FUCKYEAH-GOLDFISH

This is Annie. She is an American Comet goldfish I recently acquired when I found out my grade nine science teacher needed help cleaning her fish tank. The tank, a twenty-nine gallon, was appalling. The algae on the walls was so thick you could barely see this pure white fish swimming on the other side of the glass. As I inspected further, and began to clean, I found many things that will horrify me to this day, if not because of the disgusting state of the tank, but because of the morality issues in this situation.

 Firstly, I asked if she had any water conditioner for the tank, which removes harsh metals and chemicals from the water to make it safe for fish and where she kept it, seeing none. She told me that she hadn’t had any in more than a year, and hadn’t bought any. I had brought my own, I said, and that was good enough.

Secondly, this fish had not been fed in upwards of three months. The feeding hatch hadn’t even been opened in so long, there were dead spiders on the inside of it.. More than nine gallons of the water was evaporated from her tank, and she had suffered burns from the high concentration of ammonia in her water, the levels of which were 6.2 when I tested- more than 6.00 over the safe limit for fish.

The teacher who had been caring for her asked if I wanted to bring her home for the summer, since she didn’t want her anymore, and I gladly said yes. Then she offered to let me keep the equipment as long as I would get the fish out of her life. “I’m just waiting for her to die anyways,” she had said to me.

My issue with this is one of morality. This woman is in charge of the lives of one hundred and forty students everyday, all year long, and yet she doesn’t even have the responsibility to open the hatch and sprinkle in a little food? If one is so trusted with a human life- with one hundred and forty of them daily, then why can’t she be trusted with one much simpler? All this fish needed was some daily love and a few decorations in her tank. She had nothing. Nothing at all. What makes her life so valueless? What makes us think it’s okay to treat an animal, or anything this way? Nothing should make us think this is okay.

 A life is a life, no matter how many of them there are in stores, no matter how cheap they are- they are living, breathing beings that deserve the same respect we would give our most prized possessions. If we can’t treat a goldfish with love and respect, what does that say about how we treat our fellow humans?

My boyfriend and I have a goldfish, Dionysos, who we love very much. Lately, he seems to have trouble swimming down in our aquarium and he’s turned purple from his forehead to the beginning of his fin. Does anyone have any idea what this might be because of? If you have any idea, please let me know. This fish is our baby and we’d be very sad to see him suffer or die.