Matt's Fish Blog

This is the story of the 12 goldfish I bought for a dollar at the fish store.

Saturday, August 14, 2004

Final Thoughts

I originally bought the the bag o fish because I thought it would be funny, and it would be something fun to do with my cousin. I decided to make a blog about it for three reasons, first was so my cousins could read and see how my fish are doing, second I wanted to document it to show people in the future, third was to help anyone who just got, or was thinking about getting fish, but never owned them before.

I hope this blog can help anyone thinking about getting fish. You cant just buy 12 fish for a dollar, a dollar fifty of food, and expect the fish to live. Contrary to what people might think I did try to keep the fish alive, I always fed them, changed the water, and did whatever I thought I could to make sure they don't die, unlike V.

If anyone would like to make comments on this post, or any other post saying what I did wrong, or what I thought that was stupid I would appreciate that. Anything to make this blog a better resource for people getting, or thinking about getting goldfish.

Throughout this experience I have learned one important thing. It is impossible to keep goldfish alive if you do not know much about fish, and don't know what your doing. That is why goldfish is the perfect animal to get if you want to get out of buying your kid a dog or cat. Here is my advice to any parents looking into goldfish to teach your kid a lesson about getting pets. You tell them if they take good care of the fish, you'll buy a dog, within a week all the fish will die, then when they ask for a dog you say "Sorry Honey, but your just not good at taking care of animals, I don't want dead puppies all around my house, do you?"

This was originally posted 9:57pm Aug 14 2004, It was intended to be the last post , though I may decide to update this blog again for some reason or another, and if I do, I'll change the date this was posted to keep it at the top of the blog.

As for V's fish

I talked to B on AIM today and she says she has no idea how V's fish are doing, he hasn't looked at them in a while and they're probably dead. I'll update this blog if I hear anything more about how his fish are doing.

One week anniversary

It's the one week anniversary since I bought the fish! I went at 4 oclock to congratulate Sneaky on living a week. My original plan was to drop him in the fish pond across the street with some food, so he can make friends and be happy. Though I found out my plan was flawed when it turned out that Sneaky was dead. For the first time Sneaky was not hiding, he was upside down at the top of the bowl.

I threw away the plants, put the rocks back in the yard, cleaned the bowl, and got rid of the fish food. I no longer have any fish, and since I'm going to college in a week, I doubt I will have fish again any time soon.

Friday, August 13, 2004

And then there was one

I looked in the bowl today, and Biggie F has was at the bottom, I poked him and he didn't move. Biggie F is dead. I guess the clean water and plants couldn't keep him alive. Sneaky is the only fish left alive.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

A Second Opinion

So I'm sitting at the computer when my mom comes up and says "A guy at work told me all your fish are going to die" that made me sad, she said they were all going to die because they were breathing and eating dirty water, and her co-worker said I would be lucky if they live a week. He said to keep the fish alive you need a filter thing or plants to clean the water. So I decided I needed to save Biggie F and Sneaky. First I went to the grocery store, I brought my jug, and filled it up with their water filler upper thing, it cost 39 cents, then I came back and went into our back yard, I got a ton of plants, and more rocks, I figured at least one of those plants would clean the water. There were more rocks, and more plants in the bowl then ever before. Below is a picture of the bowl, Sneaky and Biggie F are in it but there under a rock or a plant or something.


Lack of Skills

Well, while skills was very skillful at avoiding the spoon, it has become clear that he is not very skillful at staying alive. About 20 minutes ago I found Skills at the bottom of the fish bowl sideways, when poked he did not move. Skills is dead.

This time I have no idea what killed him, I suspect the fish food. Me and my cousin V were planning on splitting the fish food, we were looking at the cheapest food which was 6 bucks, and then he asked "do you have anything cheaper?" The guy got some food that was not on display, it was behind the counter, he probably picked it off the floor or something, it was 3 bucks, we paid $1.50 each.

Here is the food....



I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Clean Livin Fish

I gave the fish a clean new bowl of water, some new plants, and some more food, this morning. Biggie F, Skills, and Sneaky are all still alive. Here are some picures I took when I woke up at about 11.







Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Stayin Dead

Sad to say, Stayin Alive did not stay alive, this morning I found SA dead. He was already dying, and I guess the distilled water couldn't save him. That means Biggie F is the last fish who is gold in the bowl.

Also, just so there's no confusion, Biggie F is not actually large in size, but he still is big in stature, anf if you can't understand that then you've probably never owned a fish!

Monday, August 09, 2004

The Killer Water

So I was talking about the fish tonight, and my plan to give them tons of food, since they must all be starving, and then that's when I found out the reason the fish are dying, my parents told me our tap water has tons of chemicals in it! The fish are dying because they are swimming in water that is filled with vitamins, minerals, or something or other that's killing them.

So I drove to the grocery store to buy some distilled water, to try to save the now 4 fish that were still alive. It cost $1.09, I could have got it cheaper, but I wanted the official distilled water, not the cheap stuff.

When I got back the fourth fish was dying, he was at the top of the water, but he wasn't on his side, he was diagonal, and when I touched him with a spoon we swam a little. So I filled up the bowl with the good water, put the rocks and plants in, and put food in.

So right now there are 2 fish left from the gold tribe, abd 2 fish left from the grey tribe. Who will win Survivor: Fish??? I decided to name the diagonal (gold) fish SA, for Stayin Alive, because he was on the brink of death, but now he has a chance! I named the big grey one skills, because he was the hardest to catch, and he flips alot. I named the other grey one sneaky, because he hides alot, and is always the hardest to find. I named the other goldfish Biggie F, I named him that because, I figured he would likely be the last fish that was gold, so I decided to take the letters of Last Of The Store Bought Gold Fish, or LOTSBGF, or Lots Bg F, that's kinda like Lots of Big F, so I thought, what's Bigger then big? What's lots of big, and I came up with Biggie, Biggie Fish, or Biggie F.

A dead mother fish

So I woke up this morning, and my first thought was "Oh my god! All my fish are dead!" There were 2 floating, and the rest were at the bottom not moving "This is bad" I thought, so I fed the bowl of dead fish and went back to sleep. Eventually I found out that there were not all dead, just all the big ones, including Samuel Jackson. I figure it must be the food why they are all dying, there are only 5 left! So I got plenty of food and fed them!

A bad sign?

After feeding the fish and stuff, I turned on the T.V. and the exact first thing I saw was a close up of this....



A evil goldfish, in a glass bowl just like mine, the exact first thing I saw when I turned on the t.v. was the evil goldfish staring at me. A sign?

Sunday, August 08, 2004

A bad mother fish

Samuel Jackson has survived! We finally got home from my cousins at 11pm. It turns out that three of the fish had died, I was worried at first one of them might be Samuel Jackson, but then I saw him acting cool at the bottom. I don't know what the three died of, maybe the brown water, maybe it was their time, maybe they didn't have enough food. When I got back some of the fish were swimming all around looking for food. Though for the record it's not my fault if there was a lack of food, because while I was feeding them before I left, my cousins were telling me not to put too much food in the bowl because the fish would explode (that's what happened when they went on vacation.)

So anyways, I put new clean water, and an extra rock in the bowl, and fed them plenty.

The death of V's fish

I'm still at my cousins house, and will be until the afternoon. My mom called my aunt, and decided she would update me on my fish, she said 1 of the grey ones is dead, Samuel Jackson is fine, and the fish are swimming around, she asks about food, but there is none, my cousin V has the food, I took my share of it, but I can't get it to the fish until this afternoon. I bring up feeding them cheez-its, but we decide to just wait till this afternoon.

Meanwhile, their have been mass deaths in my cousin's fish bowl. I'll start from the beginning, he got a bowl (3/4 the size of mine) and put the fish in it. The first thing he did was flush the fish that died on the way to my house. Next, he named a couple of this fish he liked Tony, and Justin Timberlake, and the twins. That night he found out that Tony was dead, and he flushed him.

Then we woke up this morning, and one fish was dead, and the water was very dirty, and he made a new bowl. At about noon we started eating breakfast we noticed that one more fish was dead, then we saw Justin Timberlake dying he moved a little, then he stopped moving, we also found out one of the twins was dead, he flushed all three.

My cousin V was then thinking about what to do, he thought about dumping them all in a creek, but his sister told him it's filled with sewage and they would die, his mom thought they would be better off if he flushed them all. He eventually decided to make a little pond to give them more room. He got a tiny plastic pool with about a 2 feet diameter. Put rocks and stuff in it, filled it with water, dumped the fish in it them fed them.

Were soon going to a bagpipe festival so I don't know if more of his fish will die, and I don't know if any more of my fish will be dead when I get back (hopefully Samuel Jackson will be fine.)

Saturday, August 07, 2004

I Hope They Live

Me and my brother are going with our cousins to their house for the night, we will be back midday, maybe afternoon tomorrow. I am going to give the fish a few pieces of food, I hope they all live through tomorrow, the fish bowl will be sitting on my desk. Meanwhile we are going to put my cousin V's fish in his bowl, I'll tell you what happens with his.

His mom is starting to not like the fish, I don't know if he'll be able to keep them, she just said "Hopefully they'll all be dead by tomorrow" If we wake up and they have been poisoned, we'll know who to blame.

Day One

Day one, me and my cousin V were bored waiting to get picked up, when we decided to buy some fish. There was a Fish store across the street from the mini golf and we walked in. We had agreed we would both buy a fish, my cousin V originally wanted a nice fish, but he found out it would be too expensive to keep it alive, so we both got 12 goldfish for a dollar, we split the cost of the 3 dollar food (cheapest they had.)

We walked out, and my cousin B was upset we actually bought the fish. My cousin V was happy he got extra fish because the guy in the fish store said he could keep the fish if he saved them by picking them off the floor, he named the one he saved Lucky. I was happy one of my fish was large with a cool black stripe on his back, he looked like he owned the bag the fish were in, I named him Samuel Jackson, cause he is a bad mother fish.

My mom, and my aunt picked us up shortly after we bought the fish, my mom obviously did not approve, my aunt didn't care about V's fish as long as he didn't spill them in the car.

Below is a picture of my fish in the bag......



Once home I asked if I could put the fish in one of my mom's Tupperware bowls, she said no because the fish will want to see out, and suggested a glass bowl we never use.

Pictured below is the glass bowl I choose.....



Once in the bowl, I decided I needed a way to stop the fish from jumping out and committing suicide, so I surrounded the sides with saran wrap (the middle is open for air.) I then decided to put some rocks at the bottom a few leaves, and some food to make it homey.

Below is a picture of the fish bowl after I finished....



Meanwhile, tragedy has struck, one of my cousins fish has died. Still in the bag, he is not moving sitting at the bottom, we poked him, nothing happened, we all concluded that he has died.