The little crab that could (and almost died because of it)

Dantzel and I recently bought a fish tank to help top off our awesome apartment. Right now, we've got a school of six tetras, two aquatic crabs, an algae eater who thinks he's a tetra, an angelfish and puffer fish, all which swim (mostly) happily together.

Well, getting the tank started was a bit of a process. We went to Walmart late at night and bought the fish and tank, but when we got home, the tank was cracked. Because it was late and we were tired, we decided to take the tank back the next day and put the fish in a large mixing bowl.

Over the night, however, two of our fish jumped out of the bowl and died from suffocation. Since then, Dantzel has been jittery about jumping fish and the possibility of mounting casualties. We finally got another tank, set it up and things have been pretty cheery for a couple of days.

When we got home tonight however, we looked in the tank and noticed one of the crabs were missing. We looked around the tank, but couldn't find anything. I wondered if maybe the crabs got in a fight and one of them ate each other but decided that unless the victorious crab buried his conquered tankmate's corpse in the gravel, it would be impossible for him to completely disappear. I doubted that the crab could get out of the tank - I had watched them often as they humorously climbed on top of each other to try and climb out the three foot tall tank wall to no avail.

Until, giving up on finding our disappeared crab, I looked at the carpet and noticed what I at first thought was a really big spider crawling along the edge. Hollering for Dantzel, we cornered it and caught it, then dumped it unceremoniously back into the tank.

Luckily, crabs can live for a while outside of water, but not really for long. Luckily, I felt like playing Okami right afterward and so was looking for the TV remote and spotted the crab along the dark wall in the hallway (I rolled a natural 20). And luckily, it wasn't too late to save him.

The only possibility we thought it could have is that it climbed up the flimsy water plants and launched itself to the filter cord and climbed out that way - no easy task. Either way, it was an impressive, if not a somewhat exciting way to end our evening. I moved the plants away from any other climbable objects. Hopefully this will keep the crab from escaping again.

Moral of the story: You may think that you're kept down by the system and try to escape, and may actually succeed. That doesn't mean you're not going to die or starve to death or dry out. Think twice before escaping your tank.