R.I.P. Goldie

Last night we walked into the girls' room to find our goldfish, Goldie, lying at the bottom of of his tank. Goldie is our goldfish who we've had longer than we have had our daughters. He started out as a tiny little thing in our 20 gallon fish tank with 6 other buddies. He survived 3 moves, outlived more than 15 other fish and snails, made it through the last 2 summers when we lived at camp and only fed him once a week or so and thrived in a tanks so dirty you could barely see him.
To be honest, for the last couple of years we have secretly wanted Goldie to pass on. We wanted new fish, colorful fish to enjoy. Goldie had gotten so big that we couldn't add other fish because he would kill them...and goldfish can only live with other goldfish. So, about a month ago the tank needed some serious cleaning. So we bought a little goldfish tank and put Goldie in there and moved him up to the girls room. Then we bought some neon tetras(the furious five) and some other kind of pink fish, which the girls promptly named pinkish and pinkie. Goldie was not impressed. You could tell. Plus, I think he was lonely way up in the girls room and not in the living room with us anymore.
So last night when I announced the death of Goldie, I was worried about how the girls would react. There was a moment of silence, which I broke by saying that we would flush Goldie down the toilet. The girls excitedly ran downstairs, thanked Goldie for being such a good fish and flushed him to fish heaven. Two minutes later they were talking about a new fish, Hubby suggested a Siamese Fighting Fish. We'll see what happens when I get home from work today....