The Three Tomatos

Dan and I have had fish as pets since the early days of our marriage. Due to various maladies and calamities, the types of fish have changed...except "Big Mama" - our very large plecco. Over the years, she grew to be over a foot long and did a marvelous job of keeping the algae off the sides of the tank and off the rocks.

After losing some of our original fish and only left with Big Mama, we visited a pet store and simply stated to the fish expert "we need something that will last". He pointed us to these itty-bitty orange-ish colored fish and assured us they would out-swim any predators and stick around for a while.

We purchased 3 and they were dubbed the Three Tomatos (more for their semblance in color than anything else).

They did indeed stick around for a while and provided hours of entertainment as they zoomed back and forth across our 75 gallon tank. Big Mama tired of trying to capture them and they lived together as a big happy family.

Eventually we lost the 3 tomatos and found ourselves again with only Big Mama. We decided that at this point, we may be over the fish phase and opted not to purchase any more. When Big Mama left us earlier this year, we cleaned out the tank and moved it into the garage, unsure of what we would do with it.

Today, Dan was cleaning the garage in prep for moving both cars in for the winter and Will noticed him moving the fish tank. Will commented that he missed his fishy friends and became sad. Dan took a break from his chores and took on a craft assignment. He cut a piece of the paper that served as the backdrop of our fish tank and then made the fish (of course to resemble the three tomatos) out of some craft paper we had. Add one googly eye and voila!

This now hangs on the wall right next to Will's bed....he is very excited.