Last year, my roommates and I decided to put the empty fish tank sitting on our basement floor to use. After a trip to PetSmart, we walked away with two angel fish and a red-tailed shark. I am reluctant to address them by name because it reflects the immaturity of our collective house members, but I shamefully will. Phallus and Coitus were the two-angel fish, and Roy was our shark.  Roy was named after our UNC basketball couch, Roy Williams, which is respectable I guess. The other two… not so much. But to my defense, two out of four of my roommates were 20 something fraternity guys and the other two just don’t have much of a filter. Although, I can’t sit here and act like I don’t get a chuckle out of trivial poop or sex joke every once in a while.

Over the years, I have gained an affinity for these fish. They had complex personalities of their own. Phallus and Coitus were intelligent guys, very aware of their surroundings outside those four glass walls. Anytime I would sit next to the tank, they would swim right next to me and start dancing in the anticipation of being fed. Those two were elegant creatures. Roy, well, he was the fish we loved to hate. He was extremely aggressive and constantly harassed our angel fish. But as you know, a parent-child relationship is one of the strongest bonds out there. As parents to Roy, we grew to appreciate him, despite all his rage. Not only did our house love these fish, but our two cats did even more. Well, the cats maybe didn’t ‘love’ the fish, rather envisioned them as their next meal during each stare down. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that I lived in a zoo?

Anyways, this weekend I decided it would be a fantastic idea to clean out our fish tank.

The tank was absolutely disgusting and I don’t think it had been tended to since we first assembled the aquarium about a year and a half ago. You could see the thick layer of fish poop and food piled at the bottom. And not to mention, there was some nasty infestation of white dots that coated the surface of everything in that tank. I have later discovered these ‘dots’ to be a parasite called Ich. Poor water quality and stress in the tank is the culprit. How I see it is we can take fifty percent of the blame for the cleanliness issue, but the other fifty goes to Roy for the stress-inducing bullying.

My roommate Corille and I took on the challenge. After fetching the fish out, we dumped the ten gallons of poop water down the kitchen sink. While Corille took the tank into the shower to scrub and bleach, I scooped out the rocks and put them into a pot of boiling water. My intention was to burn off any traces of the Ich infestation. In hindsight, yes, that step seems really stupid. But in the mind of poor college students who did not feel like leaving the house or investing in a $5 bag of aquarium rocks, boiling pebbles is what it came down too.  Corille and I strained the pebbles using a colander, losing a few to the garbage disposal (which is now currently out of order). After this, we took about 100 trips from the kitchen to the tank with a Brita pitcher full of untreated tap water.

We were so excited to introduce our fish to their newly improved home. They seemed really into it at first. I could see their future lives of zen and tranquility now that they weren’t forced to exist in a sewage tank.

About 30 minutes later, our roommate Lucas reemerged from his deep slumber that conveniently took place during this whole cleaning ordeal. I decided to give him the silent treatment for doing so. I know, real mature, but do I have to remind you again that we named our fish Phallus and Coitus? Unfortunately, this silent treatment did not last long. Lucas immediately let us know the wrong we had done.

The fish were dead. I don’t know if anyone has heard of this, but there is this thing called google?  Well, apparently it could have informed me to keep about half of the existing water in the tank when cleaning it out. Come to find out, fish are really reliant on the existing bacteria in their environment and can’t live without it. I’ll count this as my PSA for any of you thinking about cleaning fish tanks in the coming future.

Traumatized Hayley phoned her brother to break the news. Drew is an amateur fish expert. Just to give you a sense of his passion, he received a color changing fish tank light for Christmas this year and keeps his snapchat following up to date on his impressive fish colony. Though comforting in his remarks, he reminded me that fish are just fish. This helped me come to terms with the huge mistake I had just made. The saddest realization for me was that I thought I was doing a good thing for the fish, but in reality, I wasn’t.

Sometimes when you do good things, good things may not always happen in return. In my opinion, everything in this world is accidental and you may not always be able to predict a good outcome from good behavior. Nevertheless, if you spend your time at least trying to do good, then you will have spent your time doing something worthwhile. Even though I committed fish genocide this weekend, I learned to never make this mistake again. The fish I may own in the future will especially thank me for this lesson learned.

That night, my roommates and I said goodbye to Phallus, Coitus and Roy with a tone-deaf rendition of Amazing Grace as we flushed our aquatic children to their watery graves. It was a sad day at 120 Kenan Street, but there’s still a glimmer of hope – we’ve all seen Finding Nemo, right?