People Are Crying After This Guy Made A Tiny Wheelchair For A Goldfish With A Bladder Disorder

“You are teaching people that all animals, no matter their handicap, deserve love and support,” someone said to the two friends.

Taylor Dean is a 19-year-old from San Antonio who currently makes her living creating educational animal videos on YouTube. Her friend, Derek, 20, works at a local aquarium shop in the same city.

Dean said a customer of Derek’s recently brought in their pet goldfish that was suffering from swim bladder disease, a disorder that prevents a goldfish from controlling its buoyancy in the water.The swim bladder is essentially an organ helps the fish stay stable in water. When the bladder is deformed or affected/infected — by bacteria or parasites, for example — the goldfish loses its floatation stability. This can cause it to float to the top of the water, swim upside-down, or have a heavy lean toward one side.

According to Derek, this particular goldfish had an incurable swim bladder problem that prevented it from holding itself upright, and made it permanently stuck at the bottom of its tank.

After diet adjustments and water treatments were ineffective, Derek decided to try something else so the little guy could cope. He created a one-of-a-kind “goldfish wheelchair.”

“I got some airline tubing that people usually use in their tank and just placed it around the goldfish. I added some valves to the bottom of it, which acted as a ‘chair’ to prop him up. I added weights to the bottom of the ‘chair’ and something to keep him afloat on top (styrofoam), and slowly removed pieces until I achieved just the right buoyancy to make it easy for him to swim around without feeling like he’s dragging around a chair.”

“The bottom weight is almost equal to the pull on top so it works quite well for him!” he added.
   

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