Blog Revival Part 1

Does anyone have hobbies anymore? Back when my dad was a kid, he collected stamps. How boring is that? When I was a kid he tried to get me to have a hobby. I started out by collecting pennies. To jumpstart my collection, he bought me 2 penny collecting books that dated back to the 1940s. I’m pretty sure the oldest penny I found was from 1945, which is pretty old, but I really don’t care about pennies. But I did need a hobby, correct? Every adult I knew had a hobby. My dad likes building furniture (bed frames, cabinets, etc) and my mom loves cooking (seriously, it’s a hobby for her. She watches food network and spends so much time looking up recipes on the web). But I didn’t have a hobby! How was I going to be a responsible adult and contributing member of society? Fortunately pogs came along, but I’m pretty sure I only liked those because everyone did. Then I got pokemon. But collecting pokemon is pathetic. I also didn’t like professional sports, so I couldn’t collect baseball cards like my friends. What was I to do? Here’s what happened: I played video games.

Years have passed. Since my days of collecting pennies, I have learned to drive, gotten laid, tasted the rainbow, and graduated college. I am a somewhat adult who somewhat contributes to society. And guess what? I have a hobby! This leads me to the main purpose of this post, which is about my new hobby, fishkeeping.

The hobby really got started when I thought about how cool it would be to have my own ecosystem. This was back in June. When I was bored at work, I would google search aquarium stuff, but nothing too serious. Then I came upon pictures of something called “aquascapes.” This is by no means what I want my aquarium to look like, but it really caught my attention and caused me to think more seriously about making a nice environment for fish. Here are some good pictures: one, two, three.

As I mentioned, those pictures aren’t anywhere close to what I have right now and it is likely that I never will have something like that, but I do now have two aquarium tanks in my apartment.

I started out by simply going to the public library and picking up a couple books about fishkeeping. It got me really excited. I ended up buying “Freshwater Aquariums for Dummies” and read it cover to cover. Once I had a good idea of what I wanted, I got on craigslist and found a sweet deal. It was $100 for a 30gallon tank + power filter + heater + stand + accessories like nets and artificial plants. Now it might not be obvious, but a good stand is very important because the 30 gallon fish tank can weigh about 300 lbs. The same night that I got the tank, I went over to petco and bought some gravel, chemicals, test kits, and filtration stuff for the filter. Then I filled the bitch up. After letting the tank run for a few days, I bought my first 3 fish. They are zebra danios and they are good starter fish because they can handle beginner mistakes and can withstand a wide variety of water conditions. I basically had these fish for about 3 weeks before I got any others. This was important because the tank is going to become an ecosystem. When the fish pee/poop, they release ammonia into the water. If this ammonia builds up, it becomes poisonous to the fish. Fortunately, bacteria are present on the fish when you buy them, and these beneficial bacteria break down the ammonia into less harmful nitrites. However, nitrites are still dangerous (which is why you should not eat too much beef jerky). There is ANOTHER type of bacteria that breaks the nitrites down to nitrates. Nitrates are even less harmful, but the way you reduce the nitrates is by simply changing the water in the aquarium. This whole thing is called the nitrogen cycle if you’re curious. I like to call it the circle of life.

So I couldn’t buy all the fish I wanted (and still haven’t) because I didn’t want them to all die (I’m such a sweetheart). In the meantime, I wanted to make my tank look nice. I had some fake plants in there and this out-of-place looking coral-imitating structure that I got with the tank. I hated it. So I went to a local streambank and picked out a bunch of rocks. Then I made some cave-like structures in my tank and tried to make it look somewhat like how I think a nice environment for fish would look. Having caves/rocks is important for 3 major reasons. 1) its more natural, namely, you don’t find treasure chests and sunken castles in nature, 2) it gives the fish places to hide, and 3) it provides natural boundaries for territories. I set up some of the rocks into tunnels while the others I kind of scattered around the tank.

I bought another type of fish at this point: a red-tailed shark. Unfortunately its not a real shark. It looks more like a catfish because it has little whiskers. And it will only grow to about 4 inches long, which is still pretty big for a tropical aquarium. In terms of behavior, it is not very social and tends to fight with others of its species, so I bought only one. It also is slightly territorial, but mine doesn’t show too much of that because it is still young/small. Finally, it is a bottom dweller, which is something I needed because the danios are hyper-active fish that swim in all areas of the tank, but tend to make the top of the tank look like a racetrack. I had been sharing all this with my friends in grad school, and one of them commented that he used to have a fish tank that is at his parents’ house. So, after thanksgiving break, he came back to Maryland with a 10 gallon tank and all the accessories and sold it to me for $20. So I set up this tank pretty much how I set up the other one. I transferred the danios to this tank so they could start up the nitrogen cycle there so bacteria colonies could form.

I’m getting out of chronological order here, but at some point before this new tank arrived I bought new fish called platys. They are live bearers (no eggs, males have a dick they stick in the females) and come in a wide variety of bright colors. I bought 2 breeds of platy: mickey mouse platys and gold wag platys. I don’t know why the latter is called gold wag, but the other is called mickey mouse because of the markings near the tail looking like mickey mouse’s head and ears. Anyway, these fish are supposed to give birth every 4-6 weeks. I’ve had them for about 8 weeks and they haven’t had any babies yet, but I’m remaining optimistic. Right now I have them in the 10 gallon tank by themselves. I’ll admit, it is possible they have already had babies and ended up eating them all. This is part of the reason that I put them in the tank by themselves.

The 10 gallon tank is also special because it has a very bright light on it. This means I can put live plants in it! So I did this about 2 weeks ago. I bought two types. One is called micro sword. As you can see, it pretty much looks like grass. I bought one big bundle of it and broke it into 3 pieces. I hope they create a lawn effect in my aquarium. I’m not entirely sure what the other type is called, but it is a taller plant with short, narrow leaves. Anyway, I’m hoping that the plants will give the baby fish lots of places to hide so they don’t get eaten by mommy and daddy.

I have two other species in my tank that I haven’t mentioned yet. They are called neon tetras and spotted corys. The neons are very small schooling fish (so I have 5 of them) that aren’t particularly active, but they’re so pretty! It is cool watching them move together. The corys are bottom dwellers that are very playful. They have little whiskers by their mouths that help them find food on the bottom of the tank. Their bodies are slightly awkward shaped and its amusing to watch them swim around.

This post is getting a little long, but I’ll post pictures of my tank in the future. Wish me luck! And enjoy finding a fun hobby!