If you’ve ever reared a fish as a pet, you might have noticed that sometimes, your fish might have problems swimming where they can no longer maintain themselves upright and will start swimming on their sides. This is known as swim bladder disease and is actually pretty common amongst aquarium fish.
Most of the time, this can be fatal, but in the case of Henry Kim, a Korean fashion designer, he decided to do something about it by building a custom “wheelchair” for one of his pet goldfish suffering from it. According to vets, fish that are affected by swim bladder disease tend to die in a couple of months, but thanks to Kim’s selfless act, his goldfish is still alive after five months.
For those unfamiliar, the swim bladder is an organ in a fish that helps them to control their buoyancy. Swim bladder disease is when the organ is dysfunctional due to intestinal parasites or constipation, and in most cases can actually be cured by feeding the fish peas or having a doctor fix it by putting a stone inside the swim bladder.
We imagine that the latter is probably going to be a very expensive procedure, so Kim’s solution is actually rather ingenious. We’re not sure if Kim is actively trying to cure his pet goldfish of the ailment, but for now, it seems to be pretty happy swimming about using its “wheelchair”.