Confessions of a Fishkeeper
I bought my first aquarium when I was 10 years old. It was one of those “everything” for $8.99 deals, where you got an Ambassador 10 gallon tank (trimmed in slick black plastic), an air pump, an inside filter, 2 feet of airline tubing, a packet of fish food and a plastic bag with 10 lucky souls paroled from the feeder goldfish tank. I remember it like it was yesterday. From the age of ten on, my obsession with the hobby grew rapidly. I think I graduated up to a 30-gallon six months later, and had already moved on to saltwater and reef tanks by the time I was fifteen. I had some sort of large, impressive display reef tank in my life pretty much continuously from fifteen to thirty. In 1998, I moved out to the Bay Area from New York, and the hobby was left behind.
About 2 years ago, on a whim and maybe because I was feeling a little optimistic, I dropped $80 on one of those “out of the box” 5 gallon kits, at Ocean Aquarium on Cedar. Justin and Aidie are just a few blocks from us, and have been a big part of my return to the hobby. I put the sweet, little tank on my desk (right beside my monitors), but it never thrived. For all my experience keeping fish back in NY, I was really not invested in it this time. I went with freshwater because I wanted it to be easy, you know. I wasn’t really interested in returning to the hobby in any fanatical sense. I just wanted to look at fish. As you would expect, I sacrificed many lives casually and carelessly in 2006. It wasn’t until a year ago, when my wife and I moved up a block higher on the slopes of Nob Hill (from Post to Sutter street), that I became interested in making my fish tank succeed.
When we moved to Sutter street, I relocated the little 5-gallon from my desktop, to a spot on the counter near a window in the kitchen with a view of a cheering patch of urban verdure miraculously flourishing between two apartment buildings in the middle of San Francisco. Remember, I am from New York, so plants and trees surviving unprotected in the city is a rather miraculous thing, lol. Well, the tank did great in the new place, and for the first time, the birth rate of our guppies and platies began to exceed the mortality rate. Given that positive indication, I ventured up to a 10 gallon. I moved the delightfully numerous guppies and platies into the new 10 gallon, and we decided to set-up the 5-gallon in the bedroom. And just like that, we became a 2-fish tank family!
We had a bit of a bumpy start with the 5-gallon in the bedroom. We put 6 Cardinals in the tank without a heater, and they were dead from cold water in the morning. I got a heater, replaced the Cardinals, and added a pair of tiger barbs and 2 white clouds to the mix. And nobody has died for a long time.
Doing so well keeping the fish alive, I finally turned my attention to the plants. I used to think of myself as an experienced and knowledgeable aquarist. But when it comes to keeping planted freshwater aquariums, I realized quickly that my reef skills were irrelevant, and that I really knew very little. When I went online and checked in on the “State of the Freshwater Hobby”, as it were, I was amazed to discover how far the art had come since I’d last had a look. All of this ADA stuff and the staggering evolution of the aesthetic standards for the freshwater aquarium took me quite by surprise. When I was a teenager, I thought I was “trading-up” to saltwater. I realize now that the most beautiful aquascapes are in the freshwater planted category.
So, I upgraded the bulbs on both tanks, and the plants began to grow! I was still so tickled by the population explosion in the 10 gallon tank in the kitchen that I was content to let the plants in the tank grow wild, for the babies’ sake, and also because it was really gratifying to watch things grow unchecked like that. It was in the 5-gallon tank in the bedroom, that I began to try to make something “pretty”. It’s kind of a cramped space to work with, but my wife and I enjoy having it by our bed very much. Meanwhile, some of our fish were becoming grand parents and great-grand parents in the kitchen. Life with two tanks was good.
Back in November of last year I was taking the recycling down to the basement one day, when, before my disbelieving eyes (standing up on their ends side-by-side in a dusty corner of the garbage room), appeared 2 perfectly good 40-gallon “breeder” size tanks. I could say that they were both “brand new”, because it was obvious from the presence of the original labels inside the tanks, they they had never been filled with water. But they were absolutely filthy with what looked like years of dust. “How odd”, I thought. Had someone from the building bought these 2 tanks long ago and never used them? Maybe somebody who’d worked in the aquarium trade. I have never found out where they came from. I took one of the tanks, and a few days later I saw that the second one was gone. Don’t know if it was rescued or just went out with the trash.
I ran up the stairs excitedly from the basement, and let my wife know I had found a “free aquarium” and that I needed her help bringing it up. Now, the old Jack would have rushed right into setting up this new (THIRD) aquarium, but at the sober suggestion of my wife, “I took it easy” with this one. After testing it for leaks with a few inches of water in the bathroom, we emptied it, slid it under the dining room table, where it remained untouched for almost 2 months.
Then, a week before Christmas, my wife went down to San Diego to spend the holidays with her parents. I was scheduled to follow down on the 23rd (for the proverbial Christmas with the inlaws). But I had 4-5 days to myself in the apartment before I had to fly down.
So I began to create my new aquarium.
That was about 6 weeks ago, and for most of that time the tank has looked like absolute shit. I caught a terrible case of green water, and it only cleared up about a week ago. During the last week, I have added the first fish residents (3 Rainbow Fish, 3 Cherry Barbs, a Paradise Gourami, an Albino Red Tail Shark, and 3 Otocinclus), and the plants have really spruced up in the light.
Tonight, for the first time, I looked at my young tank, and (applying to it a higher standard of beauty than I have ever applied to an aquarium before) I thought it worthy to photograph and share. I must apologize for the terrible quality of these photographs. I should probably get a tripod or something for the next time. But I pray some of the merit of the subject carries through:
I have high hopes for it.
Obviously, there are lots of spots that need to grow in yet. But you can see a basic sketch of what I think it can become in time with some love and care.