Something happened on the way home from the fish shop...

They died! :o(

Which was a pretty traumatic start to our fish-keeping activities I can tell you.

Having done our research, we knew a new tank is a pretty hostile place for fish. The chemistry hasn't settled down and all sorts of nasties wait in store - like ammonia spikes and whatnot - so your first fish have to be fairly robust to ride through that while the tank is "cycling." Once it has stabilised and the bacteria have started working, further additions are less traumatic, although they still have to be carefully managed. We added the bacterial culture yesterday once the water was conditioned and had a further 24-hour wait until today before excitedly setting off to purchase our first fish.

We'd opted for Cherry Barbs. Hardy little specimens, allegedly, and more than capable of coping with the harsh few weeks of a new aquarium's life. Three is both the minimum size shoal for these fish, and the maximum number we can introduce in one go, so we bought... three.

But we didn't even have chance to introduce them to the water, or take the blame for being total noobs and doing something wrong ourselves that killed them off. They were already dead when we lifted their clear plastic bag from its brown paper wrapping.

We figured they'd died of cold. The shop had, rather stupidly, bagged them up while we were still umming and ahhing about test kits, so they'd sat on the counter for ten minutes. With a single paper bag to protect them, they weren't very well insulated from the cold and, being rush hour, it took us 45 minutes to get home from the aquatic suppliers, which proved just too long.