Food for Fish: Easy Come, Easy Go

We had some friends leave China last month to return to the States. Over their 10 months here, they purchased a very nice fish tank and some awesome fish (neon, zebra, etc). We offered to take the aquarium prior to their departure, despite having absolutely ZERO experience owning fish (sorry, Amber, I don't think that the goldfish we had in our college dorm room counts. How many of those did we flush down the toilet? :-).

The thing is, Lucia loves fish. Whenever we go anywhere that has a fish tank, she always wants to go watch the fish. Interestingly, she even likes looking at dead fish in the market, provided that they are still whole (which all of them are here in China). So she was pretty stoked by our fish tank acquisition. It became her job to feed the fish every night before bed. Here is a video of her doing that several weeks ago:


So we were doing fairly swimmingly with the fish; even surviving our four day trip to Shanghai without losing a single one. The problem arose at Lucia's birthday party that we held here with the kids from her class. One of the little boys managed to escape everyone's gaze for long enough to dump half the container of fish food into the tank, thereby completely dousing it in food! I was somewhat dumbfounded, having neither the aptitude nor desire to remove each individual fish into the proper-temperature of holding water in various bowls and cups, draining the tank, removing and cleaning the gravel, cleaning the tank, then replacing everything. The poor mother of the son was so apologetic! She felt awful that she didn't catch her son in time (not like any of the other 6 parents hanging around did either!).

All's well that ends well, however. Turns out that the boy's family has owned fish before, and actually wanted some here in China. I half-jokingly suggested that they take the whole aquarium, seeing as we acquired it for free and eventually we'll also be leaving here, not to mention that with our long trip to the US coming up, I was going to have to convince neighbors to feed them daily anyway. To my delight (and momentary chagrin, given Lucia's love for the fish), the mother agreed that this would be a good idea! So after kneeling down with Lucia for what turned out to be a very short and easy conversation about Troy being able to give the fish a better home than us, Amy (Troy's mom) packed up her kids and the aquarium and took off!

Amy invited us to their house after pre-school the following Monday to come see the fish. The moment I saw the perfectly pristine tank, I knew we had made the right decision. They isolated each fish in water and cleaned the tank thoroughly, and even went to a pet shop to buy a sucker fish to clean the inside glass, some new plants, and a few new fish to add to the collection.

Thus ended our short-lived stint at being pet owners here in China. I'm glad we could keep the fish for almost four weeks and give Lucia some time with them at home, but have to say that I'm not exactly sorry to see them go...!