Starvin’ Marvin: The Piranha Who Ruined My Faith in Fish (and Glass)
A Cautionary Tale for Anyone Who Thinks Aquariums Are Relaxing
It started, as these disasters always do, with good intentions and absolutely no research.
I thought I wanted a fish. A peaceful, tranquil fish. The kind of fish you watch while sipping tea and pondering life’s quiet mysteries. The kind of fish that just floats there, minding its own business, reminding you to breathe.
What I got was Marvin.
Starvin’ Marvin.
Marvin was a piranha. Not metaphorically. Literally. A piranha.
If you’ve never owned a piranha, let me break it down for you: imagine a goldfish, but with anger issues and a jaw designed by whoever thought bear traps were too gentle. Marvin didn’t swim — Marvin patrolled. He moved around that tank like a cop working overtime and hating every minute of it. His eyes said one thing and one thing only:
Feed me, or I will eat whatever I can get my teeth into, starting with your hopes and dreams.
And reader, he did.
The teenage salesman — who radiated all the confidence of someone who had never once kept a fish alive — told me Marvin would “do fine with other fish if introduced properly.” Which, as it turns out, is pet store code for:
He’ll eat them. Slowly. Starting with the parts they need to live.
My first mistake was believing in humanity.
My second mistake was buying goldfish.
I dropped them in like little peace treaties. Marvin watched them the way a hitman watches unpaid debts. One by one, they disappeared. Not quickly. Oh no. Marvin had a flair for psychological warfare. He’d let them swim. Let them dream. Let them think maybe, just maybe, they’d made it. Then he’d reduce them to confetti.
Friends would visit and say, “Oh wow, he seems very active.”
Active? Marvin was staging a one-fish remake of Goodfellas. He wasn’t swimming. He was plotting.
And here’s something nobody tells you about owning a piranha:
They will try to eat everything. Including your finger. I know this because I tested it. Multiple times. Like an idiot.
Eventually, I stopped buying goldfish. Not because I’d grown wise. Because my bank started flagging the charges for “feeder fish” as suspicious activity. Also, I began to suspect Marvin wasn’t eating them out of hunger. He was doing it out of spite.
But Marvin wasn’t finished. No, Marvin had one last trick.
One day, Marvin broke through the glass.
Not in a symbolic way. In a shards-everywhere, surprise-piranha-in-the-bathtub way.
I had to keep him in my bathtub for two days. You ever share a bathroom with a piranha? Changes you. Changes how you look at bathtubs. Changes how you look at life.
Do I miss him? No.
Do I respect him? Yes.
He won.
The Saltwater Prison Years
After Marvin, I thought, “Let’s try something calmer. Something prettier. Something less murder-y.”
So I got a saltwater aquarium. Seven years. Seven years of testing water like a mad scientist, buying fish with names I couldn’t pronounce, and spending more money on equipment than I did on my first car.
It looked incredible. Like a tiny, overpriced ocean.
The day I took it apart felt like getting parole.
People say aquariums are relaxing. These people are either lying or have a team of marine biologists on speed dial. A saltwater tank is not a hobby. It’s a relationship with something passive-aggressively trying to die at all times.
I loved that tank. I hated that tank.
It was beautiful. It was exhausting.
It was like dating someone gorgeous who needs constant therapy and $300 of skincare products monthly.
In the end, I served my sentence. Seven years, time served, no parole violations.
And that’s why today, my pets don’t swim. They sit, they bark, or they stare at me like I owe them money — but they don’t require chemistry sets to survive.
#FishRegrets #AquariumTrauma #StarvinMarvin #GlassIsOverrated #SaltwaterIsForTheOcean #MyBathtubIsForMeNow