One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, DEAD Fish

I'm not a pet person. My dad says, "The highest pinnacle of human civilization is to no longer share living space with animals." That has always sounded pretty good to me. And, as a mother of young children I have never been ready to bring another thing into the house that I'm in charge of keeping alive. I don't even do houseplants.

Well, Adah LOVES animals. Due to my cat and dog allergies we've been able to give her a consistent and defensible no-cat-or-dog answer to her pet requests. As I said, I've never wanted a pet at all. But, we finally decided to get our animal lover her first pet. Damon's parents gave us a large aquarium for Christmas, so we decided that a fish was the way to go. Because we were leaving town the day after Christmas, we also decided that we'd wait until the new year to get said fish. This also allowed Adah to choose her pet.

On January 5, Adah & Damon returned from the store with a betta fish that Adah named Joyle. She liked the name Joy and was happy about her new fish. However, as she put it, "Joy is a girl name, so Joyle makes it more like a boy." It was a male betta.

Joyle was a gorgeous fish who enjoyed the large tank. Adah chose to get a betta because she didn't like that they were confined in tiny containers at the store. She brought him home and immediately began researching bettas on the internet and trying to teach Joyle tricks. She even got a little plastic hoop in the hopes of teaching him to swim through it.

Well, about a week after arriving home, Joyle didn't look so good. He wasn't swimming around much and his fins were looking bedraggled. He didn't eat all day. Damon did some internet research and we thought that perhaps the water was too cold. Previous research led us to believe we wouldn't need a heater, but we purchased one and the next day Joyle seemed to perk up.

It was short-lived. On Friday, January 14 we found Joyle dead in the tank. It was very sad for all of us and Adah was especially upset. Joyle was laid to rest near the garden with a grave marker made from a popsicle stick and a canning lid.

More research insued which included water testing kits. The particular aquarium we had suggested a few fish and eventually Adah decided on a zebra danio. Damon surprised her by slipping a little guy into her tank on Saturday afternoon. Adah didn't discover him until bedtime. We were still uncertain about the water's chemical make-up and leary of whether or not this new little guy would survive.

Adah name him Nile (as in the Nile River). He lived all day Sunday. On Monday morning he was stuck in the filter. He managed to get out, but died by that evening. The demise of this second fish was taken a little better by the whole family. Understandably, though, it's made us quite hesitant to pursue the fish-owning life. For now, we've decided to at least switch aquariums, having learned that the particular one we had has a history of issues. (Don't buy a Biorb.) In generaly, I think our family's pet ownership future remains tenuous.