Are we there yet? Pet peeves of the aquarium | Davis Enterprise

I?m not sure what makes a person want a pet beyond a cat or dog, but many people are attracted to more novel critters as companions: strange rodent pets like hamsters ? so cute how they travel around by ball! ? rabbits and guinea pigs (who knows what that even is); reptiles like kinda-cute turtles or hideous snakes and lizards; and of course, fish. Nothing cures the desire to have a novel pet more than having one.

We had a fish tank when I was a kid, and as one would expect, I don?t remember what kind of work was involved with maintaining it. But I do have a very vivid memory of one of the fish being a ?jumper? ? as in, this fish would hurl himself out of the tank and onto our very long and lustrous 1970s shag carpeting. He did this a few times before nobody was around to rescue him. We found him dried out and quite shaggy upon returning from a weekend away.

My kids? childhood pets have been dogs. We?ve had dogs since before our first child was born 15-plus years ago, ergo, our kids never were very fascinated by canines. They kind of take dogs for granted and don?t realize how many kids wish they could get one.

For many years, cats were a real obsession for our kids, but since my husband is insanely allergic, cat-owning would be torture for him. Stuffed-animal cats became the favored bedtime companions, and when he was about 4 years old, my older son had a phase of pretending he was a cat. All make-believe games he played involved a cat persona ? ?I?m a construction worker cat.? ?I?m a NASCAR racer cat.?

For a of couple years, our younger son really pushed for a hamster, having had one in his classroom. But I was not on board cage-cleaning and quashed this dream. After much debate between my husband and I, we compromised and got our son a fish tank for his birthday a few years ago. It is still in bubbling away in his bedroom, in that peaceful and soothing way that makes people suckers for fish tanks. But I am neither soothed by nor at peace with it.

The problems that come with owning and operating a fish tank range from puzzling to maddening.

Of course, when we first got the tank, we all were infatuated with it. Setting up the little sunken ship, arranging plants and rocks for the fish to hide in was great entertainment. But the fish were not cooperative and died within the first couple days for no discernible reason. The next batch died, too. They would flounder around (heh heh), float to the top, sink to the bottom, get stuck in the fake plants and sometimes just disappear altogether.

In fact, a cute little frog just vanished. We named it Filter because more than once we found it in the bottom of the filter, hiding away, not swimming around and enjoying the little aquasphere we?d created.

When fish died and we could locate them, I left the burials-at-sea to my husband. Flushing them has never been my forte; and in writing this column I remembered a ridiculous incident with a fish tank I had in college. When a plague ran through that tank ? which I later found out from my husband was caused by a mutual friend peeing in my tank during a party!! ? I would knock on our neighbors? door and get the nice guys next door to scoop and flush.

Anyway, because it is virtually impossible for our son to be responsible for cleaning the tank without spilling massive amounts of water, I am in charge of this thing. (By the way, we are on our second tank now after the first one sprung a leak that caulking could not fix ? that was fun ? and it?s even harder to clean.) I find myself rooting for a plague to decimate the population.

Before my cold-heartedness, when previous plagues have rained down on the fish, I?ve consulted the ?Tropical Fish Problem Solver Chart? that I found at www.gbasonline.org. It is helpful to use this chart to look up a symptom such as ?white cotton sprouting from mouth sides,? and learn that a bacteria, Flexobacter, is causing a mouth fungus.

This chart, while useful, has a way with words. For comic relief, I will now describe a few other fish tank ailments.

If your problem seems to be ?glass dirty on outside? with an appearance of ?fingerprints or drip marks,? well, your tank is suffering from ?finger grease.? Does your fish have ?pop eyes? where the ?eyes stand out from socket?? Looks like your fish needs to put down the boxing gloves to recover from its ?infection from fighting.? There are also problems such as ?thin fish,? ?shakes and shimmies? and ?sore eyes.? Is it any wonder we can?t keep our fish alive?

Before this tank, my husband and I were convinced that we should have a 100-gallon saltwater tank to bring zen to our household. Thankfully, this experience has cured that urge before we dropped thousands of dollars on that dream. For now, I?m contemplating urinating in the tank to get that plague started. Which reminds me, conspicuously absent from the ?Tropical Fish Problem Solver Chart? is ?fish dead from urine poisoning? caused by ?drunk guy peeing in tank.?

? Tanya Perez is an associate editor at The Enterprise. Her column is published every other Thursday. Reach her at tperez@davisenterprise.net. Follow her on Twitter at @enterprisetanya

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View this story on page A12 Posted by Tanya Perez on Mar 14 2012.
Last Login: Wed Mar 14 09:20:56 2012
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