Birthday Fish

The girls found an aquarium in the storage room of my classroom.   Mrs. U purchased it 15 years ago and never used it so she graciously told them that they could have it.  While the kids were at camp, I set the aquarium up so they could go pick out a fish for their birthday.  Daddy and I went to the pet store and picked out live plants and the upside heart rock.

Hadlee got the white one, Harper got the orange one and Hays' fish was black.   Two days after we got them, Harper's fish had 20+ babies.   We captured 12 that day and when we woke up the next morning only 3 remained in the net.  The white fish was really mean and kept on eating the babies and then started picking on the other two fish.  

After three days of Hadlee's fish chasing the other two fish and making Hays' fish a nervous wreck, we decided to say goodbye to Hadlee's fish.  We let Hadlee make the final decision to flush her fish down the toilet.  It was sad for all of the kids and we thought we were doing the right thing.   The next day the black was looking worse and two of our babies had died.   We even purchased a baby net for the babies to live in.  The following morning before we left to Victoria, we said goodbye to our final baby in the net, the orange fish looked like it was going to die and we found two new babies swimming around.   We went back to the pet store and it seems that our fish had contracted "fish fungus", caused by a stress and it was contagious.   When Daddy returned from his fishing trip, we no longer had any fish left.   I promised the kids that we might try getting ONE fish in August but for now we are giving up on fish.