Aquaria

[vaneramos]

When I was little we lived two blocks from Nana and Bumpa. They sat in the living room chain smoking and watching Lawrence Welk. Nana kept an aquarium full of guppies. Guppies breed exponentially, so we brought some home for an aquarium in the sunroom. My brother fed them. The guppies got a disease that grew like white moss on their flesh. We added medicine that turned the water blue, but they all died anyway.

After my brothers left for university and we moved to Poplar Bluff, I had an aquarium of my own, first with guppies, then mollies, platies, swordtails, and dwarf gouramis. The aquarium eventually became a terrarium. Fish gave way to other creatures: red-spotted newts, then hermit crabs, and finally an armadillo lizard named Genghis.

Nana and Bumpa used to come look after the house while we were away. Every time, Bumpa would commit some atrocity on the garden, cutting down Mom's forsythia, tearing clematis off the side deck, or spraying pesticide around the house to kill spiders. Genghis died after eating poisoned crickets.

Later in life I had a saltwater aquarium. Reef fish seem to have more personality, perhaps because they live in a diverse environment.

Comments

[wonderboynj.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted a salt water aquarium, just always found them to be cost prohibitive, not to mention space prohibitive.

Now that I could afford one, I have no place to put it :)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, space is a problem. They generally need to be larger than the average aquarium. They also require constant attention, which is a problem since I spend a lot of time away from home.

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

Hooray for guppies! As you saw, my uncle had a tank filled with them for many years. My parents had some for a while but could never get them to breed at all. My childhood was all about rodents, although we did have newts at one point too. And Erik has a saltwater tank now.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Your mention of guppies was what got me going on these memories. I had a guinea pig and a white rabbit, too, but they didn't last as long as the cold-blooded critters. We had a dog and two cats throughout my teens, too.

Saltwater tanks are wonderful. I would love to have one again, but it would interfere with my portable lifestyle.

[bearfinch.livejournal.com]

Another interest we have in common. Hmmm.

My experience with guppies is that they do best in hard, alkaline water, and if that can't be provided, a bit of salt (about 1 teaspoon per gallon) should be added to help protect them against diease.

I haven't yet kept saltwater fish yet, the closest I have come is brackish water species (archer fish, monos, etc.). Saltwater aquaria need a good deal more monitoring and chemical adjustment....I have though sometimes could probably easily pull it off by sneaking in water samples and using my lab equipment....

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Where do you work?

I kept a clownfish in an aquarium for a couple of years without much trouble. My problem with saltwater aquaria now is they can't be left, and I'm gone from home for three or four days at a time at least twice a month. So this is one thing I would really like to do but can't foresee doing again.

[bearfinch.livejournal.com]

I work at UWO, in the environmental engineering department. We have all kinds of high precsion lab equipment here for water monitoring (pH, conductivity, ion chromatograph, supended solids analysis, spectrophotometers, etc).

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Interesting place to work!

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Heh. It's a long time since I've heard the term "guppy" used to refer to the fish.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Funny, I've heard the slang usage so rarely, I actually had to look it up just now. I guess I'm not a guppy.