I bought what?

So back to the nitrogen cycle and its necessity in the aquarium. When you put a fish whose normal habitat is as large as the ocean into a space that fits on your countertop, steps must be taken to keep its tiny new home clean. As fish eat, both their waste and uneaten food decompose and give off nitrogen. This is toxic to pretty much every living thing that you would intentionally put in the tank. So before putting anything that you would rather not die in the tank, you must force the tank to complete this cycle. The way most people used to do this was putting a hearty, but potentially aggressive fish called a damsel in the tank first. Let it eat and create source of ammonia so that the first level of bacteria can eat and multiply.
The last time I tried this, I just ended up with a problem fish that was nearly impossible to remove from the tank. This time I decided to go another path. Shrimp. If anything in the tank dies it must be removed immediately or the result is… an ammonia spike. So why not just throw something that has already died into the tank? This is great idea that I can’t really take credit for, but should save me the money and aggravation of another starter fish. So it was off to the grocery store. I went to the seafood counter and requested a single uncooked cocktail shrimp, “that little one in the back.” I got a bit of a double take on that one but she weighed the little guy anyway, and at $6.99 per pound, my total was $0.07
At the register the checkout girl picked the plastic bag containing my little ammonia machine off the belt and scanned it, looked at the register, back at the bag, at me, then back at the bag, before indignantly stating, “you bought one piece of shrimp.”

“Yes”

“Why did you buy one piece of shrimp?"

“I’m really not that hungry."

“…”

“Do you have a bonus card?”

I did not. A shame really, it would have brought my total down to $0.06

So in the tank it went. Let the ammonia spike begin.