He compliments someone who did something well, since that's apparently precedented.

"Thanks, man! Good defense in C-5!"

"Thanks!"

He smiles warmly but isn't sure what else he could say.

"Are we keeping these teams or mixing up?"

"I think squiggles and ombre should trade, ombre's doing better by more than chance and gumption."

"No quibbles here. Somebody from another division wanna -?"

"Yeah, sure, you and you swap."

And then they're off again.

This is great. He should absolutely come back and do this again at some point.

They seem like they'd be happy to have him!

They wouldn't be if they knew the truth. If they knew the entire truth they would realize he's completely fine, actually.

Are there any aquarium stores nearby? He doesn't have firm plans yet but it seems like a good time to start scoping them out, seeing how healthy the fish are and how knowledgeable the staff are and what they have for sale.

There is an aquarium store on the fifth floor of a mall between here and his place!

He goes in and checks it out.

He's never been anywhere like it before. There are shelves upon shelves of tanks - most of them are for small fish; many of them are for longer-lived fish with more stable care needs than the vernal fish he's kept before; many of them come from places where civilization hasn't yet encroached much on the waterways; all of them are intended for a market of aquarium hobbyists who can afford heat in winter. So at a glance at least half the fish are freshwater tropicals, and so the room is full of tanks of water heated to the temperature of a tropical lake, and the air is hot and intensely muggy, and in the center there are tanks full of plants under intense growth lights. It doesn't feel real at all; it feels like walking into someone's aquarium picspam. It feels like discovering that Star Ball was a documentary and now the starship Ventures has made contact with Amenta. Sure, aquariums exist; he had one. Sure, nicer tanks with fancier gadgets and different fish exist; that just makes sense. It's just that now he's surrounded by tanks every one of which is the kind of tank other people posted pictures of and not the kind of tank he had.

They're real. The chequy tetras that his oldest internet friend got at age two and credits with teaching her responsibility are real - their conspecifics are right here. The fish with the weird faces that people keep drawing as the aliens from that book series with the magic cats are real, and really have their weird faces - and he can't reach out and touch them so for once something hasn't really changed - but he can see whatever they happen to be doing at the moment, not clips of their funniest antics. There are overbred fish with huge cumbersome fins - most of these ones are white with subtle blue iridescence - kept in isolation because if they were put with other fish even the herbivores could eat them alive, and he spends a little too long watching them even though he decided a long time ago that he never wanted fish with genetic defects that meant they had to be quarantined.

There are axolotls. He doesn't buy any today.

He asks stupid questions, questions he already knows the answers to and sometimes questions he doesn't, questions about environmental requirements and species compatibility and filter setup and quiet pumps and plant health and feeding and tank cleaning and all the incredibly convenient aquarium tools they sell which are not improvised from literal garbage only some of which he has any idea what to do with. He looks at tanks. He takes notes on the available sizes, thanks the attendant for their time, lets them know he's going to go measure his apartment and maybe come back another day. He isn't afraid or tongue-tied; he doesn't feel like an impostor. Not here. He belongs here.

They're pleasant and salesy and let him know that this one size of tank is on backorder but if he takes the display model they can get him a discount, though of course he should measure the apartment and also make sure that whatever surface he has in mind can take the weight of a full tank.

He checks some measurements just in case, but fitting an axolotl tank into his apartment would be really disruptive of his ability to use the apartment for anything else. He could fit a five-gallon tank, maybe. He considers that. He asks his aquarium forum for ideas.

are you gonna change your username? autumnalfishetc? miscellaneousfish? :P

Five gallons is the perfect size for one long-finned sapphire fish!

autumnalfish has some kind of weird vendetta against sapphire fish

try a planted tank? dwarf sword ferns & curlicues.. really give them the attention they deserve.. with landscaping? pick an interesting shaped rock for a centerpiece.. you see my vision, right?

It's fundamentally impossible to give a correct answer to this question without more constraints than "not a saph" but for an incorrect answer that makes me happy I think autumnalfish should have the world's tiniest reef tank with dogleg corals and mayyyybe an anemone. Think about it. Is it reasonable? No. Is it anything like autumnalfish's previous experience? Also no. But I've been wanting to try it for a while and just don't have any more room to fit one more tank. Let me live vicariously through you, autumnalfish.

shrimp! i keep shrimp in a tank this size. they are absolutely adorable and have officially too many appendages. just make sure your tap water is low in copper.

try something tall and you can fit more gallons on the same footprint but then you have less gas exchange so grab an extra bubbler just in case. what's your decor? do you want to do a biotope tank or are you open to something like a monochrome theme? have you ever done a fishless cycle before and do you know if you can stand the smell of ammonia? my 30gal has postapocalyptic model ruins of a retrofuturistic lunar town and the fish will hide in those just as happily as they'll hide in a painstaking replica of fallen branches in a rainforest stream. it's not like any of them are wild-type fish and they look like aliens anyway tbh. idk i think more people should consider something bonkers like that. on the other hand, i bet you'd like something really densely planted with just a couple little fish to accentuate the plants. or instead of fish, get something that flowers underwater. maybe add a snail. i think you'd appreciate a snail. you don't have any yet, do you? with your auts? if you don't, maybe you should look into adding one.

What’s your beef with sapphs?

I'm open to a monochrome theme but I do see inflorescence's vision. I don't have any snails and that does sound nice. What's the coolest snail that absolutely cannot self-fertilize, will thrive by itself in a 5 gal, and would complement swords and curls?

I don't think I've seen your 5 gal with shrimp! Did I miss pictures? Did you add them in with the dwarf rings?

Sapphs just make me think of gross things. It's not their fault or anything, I'm just weird that way.

Thanks for the cool ideas!

He'll mull that over and in the mean time he'll go to the next all-caste off-peak territory flags game.

The flags are colorful! He can claim territory with them! Someone who was there last time asks if he's new in town.

"Yeah, I'm from Mekri. You?"

"I grew up in Cherend. Moved here with the husband when he opened a franchise of Workout Within here, it didn't have one before."

"Cool!"

"Do you go to Within? His is really nice, it's got the built in smoothie bar."

"I haven't but I guess right after moving is a good time to try new things."

"Yeah! They put the class schedule online but sometimes it's buggy so if you're close by you should sign up for stuff in person."