Circle of life
A few months ago while Chris was not looking, Claire used a stool to grab the canister of fish food on top of the aquarium tank and dumped it all in. It was about a half year’s worth of food. When the aerator was done grinding up the flakes, the water was very murky and most of the fish died. To save the remaining fish, Chris spent a couple of hours vacuuming the sediment and performed many iterations of removing of most the water and replacing it with clean. A few days later, a new filter had made the water hospitable again for fish from the pet store.
Realizing that we cannot prevent Claire from getting into everything, Chris relocated the fish food about as far away as we could reasonably put it: on the top shelf of the cabinet above the microwave.
Well…
Last week on while I was not looking, Claire dragged a dinette chair across the kitchen floor, climbed onto the counter, opened the cabinet above the microwave, got the fish food, climbed down, went over to the aquarium, got a stool and dumped all the food into the tank again.
Not surprisingly, the water got murky AGAIN and most of the fish died AGAIN. Chris spend a couple of hours AGAIN cleaning the tank. Two days ago the tank was once again clean enough for six new fish (once has since died).
Chris decided to buy a smaller canister of fish food this time in case Claire decides to do it again.
If she sticks to schedule, Claire will kill the fish again sometime next spring.