Hey you!
How’s your new year shaping up? Did you make resolutions? How many have you broken o!! Lol… I stopped making resolutions a little while ago, prefer to just keep striving for perfection, trusting God to help with chipping off the less than pretty bits, and working at it. To each their own though, if you made resolutions keep working at them, one day at a time ok?
On to this gist about fish, my brother in-law bought some really baby catfish (no I didn’t look up what baby catfish are called), and put them in a massive fish tank. It’s his first time of rearing them, and my second time of closely watching (maybe even being responsible for) fish growing since I was like 5 years old (long, long, long time ago my father had a poultry and a fish farm – he actually worked in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries department).
Back to our fish in 2015, each time I go to see them, I learn something; sometimes a lesson so ‘alive’ I start to compare them with us humans. I had a chat with my sister this morning when we went to feed them, and decided I would capture my thoughts so far, and expand them as they grow (maybe even show y’all a photo or video of them sometime).
Ready? I’m excited about this!
1. Baby fish are really demanding, require a great deal of care. Their water must be changed every few days otherwise they get poisoned in it; you have to follow the pace of their eating when feeding them otherwise the leftover food in the water sinks to the bottom and becomes a problem. Still on feeding, if they’re underfed, they die. If they’re overfed, they die. (It’s worse than looking after a baby)!
2. Carers must be as intuitive and perceptive as possible. We know the that are active, the ones that are not as active, the ones we need to prod so they move around and eat, and the ones that have passed on but look like they’re still alive (which is a health problem for the others). So we’re constantly looking.
3. Fish are a lot of work! But, it’s rewarding to see them grow, and feed, and grow, and feed, and grow… (you get the whole idea)
Remember what I said about following their pace with feeding? That’s a bit tricky, and here’s how I relate it to us humans. So, my darling nephew has days when all he wants to eat is Pringle’s, and he refuses to eat anything else. Do we ‘follow his pace’ and let him eat 200 packs of Pringle’s? Of course not. But he must eat three times a day, and get snacks in as they’re due.
Relating that a bit further to our relationship with God, sometimes we ask for stuff that we are not ready for, might not be able to handle if we get it, or it’s just bad for us generally. God says no (or wait), and we ‘take up arms’. But He can see the full picture, He has the manual, and so He’s playing that out for us. Just like us and the fish.
Still on our relationship with God, sometimes He needs to move us to different waters because again He sees the entire picture but we’re either comfortable with where we are, afraid of change, or just being pig-headed (like I can be sometimes). And so we get hurt (sometimes gravely), because we are not in His plan.
Let’s take it to the fish. When they started growing and we saw that some of them were fattening faster than others, my brother in-law decided to separate them so the smaller ones would have a chance. They ‘refused’. I don’t know how to explain that, but they refused. One day, when the water change was going on, my brother in-law and sister saw something whitish and so they thought the silicon at the opening to the tank had given way. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that. It was a half-eaten fish. Yes, apparently fish eat each other.
Yep. Yep. I was as shocked as you might be now (if you didn’t know).
Final point for today, checking on these babies has reaffirmed to me two things.
A. Some of the fish died, and for no reason. Sometimes you do everything you’re supposed to do, tick all the boxes, put in the work, but stuff still goes wrong. It’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up.
B. Some of the fish are triple the size of others. Some people will run faster than others, others will get to their destination faster, and that’s okay too. Are you confident you’re in God’s plan? Are you working hard? Then stay in your lane. Don’t (and this was the first example that came to my head) cut your hair because the people with short hair are more successful, or dip your hands into things you know you shouldn’t because xyz did that and “oh, look at where they are now!”
Are you a little more relaxed with my title now? Let’s talk about it! Have you ever reared animals? What do you want to share from that experience?
PS: Baby catfish are called ‘sac fry’, or ‘fry’
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