Strangely, I have found that the more I neglect my fish, the better off they are. I'm sure it wasn't the water changing, Specklet. Sometimes you just get a sickly swimmer. Hope he's feeling better soon.

Maybe something like this would cheer him up?

As long as he doesn't look like a carrot.

Speck, fish are pretty disposable pets in my experience. The only way to tell how old they are (you know, cutting them in half and counting their rings?) doesn't really help them live long either.

So, in the end, like so many of life's little gambits, it's a crapshoot.

Well, my fish, the creatively named Fish, died passed on to the great fishbowl in the sky sometime in the past week or two. He lived outdoors in a bathtub in the back yard, so exact time of death is difficult to pinpoint. He was mighty, having made it about three years in that bathtub (it's kind of sad that he got through another winter just to perish in the spring, alas, but life is fleeting) and grown to a far larger size than your basic 25 cent WalMart goldfish ever achieves. Which is all to say, if your fish also passes on, than I'm sure that Fish will be waiting to guide him around Piscine Heaven, where the castles are all softly technicolored and fully swim thruable, the cubes of brine shrimp are delivered by the Large Hand regularly and all the other fish are friendly.

Well done, mgl.