And finally...

At the end, keeping fish in an aquarium is neither about Feng Shui nor Vaastu. It is about learning to take care of bowlful of surprises. If you are lucky the fish will breed and multiply and if you don't take care of your fish well enough, they will die. Between the two extremes you learn a lot.

If you need emergency care for your pets, the best and fastest source of information is the Internet. Not just the clutch of sites that peddle everything from gravel to invertebrates to discus, but the hobby groups. Some of them are so active that even before you post your problem the solution will be there. Even the topics list that is a part of the fish hobbyist groups is a great help. Read them through and you will get all your doubts clarified in no time. Of course, it is tricky territory, the moment you have a doubt, there will be a thousand recipes and there will be a fight.

There is one aspect that ties aquarium hobby with another hobby: photography. Photographing your fish and showing it to the world is the best way to show that you have arrived.

~S.N.

Hey fishy fishy...

Gizmos, technology and chemistry can get pretty addictive if you are an aquarist. It is easy to graduate from watching the thermometer and adjusting the timer switch to reading chemistry notes learning about alkalinity and acidity and watching strips of paper turn violet or blue. Once this stage is reached it is very difficult to back off and take the same personal interest as the pioneering aquarists. Which is the better bet for your fish as well as you?

Of course technology helps. Or how else do you maintain the right temperature in the aquarium if you cannot have that strip of thermostat and thermometer combination? But beyond this reliance it can be a dicey business as the love affair becomes a mechanical affair.

Instead of "hey! fishy, fishy" the routine can change to "what's the ph (the hydrogen ions in water which show acidity or alkalinity) today? Oh my God!" this is quite a change.

How to keep it simple? Observe the aquarium everyday, see the changes in the water colour, health of fishes, plants.

Talk to the fish (sound travels better in water than in air) and see your fish get interested in you. Snap your fingers before you feed them and the next time you snap your fingers they will come swimming to you.

But then how do you keep track of the changes in the aquarium? Keep it simple, if you know your fishes are not dying, plants are not withering and the water is clear then all is right with your aquaworld.

~S.N.

Holidaying?

You can take your dog with you on your vacation but what do you do with your fish?

How do you take care of your fish? Who will feed them, clean the tank, switch on the light and switch it off? Depends on how long you are planning to be away. If your holiday is only for a few days stretching to a week, then don't worry about feeding the fish.

The fish will be fine, may be a little hungry, may be a little leaner, maybe they will turn vegetarian and eat more greens. Just ensure that you feed them well just before you slam the door shut. A longer vacation is a different kettle of fish altogether. Make small portions of the food and persuade one of your neighbours to feed the fish every alternate day.

If you have a single tubelight you can leave it switched on if your aquarium has plants.

~S.N.

Dealing with moody fish...

'Modern Love: What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage' is Amy Sutherland's story about an exotic animal trainer who uses the tricks used to train her pets on her husband with often funny but heart warming results.

Aquarists often have to deal with similar situations where their new acquisition turns out to be a monster that devours all the plants or worse still chases, nips fins, and leaves the older pets swimming for cover and shelter.

Occasionally, an older pet becomes roguish and you have to take a crucial decision. Should you...

Mind games

But before you have to take a heartbreaking decision, you can try and use a little psychology to take care of your loved ones. Some fish are gregarious by nature and lead a social life, but some others like the fabled Siamese fighter will always be aggressive.

Then there are others like the Discus, Oscar, Scat that will be fine in a same species tank but become aggressive when introduced into a community tank.

How do you deal with this situation?

A few aquarists after getting the fish in the plastic pouch consider equalising the temperature as the main thing. It is, but more than that, you have to make the introduction as monotonous as possible. For that, you have to resort to a simple trick of feeding the fish.

Do that, and the distraction is sufficient for acclimatisation of the new members of the community.

But what is the lesson from the exotic animal trainer? When the fish behaves roguishly, create a glass partition.

Then you can start the training, if the fish is good feed it a little, if it behaves badly, ignore it. Stick to this behaviour control and the results should be good, unless you have a fish-eating monster like Arrowana.

And if everything else fails, it is better to return the rogue to the pet shop than to confine him in a small aquarium.

~S.N.

How can fish stay healthy?

As other people swallow live fish filled with yellow stuff to cure themselves of asthma, take a look at your aquarium and feel proud. But you can feel proud only if your fish stay in the pink of their health. There is no jiggery-pokery involved here, all you have to do is to observe your bowl (okay cube) of joy every day, the way you water your plants.

The signs to look out for are the fish fins, fish bellies, algal growth in the aquarium, colour of water, airstone, the gravel and the leaves of the plants. If you are having the wrong collection of fishes then it will show in the fins of your collection. Most freshwater fishes are not aggressive (piranhas, Oscars and some cichlids are the dishonourable exceptions) and nip at the fins of others only if they are bored (yeah! fish are intelligent and get bored). The solution is to read up a little (you and not the fish) and get the right environment for your fish.

There will be no algal growth if you are using treated tap water and the light is just right. Ground water has phosphorous and algae thrive in it. If you still have algae, clean up the tank and reduce the light a little. The algae will disappear.

The colour of water in your aquarium should not be the same as in a drinking water bottle. It has to be brownish green, but not too dark a shade.

If you are the one who keeps switching off the air pump, then it is likely that the airstone will get clogged. Boil it and shake it in water, the airstone would be bubbling.

The gravel gets compacted blocking the growth of plant roots, to prevent it, whenever you clean the water in the tank, stir and swirl the gravel sufficiently and siphon out the gooey poop.

Plants are the best indicators of the health of the aquarium. If they are green without any yellow or brown fringes or mottled appearance, then stop reading this column now.

~S.N.

Keeping plants green...

Aquarists can be real weirdoes. Imagine you are a chemist working in a nuclear laboratory and you have an aquarium at home. Can you mix both? Perhaps not. But one bloke did just that in the US. Instead of paying fat packets of dough for keeping his aquarium plants green by using fertilizer tablets regularly, he put one of the tablets through a gas chromatograph. Voila! He had all the names of chemicals that go into the creation of the fertilizer tablet.

So what do we get out of it. A poor man's formula for keeping the plants green. It has potassium sulfate, potassium nitrate and hydrated magnesium sulphate and a mixture of eight trace elements.



All these compounds are available at shops that sell lab equipment and chemicals. Don't buy bags of these chemicals the cops will come knocking on your door (potassium nitrate is part of the gunpowder formula also). Buy 100 gm of these and use this formula to mix, keep and add to your aquarium. Use 20 gm of hydrated magnesium sulphate, 40 gm of potassium sulphate, 20 gm of potassium nitrate, 10 gm of trace element mix and mix it with 500 ml of warm water and store it in a cool place. After the cloudy mixture settles down, add two spoons of the stuff to your aquarium daily and see the plants bubble with life. Change the dosage depending on your needs.

If you think that you will step into a fertilizer store and save some trouble, don't do it. Fertilizers have urea, ammonia and phosphates. The first two will kill the fishes, phosphate will add to your algal agony.

The subject is treated in greater detail at http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/Fertilizer/pmdd-tim.html#roll.

~S.N.

How clean is clean?

The basic test that most aquarists flunk is that of keeping the aquarium clean enough for their fishes: either it is too clean or too dirty.

Too clean would be like living in a sterile environment with the smell of chlorine, and too dirty with the fish poop and the organic waste of dying plants and it would be like living in a sewer. Either way it is sad choice for the fishes. One has to master the art of changing water in the aquarium in a way that the water is clean yet not too clean.

We don't like to be uprooted from our surrounding and placed in a new one at the flick of a finger. Fishes too don't like that to happen to them.

The trick is don't drain off all the water; leave 20 per cent of it in the aquarium so that the environment of the fish doesn't change too drastically.

Use a siphon, keep it at one-fifth the height, swirl the water so that organic waste floats, wipe the glass with a piece of old, clean cloth (anything fancy leaves scratches) and drain the water into your lawn. Fill the tank with fresh water from a borewell or tap, keeping the air filter working continuously. Watch your fish frolic happily.

~S.N.

Cool it...

Easier said than done. How did your fish survive the summer? When temperatures rise, the fish in the wild die, and in the aquarium they gasp for breath.

This happens as warm water holds little oxygen compared to cool water, thus depriving the fish of oxygen. If the aquarium you have is large, the chances of rise in water temperature are slim. On the other hand if you have a bowl of goldfish, the temperature can rise dangerously and fast.

So, how do you keep the fish cool? Wrap the aquarium or the fish bowl with a thin cloth during daytime, switch off the lights and keep checking the thermometer every few hours.

If you have a large aquarium with plants where this is not possible, add a few ice cubes in the late afternoonto bring down the temperature. Some plants thrive in warmer waters but some others will just melt away. So, keeping the temperature at one level is the trick.

And of course, if you have a deep pocket, then get an aquarium chiller imported from Singapore or the U.S., then sit back and watch your fish frolic in the sun.

Ah, life is beautiful.

~S.N.