On Aquariums

For nearly as long as I can remember I've had an active aquarium.

My first aquarium was a metal framed, slate bottomed 5 gallon unit that a friend and neighbor, David Lee, gave to me. My first fish were angels and sword tails. Eventually I discovered the fish that really embroiled me into the world of the fresh water tropical fish hobbyist: The Oscar.

It was wrong, of course, but my first oscar was a baby that I tossed into that 5 gallon aquarium. It grew rapidly and I had to give it away. For my birthday, my dad bought me a 29 gallon aquarium and took me to a pet store in another town with the promise that he would pay for something like $20 of fish. Wow! I bought another Oscar. Not any oscar, THE oscar. He was a red oscar and he was brilliant! He took food from my fingers, was stick trained (when I held up a green stick (glass scraper) he would immediately go to the bottom of the tank, submissively. When I worked in the tank he would simply watch me, but when my brother or father placed their hands in the tank he would attack them. Seriously.

I loved that fish.

Trying to find tank mates was difficult. Had to be other, tough cichlids that were too big to swallow, but not big enough to cause Oskee any grief. One day I brought home a Jack Dempsey. It was about 3 or 4 inches long. Oskee was 8 inches long. I thought I had met the necessary criteria for a tank mate but I was very wrong.

Over night Oskee attempted to eat the Jack. Unfortunately the Jack was far too large to swallow, and his fins lodge themselves in Oskee's throat. Oskee eventually died. I was so upset my parents kept me out of school that day; I made a little grave for him and held a funeral in our back yard.

I haven't been quite so attached to any fish since Oskee, but I do still enjoy them and still find them fascinating.

My most recent large, oddball fish was an Osphronemus goramy named "G". Got him at about 2 or 3 inches and raised him up to about 10 inches or so. He was full of character and all the neighborhood kids thought he was cool because he tried to bite their fingers through the glass. But O. goramy gets BIG. I gave him to a friend who had a more suitable tank and now "G" is happily growing in his new environment (last I saw him I would guess he is about 14 inches long and growing).

My current project is to maintain a (more or less) community aquarium where the fish live together peacefully. That's a hard one for me, as I prefer big, burly, aggressive fish. Still, the little ones have pretty colors and are fun to look at and there is less drama and trauma associated with fish that aren't always fighting.

Still, the old urges slip in and I dropped a couple of baby sunfish into the tank. It's hard to say how that will progress - but sunnies can be terrors. For now, however, all the tetras and other fish are much larger than the baby sunnies.

On a side note, we had to move our crayfish (we caught a baby up at White Horse Lake last July) who had grown to 4 inches in length and had begun hunting and eating the fish. We placed him in Isaac's tank with a full grown male firemouth cichlid. The crayfish can't get him, he fights back. :) So at the moment there is a stalemate. If necessary the crayfish will get his own tank.

Anyway, I cannot foresee a time when I do not have an aquarium.