We had (note past tense) two tiny cute goldfish for exactly one week, until last night when I went in to check on them and M before going to bed and found both fish dead and floaty.
A quick Google on goldfish care indicates that they probably died of a combination of massive overfeeding and possibly inadequate chlorine removal when I changed a bit of the water. Hmmmmmm. So much for goldfish being good hardy starter pets!
So D and I got a cup, scooped them out and flushed them. This morning I broke the news to M. before she had a chance to get up and find them missing.
Me: …and we didn’t want you to wake up and find them dead and floating, so we gave them a water burial.
M: But I wanted to bury them in the stones! And what’s a water burial anyway?
D: (muffled coughing noise)
Me, deciding a degree of honesty is the best policy: We flushed them down the toilet, hon, so they’ll end up buried in the lake with all the other fish.
D: (muffled comment about a rather indirect route, sewage treatment plants, etc.)
After some weepiness on M’s part we decided we will give everything in the tank a good cleaning and will go buy some new fish on Thursday after school.
The status of the water snail remains unknown. I am crossing my fingers.