Cheap fish with short lives

I heard another story that made me think, "Only in Japan." I was talking with someone who bought some cheap goldfish. They died a few days later. He went back to the shop and asked why they all died so soon, and the shopkeeper explained that these fish are supposed to die after a couple of days. Huh? And why would you sell fish that die after a couple days? The answer: to teach children about death.

Naturally the next question was, "Why would you sell these fish to me?" The shopkeeper replied, "I thought you needed to learn about death, too."

Thankfully I have never had this experience of being sold fish that were meant to die. All my fish died from poor water conditions and from eating each other. Here are some pics of my dear ones that have passed on before their time.

My expensive blue and beautiful. He turned out to be a bully and had to be dealt with. To my dismay, the smaller tank I transferred him to had poor filtration and he didn't make it.


I don't know why but Apple's shell got thinner and thinner until he had nothing left to live in.
African Aphyosemion - a $60 birthday present. I didn't notice the filter had stopped up and ammonium nitrite levels skyrocketed. He got a bacterial infection and puffed up like a balloon. By the time he saw medical treatment, it was too late.
My lovely albino medaka . . . One night I woke up to a frantic splashing occurring in the tank. The Aphyosemion had one halfway in his mouth and they were thrashing in unison. The few survivors were promptly separated.


Golden loaches. They were scared of the other fish and wouldn't come up to eat. Poor things died of starvation.



Sadly, I have no photographical record of the many others that are no longer with us. And what happens after they pass on? Some make their way underground via toilet. Others head for cremation mixed in with the "burnable garbage." When I was a kid, we turned them into dried fish mummies and put them in a plastic ziploc bag. We had a nice collection of dried corpses. Until the cat ate them.