The great zebrafish massacre

I should never have agreed to buy Sasha fish for her tenth birthday. But it seemed like such a modest request. It’s not like you’re going to come home one day to find they’ve escaped or starved to death — like certain rodents I can think of. I was also lulled into a false sense of security by Sasha’s promise that she would look after them herself. I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.

It wasn’t until we were in the pet shop that I discovered she had something more exotic in mind than a couple of goldfish. She wanted tropical fish. That meant spending £100 on a 50-litre tank, complete with built-in filter and heating element. We were then told by the pet-shop owner that he wouldn’t be able to sell us any fish until we could prove that the nitrate levels in our tank had fallen below a certain level. Luckily, all the products we’d need to ‘prepare’ the water just happened to be on sale in his shop. Handy, that.

Fast-forward two weeks, by which time I’d spent the best part of a Saturday afternoon assembling the fish tank. Sasha’s contribution was to watch me like a prison warder and scream if I deviated from the instructions by one jot. We went back to the shop with a water sample and — heaven be praised — were given permission to buy some fish. ‘How about some zebrafish?’ the man suggested. ‘They fall into the category of “hard to kill”.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ I said.

We returned to Acton with 12 zebrafish and began the process of introducing them to their new home. The most tedious part was standing beside my daughter as she painstakingly thought up names for all 12 of them.