and then there was one...

Today, on Nick's 5th week anniversary in residence, he joined the ranks of his fellow pet fish the world over. He died.

Mac was doing some school research on birds on my laptop which was set up next to the aquarium. All of a sudden, Jimmy and I heard him scream that there was a dead fish. Upon shaking the aquarium to see if he "playing dead" down there on the rocks (he wasn't floating after all which is what I thought dead fish did), we determined that Nick was, indeed, deceased.

So I fished him out with the net and gave him a little autopsy inspection. Interestingly, all his fins were gone. He looked kind of naked with nothing on top and nothing on bottom. What happened to his fins? When a fish dies, do the fins just fall off?

I have my own theory about what transpired.

Mike turned into a cannibal.

The other day when I fed the fish, I noticed that Nick was just happily doing his thing, minding his own business and eating the food. There was plenty of food for both of them, but I watched as Mike, the bigger fish, picked a little at the food and then turned into a bully with Nick. He was nipping at him as Nick tried to eat his food. I tapped on the tank to get him to leave Nick alone and that probably just turned the volume up on his bully tendencies and made him more aggressive when I wasn't looking.

I am sure that they were both alive yesterday when I fed them, so something catastrophic happened in 24 hours. Maybe there really was carbon monoxide poisoning in the apartment yesterday like Jimmy questioned when he witnessed Mac's and my lethargy last night. Or maybe that bully Mike just pecked at poor little Nick's fins until he couldn't swim anymore and then he just laid down and died.

We've had an unceremonious burial for Nick in the trash can - we would have flushed him but we've had issues with the toilets flushing everything down and I just couldn't bear the thought of poor dead Nick re-surfacing after every flush.

In any event, Mac seems to be over the trauma of the death. Within 30 seconds of discovering the death, he renamed the cannibalistic Mike "Nick" which seems terribly traitorous given my autopsy report. Seeing as how nobody in this family except me has interacted with the fish (or fed, or cleaned the tank and the fake tree and the rocks -just for public record) in the last 5 weeks, I guess his attachment disorder could be considered normal.

And since I'm solely responsible for the care and feeding of Nick #2, he better hope that I quickly forgive him. One thing's for sure: we will not be introducing another fish into the aquarium with that bully fish.