PART 5: AN AQUARIUM COMES HOME!

A few weeks before Pinto met its unfortunate end, I got engulfed by an intense desire to start a fresh-water aquarium, again. I could not just wait till we visited an aquarium shop. On one fine morning, we (my daughter, wife and I) happened to arrive at the aquarium shop even before it opened and started its business on that day! Fortunately, I met an employee (a very young fellow) of that shop and came to know that the owner of the shop was going to arrive in half an hour. I wanted to utilize that time talking to that employee of the shop. It was really interesting. I asked questions about the varieties of fishes they sold, types of aquariums, fish food, prices, fish care. The guy answered all my questions very politely and in a professional manner. After a short while, the owner of the aquarium showed up. He was a young, calm and polite person. He opened the shop and in less than ten minutes, he welcomed us to the inside of his shop. It was just brilliant. The shop was not huge. But, it was clean and well decorated with various types of aquariums and fishes. My daughter and wife were thrilled to see so many beautiful fishes around. After spending some time there, I learnt that a fifteen-liter glass bowl was my only and the best choice. This was because, I wanted an aquarium on my study table and no other type did match the requirement specifications (size and weight)! I really did not realize, then, that a fishbowl was not a good home for fishes. However, I was warned by the employee of the shop. But, I hardly had another choice.

We got done with choosing our fishbowl, gravel and other accessories. Finally, it was the time for selecting our fishes. Usually, childhood memories do influence adulthood decision-making! The first aquarium I got a chance to take a closer look at, in my life, belonged to Nayan Chaachaa, one of my father's friends. He had, in his aquarium, a few Black Mollies, Red Mollies and few other varieties. Then, so many years back, I really liked the Black Mollies in his aquarium. Back at the aquarium shop, I wanted to buy a couple of of Black Mollies. Then, I checked with my wife about her choice of fish. And, of course, she wanted a couple of Goldfishes in our fishbowl. You know, pictures of fishbowls housing Goldfishes are so common! So, her choice did not surprise me. We ended up buying four Black Mollies and two Goldfishes. Later, much later, I realized that the fish population I bought was really huge for my 15 Liter fishbowl! We reached home as quickly as possible. I installed the fishbowl, cleaned the gravel, did the electric (lighting) connections. Once the fishbowl was ready, filled with untreated tap water, I released the fishes into it. Here is a word of caution. Never ever use untreated tap water in your aquarium. I did not realize the potential danger then. However, many aquarium and fish-keeping books have warned about using untreated tap water. However, I was keen on experimenting with tap water. My bad! No damage was done and life went on. May be, I was just lucky! I tried my best to provide the best quality (clean, at least) of water and food to my fishes. Goldfishes are usually messy. They eat a lot and polluted the water so quickly. I realized that it was a bad decision to house Mollies with Goldfishes. I got into the routine of changing 75% of water on every alternative day. However, something unfortunate was going to happen NEXT!

PART 5: AN AQUARIUM COMES HOME! by Debi Prasad Mahapatra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.