My wife and I had a plan for deciding when it would be time to have kids. We laid out a series of steps to seeing what we could keep alive under our care. So, we bought a plant. After a couple of poor starts we still have the same plant basking in the warmth of our living room for the past 8 years. So we got a small fish tank and a small selection of the pet store's finest that promptly died about two weeks later.