The Accidental Aquarium
There’s a thermometer in my aquarium that shows a nice green band where the temperature needs to be for the fish to be comfortable. My wife noted that the temperature has been well below the green band for the past few weeks, and she suggested I get a heater since the weather’s been cold. I tried to argue that the problem would fix itself when spring rolled around in a few months, but she wasn’t having any of it. And so we soon found ourselves in line at Petco waiting to purchase a heater. Everything was going fine until we got to the register where Jack, the resident Aquarium Inquisitor, was waiting for me.
Every pet store has a Jack. The guy the other clerks go to with aquarium questions because he’s weird and into aquariums. Whenever Jack helps me, my heart races because I know he looks deep into my soul and sees a bad aquarium hobbyist. He pelts me with questions that I have no answers for. Simple things like water parameters and fertilizer schedules have me bamboozled. I want to get down on my knees and shout, “Mercy, Jack! Mercy! It’s not my fault! I fell into this hobby accidentally!”
It all started six years ago when a friend and I went to the county fair. I couldn’t resist the temptation to play this carnival game where you throw ping pong balls into tiny fish bowls. If you get it in, you win a goldfish. If you don’t get it in, well, you win a goldfish. Win-win, right? My friend said it’s not worth the $5 since goldfish cost 10 cents at the pet store. But I didn’t want to buy one, I wanted to win one.
Naturally, I didn’t get any of my ping pong balls into a fish bowl and ended up getting the consolation goldfish, a black one I named Poseidon. He was so regal and elegant! And he came in this cute little plastic carrying case. I was planning on taking him to work and leaving him on my desk when my friend informed me that goldfish need an aquarium with filtration to survive. Oh.
I couldn’t get to the pet store that night since it was too late, so I took Poseidon home and placed him on the kitchen counter. The cat promptly jumped up and eyed the fish. I didn’t know much about fish psychology, but I knew Poseidon was scared. Who wouldn’t be, right? I think the cat sat there all night because when I woke up, it was still sitting there eyeing Poseidon.
I was at the pet store right when it opened and got me a 10 gallon starter tank with lighting and plastic plants and filtration and everything. Poseidon was only going to have the best! I put everything together and dumped him in. “Welcome to your new home!” I said. He then promptly darted around for a bit and died.
With the benefit of experience, I now know that I had made two fatal errors with Poseidon: (1) goldfish excrete A LOT of waste, so even a small amount of time in that tiny box was enough to suffocate Poseidon; and (2) aquariums take about a week to “cycle,” which is the process whereby beneficial bacteria grow and regulate the water to make it safe for fish. At the time, I just thought it was bad luck. That Poseidon was a weak county fair fish that couldn’t handle the real world.
With Poseidon now in the Great Ocean in the Sky, the smart thing to do would have been to return the stuff I’d just bought. I’m not smart, though, so instead I bought more fish and dumped them into the aquarium. They didn’t die. In fact, they had a rather healthy existence. So I got bold. I got a bigger aquarium. 20 gallons instead of a mere 10. Then I got bolder and put in live plants. Then I upgraded to a 55 gallon tank. Then I put in a complicated CO2 rig for the plants.
It’s funny how quickly a hobby can spiral out of control. It’s definitely in my nature to get obsessed with things. Unfortunately, it’s also in my nature to get bored of things, too. I am ashamed to admit that my interest in my fish has ebbed and flowed so that sometimes the aquarium is in immaculate condition and other times not so much. There was a stretch over the last few months where the aquarium was in really bad shape. So much so that my wife gently hinted I should get my shit together and take care of it. This is why I was so nervous to encounter Jack. Would he know I had been derelict?
Jack and I went through our familiar routine as he rang me up for the heater. He battered me with questions about CO2 levels in my tank, like was I only turning the rig on at night? I got freaked out and lied, “Yes!” He replied with a satisfied nod. Did he see through my deception? Or was he testing me? Was it a trick question? Did he want me to answer truthfully and say I keep the CO2 on during the day when the plants are photosynthesizing? Thankfully my wife distracted him long enough for us to get the hell out of there.
I don’t know why Jack freaks me out. In all honesty he probably doesn’t care what I do so long as the fish are healthy. And they are (or so they seem). Maybe it’s the Japanese person in me always pursuing perfection in anything I do and being guilty when I come up short. Keeping an aquarium isn’t just a hobby. It’s an art form mixed in with a lot of science. There’s a Tao to it all, a process of growth fueled by many triumphs and defeats. Now that I think about it, I’ve learned a lot from my journey pursuing fish tank Nirvana, the most important lesson of them all being this: I should always listen to my wife.
