Picketing Fish

For Canon's second birthday, we got him an aquarium with 5 fish in it. We decided to try and do it right : we bought a heater, thermometer, water conditioner, plants, and food. We bought a siphon to clean the water every two weeks.

This was the morning of his second birthday. See how excited he was about that fish tank? We didn't even have the fish yet!

Canon was so excited and named them each. He fed them twice a day and talked to them, but they started dying off pretty quickly. So we replaced them - three different times - each time we had the water tested and made any changes that were recommended. And of course, each time it happened he cried that they were gone. In fact, he just saw this picture and again got upset that "those fish are in heaven". Pitiful child.

We eventually came to the realization that we shouldn't bring any more fish home. I envision all of the fish at the pet store picketing against our family. "Heck, no! We won't go!" Of course, every time we visit a place that has fish in tanks, Canon is obsessed and wants to stare at them for hours.

Fast forward two years. My mom asked if we would mind her getting Canon a fish. He really wanted a puppy, but we definitely put our foot down on that one. So she did the next best thing. She found him a Dalmation Molly fish and he named him Puppy. It was a match made in heaven. In addition to Puppy, he also got Molly {a black Molly fish}, and Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3 {3 neon tetras}. He was so excited about them and couldn't wait to get them home to our death trap our fish tank.

Within 30 minutes of getting them acclimated to their new home, we already had two tetras down. Two hours in, we lost all but Puppy. Miraculously, he lasted through the night and is still kicking swimming as of right now, but I don't suspect that it will last much longer.

All of the deaths happened after Canon fell asleep, so of course I spent the entire night worried about how to talk to him. I am talking next to no sleep. When I did sleep a little, I dreamt about how heartbroken Canon was going to be when he found out what happened. Craig thought I was crazy that I lost sleep over fish, but I can't help it. I mean, how do you explain this to a child? He hasn't yet noticed that four are missing, though he did of course ask to feed them all this morning. Naturally, I let him put food in there. Puppy still has to eat, after all.

I know it is just that these things happen, but seriously why do they keep happening to my baby?! I swear, when Puppy passes on that aquarium is being turned into a fake terrarium with dinosaurs roaming throughout. Hopefully I can't kill fake plants and plastic {extinct} reptiles. I can't promise anything though.