Goldfish

On Sunday, May 6, 2001, my two lovely goldfish both passed away suddenly. The cause of death isn't certain, but they had been through a lot of stress, so I suspect a bad case of ick. I buried them the next day in the backyard of my parents' house. Here is their history...

My goldfish were purchased in February 1999 for 15 cents each at Meijer of Okemos, Michigan, along with two other goldfish who belonged to Amber, my roommate.

We named all of the fish after beer brands since the money for purchasing the fish came from returned beer cans which we had found and returned for the 10 cent deposit offered in Michigan. Amber's fish were named Molson and MGD. I named my fish Labatt and Killian.

I took care of the four fish during the summer of 1999, and MGD died. We moved the fish from a one gallon tank to a 5 gallon tank when they returned to school with me in the fall of 1999. However, when I moved the three boys back to my house for the summer of 2000, the 5 gallon tank got cracked and was no longer usable, so Molson, Batts, and Killi were moved into their current home, a 10 gallon tank.

Molson experienced a traumatic difficulty a bit ago and was disabled for several months. He somehow lodged himself in our lacking old filter and, we surmise, broke his back. He was able to swim and seemed to be doing okay, but his back was not straight and he was much more mopey than ever before. At the beginning of January we determined that Molson's tail was dead. The cells started turning black, and he could not swim well at all. Sarah, our suitemate, gave him as humane a death as we could think of one afternoon. Now Molson is better off and no longer feels the pain of his injuries as he swims through the great big fishbowl in the sky.

Future improvements on their living quarters were anticipated. We had recently replaced their filter and got them a new bubbler. The current light source (fluorescent bulb), however, was thought to need replacing, but actually a new starter was all that was required, but we got a new bulb, too, before finding this out. The fish had lots of accessories including a plastic plant, a clay pot, two shells, and a glass filter with a broken tip salvaged from my CEM 262 Quantitative Analysis chemistry lab.