MISQUAH — The new minnow tank at Tim’s Bait & Liquor, greeted last week with what this paper called quiet civic pride, developed a slow leak over the weekend, sending a thin and determined stream across the floor in the general direction of the beer cooler — a route Tim Brevik described as “the one path, of all the paths, that would cost me the most money.”

The minnows, Brevik reports, are unaffected and “honestly thriving — best-looking fatheads I’ve had in years, which is the part that gets me, because they’re thriving their way out the bottom of the tank.” The floor is another matter. A bucket has been placed; a second bucket has been placed beside the first, “for when the first one’s a problem”; and a third waits by the door, “for optimism’s sake, or pessimism’s, I can never keep them straight.” The leak runs, by his estimate, “a coffee can an hour, give or take, and mostly take after dark, which is when I’m not here to bail.”

Brevik declined to discuss the tank’s warranty, the installer, or the phrase “as-is,” noting only that the tank “owes nobody an apology yet” and that the leak “gives the place a water feature, which the city’s been after for years for the Main Street beautification, so really I’m ahead of the council, for once.” A regular who was present for this assessment, nursing a coffee and declining to be named in a dispute he wanted no part of, observed only that the tank had been “Tim’s pride and joy for about a week,” and that pride and joy “run about a week, around here, on most things.” A more permanent fix, Brevik said, is “on the list, right behind the third light tower,” which regulars understood to mean never.