Fishes

The morning of Brandt's birthday, Mikayla called me and said, "How do you feel about fish?"  Well, I like to eat them, I like to watch them at aquariums, I think they are great swimmers.  She wanted to know how I would feel about Brandt getting fish for his birthday.  I said it would be fine.  So, for Brandt's golden birthday, Mikayla and Guy gave him six goldfish.  Isn't that cute?

Mikayla did a good job of selecting decoration to go in the tank, understanding as she does how much Brandt likes pirates.  She also selected six different looking fish so that Brandt and Blythe could name them and know which was which.  We have put them on the media cabinet just below the television in the family room, so we can watch them regularly.

Unfortunately, our first week with fish has not been super successful.  On Monday evening I found one floating on top, dead.  I didn't want to traumatize the children, so I just scooped it out, flushed it, and said nothing.  Even though we had only had the fish three days, the tank was gross so I wasn't super surprised.  I cleaned the water and hoped the remaining five would do fine.  

Our first casualty.

Floating belly up.

I did slip up day before yesterday when Kent asked me if I was overfeeding them as he watched me sprinkle fish food over the top.  I said, "I don't think I'm giving them too much.  There are five of them after all."  He was sitting on the couch with the children watching something, and without missing a beat, Blythe said, "Six." Yes, there were six, once.

This morning Brandt discovered two more fish dead.  One was at the bottom of the tank and Brandt said, "Is that one sleeping?"  Yes, it was sleeping with the fishes.  We determined that the filter was far too small for the tank (a filter for a 1-3 gallon tank in our 10 gallon tank), so we went and bought a new one.  When we got home to clean the tank and rearrange, we found another fish had died, leaving only two.  Within a week, before I even had time to blog about it, four of the six fish have been flushed.  Fortunately the children have not been overly concerned.

Kent and I are hoping that with the acquisition of the bigger filter, and the loss of four fish, our remaining two, Pirate and Goldie, will thrive.  Well, I suppose we are hopeful.  We weren't really looking to get a pet, but we certainly don't wish them ill.