New family members!

So, last weekend I fulfilled another long-held desire (that I wasn't even really aware I was harbouring until the opportunity arose), and got an Aquarium. Well, actually, it wasn't last weekend, it was almost a month ago when I actually got the aquarium, from a colleague who had upgraded to a bigger one (thanks Frederic!) - SWIFT has this really interesting "For Sale" newsgroup that all sorts of interesting stuff appears on and there are occasionally some real bargains if you are quick.

Now, if any of you have ever had an aquarium (and no, the fishbowl that we got you for your birthday back at Uni doesn't count Shane because the fish died so soon after and, AFAIK, were never replaced [1]), you will appreciate that preparing an aquarium for fish is no mean feat. First you've got to get all the right bits and pieces and then make sure you have the right mix of plants, soil, rocks etc. Then you add the water, but straight tap water is no good, of course. You have to work to get the temperature, pH, oxygen, nitrogen and bacteria levels just right, and all the other nasty chemicals like chlorine, flouride etc need to be removed or the fish will quickly die (with very nice strong, white teeth)

So, this whole process of filtering, purification, nitrogenation, oxygenation, bacterification(?) etc takes several weeks, and even then you have no real idea whether you've got it right until you actually put the fish in...

For the last couple of weeks, then, we've had an increasingly complete and fairly healthy-looking aquarium, sans poisson. (Although I should mention that we did have several very cute little aquatic snails that came in on one of the plants, and they seemed to be loving their new home, and beginning to produce some even cuter little snails at an alarming rate)

I decided that there was nothing more I could do, so last Friday night was the moment of truth.

On Friday after work, I raced down to the local aquarium shop in Wavre to get our first fish. When starting an aquarium, some good advice is to choose a small number of very hardy fish. some even better advice is to not get too attached to your first fish, because they'll almost surely die on you. Bearing this in mind, I decided to start with 4 small livebearers - a male and female guppy and 2 simple orange platys

After carefully balancing them for about 30 minutes, I held my breath as they were finally introduced into their new home. All seemed happy, and they raced off, chasing each other around and exploring every inch of the tank.

Even with such a promising start, though, I didn't want to get my hopes up, so decided not to give them names until they had survived at least one night.


As you can see, Olly was rather intrigued by the new arrivals. Lucy and Max were typically oblivious, and just looked at me like I've gone mad, staring at a funny box in the corner (no doubt wondering to themselves whether this new kind of madness would somehow result in more food for them.)

So, Saturday morning came, and again holding my breath, I turned on the aquarium light to find 4 happy, active fish who seemed quite pleased to see me, thinking of course that it was time to be fed. This reminded me that, in my determination to not get attached, I had actually gone beyond not naming the fish, to not even purchasing any food for them.

Time for another trip to the friendly fish place. I was feeling pretty proud of myself and chuffed by this initial success, and as I was walking around the aquarium shop, I had to really fight the urge to get some more exotic, exciting fish. When I was looking at all the fantastic fish in the shop, some very cool things in one of the tanks caught my eye. In one of the tanks, there were these 5 shrimp/yabbie-like creatures, about 5 cm long, with normal shrimp/yabbie like heads, tails and feet, but without pincers, and instead these 4 really funny front legs with kind of two opposable hands that opened out a bit like mini baseball gloves. I really don't know how to describe it. Looks a bit like the second one on this page but doesn't do the crazy thing justice, so I'll do a bit more research and try find some good pics somewhere. So these things were just walking along the bottom of the tank, using these crazy hands to pick up rocks, stick them in their mouths, suck them clean, then put them back down. They were all doing this in such a constant, repetitive, mechanical fashion - I was absolutely fascinated by these "cleaner shrimp", so I consulted with the friendly fish man, who assured me (in reasonably good English) that they were very hardy and suitable for even new tanks if there was enough algae, plant scraps and other waste for them to eat.

I decided to push my luck - and then there were 5.

After giving the fish their first feed and introducing them to their new cleaning staff, it was time to give them names (not the shrimp though, that would have to wait a while.) After much contemplation, I decided that the platys would be called Pat and Polly, the female guppy would be Gertie, and the the male, Gav. Like most creatures, (with the notable exception of humans, of course ;-) the male guppy is vastly more beautiful than his female counterpart. Gerty is a fairly plain, mottled, dirty grey, but she has some nice specs of colour in her tail. Gav, while significantly smaller, is a vibrant almost fluorescent yellow, with a long, flowing tail. Gav is a real stud, and is constantly trying it on not only with Gertie, but also with Polly and Pat. As I type this, I realise that Pat is actually a male (I had assumed that the shop had the male and female platys separated like they did with the guppies, so I hadn't given him a serious look over in that area until now.) Well, go Gav - funtimes in the swingers aquarium!

So, all is going well in the tank... The biggest problem so far is one that we are quite accustomed to here - how the heck to keep Lucy's hair out of the tank! Ollie absolutely loves the food, he can't wait until I finish feeding them so he can lick the very fishy smelling crumbs off my fingers.

Well, that's enough rambling from the proud new father on this topic. Keep your fingers crossed that things continue to go well - watch this space for more updates and photos. Sorry about the photo quality by the way - quite difficult to get a good shot because the lighting/reflections are pretty weird, and the fish just won't sit still for long enough!




[1] Yes, I do acknowledge your arguments that the cause of death was probably related to the higher than usual level of alcohol that well-intentioned students added to water on the night of your party, but I still counter that poor parenting was a significant factor in its untimely demise Shane. back