RIP JJ

So we, being the awesome parents that we are, bought James a goldfish for his birthday. He affectionately called him JJ and was excited to take care of him. His job was to feed JJ twice a day but I, thinking the fish wasn't getting fed enough (because he looked hungry), took over the feedings.

Mistake #1 - don't put me in charge of feeding the fish.

One day, instead of picking up the tiny flakes of fish food and placing them in the tank, I thought it would be more time effective to shake the little container over the water. This resulted in about a 1/4 cup of food being dropped at the same time. I tried to get most of it out as quick as I could, but the majority of it sunk to the bottom. The next day the tank was murky, so much so we could barely see the bright orange fish. Ben changed some of the water out but it didn't help, so he decided to change ALL the water.

Mistake #2 - don't let Ben change all the water at once.

The tank was all sparkly and clean but we noticed something about JJ. His tail started to disintegrate before our eyes. Within a day it was completely gone. I don't know if you've ever seen a fish try to swim without a tail, but he pretty much can't. The poor little guy would try so hard, only to end up ricocheting off the plastic plant and cut-out pirate ship. He was still able to eat but I was worried about whether or not he was in pain. Ben and I were discussing last night whether or not we should put him out of his misery, but he ended up dying sometime last night anyways.

James is fine about it - he could obviously tell JJ was sick and is anxious to get a new one. Maybe one day we'll tell him how Ben and I, as a collective unit, inadvertently killed his fish. Hopefully he'll forgive us.