have - like a little gimmicky thing sort of. i think i might have heard of that sort of fish before!
I had a freshwater tank (10 gallon - nothing big) before we had kids. When the twins came, I packed it up.
Recently, however, I got it going again and the twins love looking at the fish.
I chose freshwater because more can go wrong with salt water but the fish are prettier with salt water.
The cleaning thing is the worst part. I just recently cleaned our tank and it looks great. I'm now determined to keep it that way.
Good luck!
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