FishProfiles.com Message Forums

This article was originally posted some time back, prior to the Board archiving, but I've been asked to post it again. And, in the light of some of the anecdotes I've been given by some of the regular Board contributors with respect to woeful aquarium practices encountered in their travels, the reappearance of this article is probably apposite. So, here goes.

An Aquarium Is Not A TV

I've been doing some more reflecting, and what I'm about to say might prove a tad controversial, but hopefully, my readers will find my ideas meet with a degree of approval.

Quite a few of the problems encountered (particularly by newcomers to fishkeeping, but it can catch the more experienced off guard at times too) can be laid at the door of what I shall call the 'instant gratification' culture. This is embodied by television and other forms of home entertainment: you buy the TV/VCR/DVD player, take it home, plug it in and enjoy. End of story. For quite a few people, it's the same with cars. You buy the car, drive it home, and when you want to go somewhere, get in, start it up, and off you go. Maintenance, particularly for affluent owners, is usually someone else's problem. If it starts to become troublesome and needs a lot of maintenance, you ditch it and get a new one.

The culture of instant gratification, however, does NOT apply to fishes. Fishes are NOT things you simply take home, plug in and watch, engaging in channel hopping to find the ones you want the most. An aquarium is NOT a TV. It may look like one, and I even know of people who have constructed aquaria inside TV cabinets, but there the resemblance ends.

An aquarium is a complex biological system. Moreover, it is one that is largely isolated from the rest of the environment. Unlike natural water systems, which [1] have far larger volumes of water, and [2] are connected to other biological systems (e.g., when fish eating birds arrive for a meal), an aquarium is a body of water, kept separate from the vast majority of outside biological systems, in which living organisms are expected to coexist. And, the good news is that they can, and can do so spectacularly well, provided that the person responsible for the aquarium is prepared to exert some effort directed toward that end. To be successful, an aquarist needs to engage in both physical effort (various housekeeping tasks such as water changes and gravel vacs) and intellectual effort (understanding the proper functioning of entities such as biological filter substrates, and acquiring a certain ecological awareness, noting such details as species compatibility).

The trouble is, the seductive pleasures of instant gratification, as embodied in televisions and cars, lull all too many people into thinking that all they have to do is buy, plug in and go. An aquarium doesn't work like that. It's a living system, and living systems require tending. They require patience. They require application and diligence on the part of the human being responsible for them, in the case of captive living systems such as aquaria. And, of course, along with the 'plug in and go' mentality, there is the dread hand of fashion, typified recently by the infamous Nemo film, which if studied diligently, actually contains much the same message that I am promulgating here. Sadly, all too many cinema goers see it simply as yet another 'sit and watch' piece of light entertainment, without bothering to actually think about what they are watching. And, when little Johnny starts clamouring "Daddy, can I have a Nemo?" how many parents will take the trouble to sit down with little Johnny and explain that Nemo is a cartoon fish, and real fish need looking after?

One of the messages that I push here on this board (and this is yet another instance of this) is that an aquarium is an entity that requires attributes that are unpopular or unfashionable in today's "I want it now" world. Attributes I've already cited above, such as patience, application, and a willingness to learn. All too often, any pastime that requires intellectual input is dismissed these days as 'boring' or 'nerdy', but if it wasn't for those of us willing to be unfashionable, boring and nerdy, the shiny toys that the instant gratification brigade love so much wouldn't have come into existence. If you took the average couch potato and exposed him to even a fraction of the underlying engineering complexity behind television broadcasting, he'd have a seizure. And how many people watching trashy DVDs on their shiny new DVD player have even the slightest inkling how a DVD player works?

Sadly, I've encountered the same mentality among managers in IT companies, believe it or not. People who think that all that's needed to get their shiny product into the marketplace is a nice pretty user interface with lots of shiny buttons for the users to press, and hey presto, they get their work done like magic. It doesn't work like that, and as a former assembly language programmer responsible for real-time embedded systems (including operating systems for cruise missiles) I'm well placed to blow this myth into orbit with a 50-megaton thermonuclear warhead. Recently I've been working on a project to map images onto curved surfaces (known as Bézier surfaces to those with the requisite mathematical background) and I've now brought this project, in between writing articles for this Board, maintaining an underwater madhouse full of frolicking Panda Corys, and applying for jobs with various organisations whose IT departments are managed by MBAs who wear red braces and think that they're Superman, to something approaching fruition. If I show the average randomly selected couch potato (or for that matter quite a few so-called IT managers) the underlying code, just watch those eyes glaze over. The same malaise infects politics too, a case of 'never mind the substance, concentrate on the pretty packaging', but I'll leave detailed analysis of that aside in deference to the operating conditions in this forum.

But if it hadn't been for the willingness of those who went before us to devote effort and intellectual rigor to their pursuits, our lives now wouldn't be so easy. I for one still find it amazing that technology and understanding has advanced to the point where reef systems are now manageable, and successfully so, by the reasonably educated layman. Twenty years ago, they were the subject of Ph.D research papers. No doubt in another twenty years, someone willing to be 'boring' and 'nerdy' will crack the secret of keeping Rainbow Butterfly Fishes alive for more than two weeks in the typical home marine aquarium. Likewise, if John Logie Baird hadn't wrestled with engineering problems of considerable complexity, and solved them, we wouldn't be able to push a button on the channel zapper and surf zillions of TV channels from the armchair.

But the fact remains that a certain degree of intellectual rigor, and all those other unfashionable character traits so often derided as 'uncool' are the very ones that make for successful fishkeeping. You don't need a Ph.D in marine biology to keep a reef system, but it sure helps an awful lot if you take the time to learn from those who have and who made it possible in the first place. And those of us here who have been successful with our fishkeeping didn't become successful by channel zapping. Take Shini, for example: he's a practising veterinarian, and you don't get to be one of those overnight. Here in the UK it's a five year degree course, and a hard one at that, in which you can be in a lecture theatre in the morning learning about metabolic pathways, and up to your eyeballs in filth on a farm with your arm up a cow's passages in the afternoon. Chances are it's not that different in America. But all that effort means that when Shini has the chance to keep a Potamotrygon motoro freshwater stingray in an aquarium, first, he'll set about doing it properly, and second, it'll live a pretty decent life being cared for by someone knowledgeable. Likewise, most of the marine keepers like Oleta didn't end up with resplendent miniature reefs in their homes without working toward that end. And my Pandas wouldn't spawn once per week if they weren't happy with the little underwater Disneyland of bogwood caves and plants that I spend so much time caring for - and as if to reinforce the point, here am I, 40 minutes after another water change and gravel vac, and my Pandas look as if they're gearing up for yet another five hour spawning marathon.

There's a popular car sticker over here in the UK. It reads: "A dog is for life, not just for Christmas". The same applies to fishkeeping. While I've only had the Pandas for around 18 months, the Panda Palace itself has been running since December 1994, and in that time, I've averaged around two dead fish per year, almost all of them from sheer old age. I recently posted about my Methuselah Otocinclus, which went to the great aquarium in the sky aged over 9 years old. Yes, it's possible, but [1] you have to love your fish, and [2] you have to do the spadework and the headwork to make it happen. It won't happen if you treat an aquarium as yet another TV-style shiny toy or disposable income status symbol.

I really should get an editorial job on a magazine. Any publishers reading this, my fees are reasonable



Last edited by Calilasseia at 28-Feb-2005 18:47

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Very well said.

Great article cali I love to read yours very well put. Great job.


==fish1

Nice job Cali. And like it is said "Patience is a Virture." And is especially true to this hobby (much more than that to many, as you can atest).

---

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

Great article.


http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/s8xi5heh/album?.dir=b5f2

http://www.deathbydyeing.org/



http://www.flickr.com/photos/corydoras/
Member of the Malta Aquarist Society - 1970.
http://www.maltaaquarist.com

*shines Nerd badge* T'anks Calilasseia!
Best example I've experienced is the overheard conversation between LFS employee and customer. "so I can just put some salt in the tank?" said the customer in front of a display of saltwater fish. Not able to listen to much more I surmised that the customer had found a fish they liked for the tank they likely had just picked out and didnt know that the shop carried both saltwater and freshwater fish!

^_^
[hr width='40%']"There’s an emptiness inside her. And she’d do anything to fill it in.
And though it’s red blood bleeding from her now. It's more like cold blue ice in her heart.
She feels like kicking out all the windows. And setting fire to this life."

I agree wholeheartedly! Hope you get that editorial!

SW Pics: http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dave_slade@btinternet.com/
Saltwater tank 125G-30G sump with caulerpa refugium.
yellow tang, atlantic anemone, 11 turbo snails, 4 nassarius snails, 12 various hermits, 3 cleaner shrimp, 2 occelaris clown, yellow

Very good editorial, and a good reminder to everyone that patience is needed. Don't know what it is about an empty tank that makes people want to overstock it immediately..*am now fighting the impulse*..but this is an act of patience and love that experienced fish keepers follow.

Hi All,
Tanks for the article Calilasseia. I could not agree
more, and I've seen those bumperstickers here in the states
as well.

The thing with tanks is, that they get to you. Maybe not
right away, but eventually. Walking through the store
and seeing what is called in the LFS trade as the "Zoo
Tank" or "Zoo Fish," folks see them and want a piece of
nature in their homes. Unlike a dog or cat, they don't need
to be walked several times a day, not need the litter box
changed frequently, they don't need constant attention,
and after all that small can of flake food, is really cheap.

So where to locate the tank? Many put it right beside the
TV and at night plop down in front of it after eating
dinner to the news, or quiz show, and there it sits.
Others recognize a kind of kinship with the serenity of
a tank, and the fish moving among the plastic or live plants
and put the tank in a quieter location such as a study.
Still others place them in their bedrooms, where they can
sit and read before sleep, and find the combination of
a good book and the peaceful fish movements relaxing.
Then the lights go out, and suddenly the filter and, or,
the airstone makes too much noise. "How do I make things
quieter?" is a frequent question on this board.

IMO, a tank should be a part of your life. Even in these
days of meetings, work, kids, bills, and, or, parties one
should place a tank, where you can actually sit, relax,
look AT the tank, and watch the fish. Someplace out of the
main traffic routes of the home. Someplace where YOU the
tank owner can, and does, sit comfortably and enjoy the
tank.

If you place the tank in this mythical place, you will get
more out of it, and be willing to put more into it. More
time to regularly clean it, more time to observe the
interactions that occur, and more time to enjoy the hobby.


Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--