After more than 2 wonderful years together the end has come.

I went to try and feed her this morning and she was gone… it looked like she was just laying in the sand sleeping peacefully.

The last few days have been quite heartbreaking as she has wasted away, unable to eat. But how she loved her lobster eggs, until the very end. Already more than a week ago she had stopped foraging, but threw herself over the lobster eggs whenever offered, although towards the end she couldn’t keep them down and kept spitting them back out. But she loved them just the same, her most favorite food in the world.

I did everything right. I dared to challenge decades of dogma and prevailed where conventional wisdom said I would fail. I not only kept her alive but had her thriving. Already in the first year she spent in a 10 gallon setup she thrived with an abundance of food and received enough nourishment to even bear eggs.

She died not from starvation or nutritional deficiencies, but from the complications of being egg-bound, an affliction that sadly can affect any species of fish, marine or freshwater. So looking back at the past couple of years I cannot say otherwise than that my first experience with Mandarin Dragonets has been nothing other than a complete success.

So as the final chapter is written in this story, and the book is about to close, let us remember “Lassie” one last time with this never before shared photo.