In September, 2006, at St. Monica’s final Octoberfair parish fair, we won a goldfish in the classic parish fair ping-pong ball in the fish bowl game. Last weekend, 18 years later, that fish, known as Fish-Fish or just Fish for short, crossed the rainbow bridge. This hearty fish lived his 18 years in a cubic foot of water on our kitchen counter.

Fish was small when he started his time with us. Here he is in December, 2007, just over a year old.

Fish had quite a personality. For a fish. He would great us each morning and evening at feeding time. Once, when I was travelling and my wife had forgotten to feed him, he banged against the side of his tank to get her attention. Here is is in 2010.

As he grew, I had to reduce the number of plastic plants in his tank. By 2017 he was much larger and was down to one plant.

Perhaps you wonder what Fish did all day. He mostly moved the rocks around in his tank. He did sleep, hanging vertically in the water without moving. We knew his time was coming when he began to slowly move upside down when he was sleeping. Here is a short video of Fish enjoying tending his rocks.

I cleaned the tank about once every five weeks. I started taking pictures of Fish and his cleaned tank so I could keep track of when I had last cleaned it. Here is Fish last month, in his ultimate romp around a clean tank.

RIP Fish Fish, September 2006 – October 2024.