archiemcphee:

Today the Department of Awesomely Good Deeds salutes Derek, a caring and resourceful aquarium shop employee who helped his friend Taylor Dean by creating a floating ‘wheelchair’ for her ailing pet goldfish. The cute little fish suffers from a swim bladder disease that makes it unable to control its buoyancy, so it floats very poorly and tends to sink to the bottom of the tank. Derek fashioned a little rigging to compensate for this.

“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,” Derek told BuzzFeed. He added: “The bottom weight is almost equal to the pull on top so it works quite well for him!”

[via Bored Panda and BuzzFeed]