ODD AQUARISTS & ODDER AQUARIUMS
By Austin R. Braganza, MAS
Bettas are probably the best example of fish in odd containers. Bettas being the least demanding for space and water dissolved oxygen, have been kept in a variety of jars, mugs, vases and even tupper ware. I recall seeing a breeder with a counter top covered in jars, interspersed with five and ten gallon aquariums. Then there is the odd large vase. In spite of the seeming disarray every container had a lid and a little green plant. Clear glass, green glass, blue glass containers made the whole counter top look peculiar and yet beautiful at the same time. Almost all the fish stores carrying Bettas have them in the little shot glass sized plastic cups, one store actually had a cup design that would not empty if tipped over. Then of course is the vase with a peace lily and among the roots the counter top Betta. They live in paddy fields in the wild, so is the pickle jar such a bad thing. I once visited an ancient temple pond in southern India that held among other things some type of Betta. The temple was no longer standing but the pond still held water and a variety of fish that had probably evolved over thousands of years in the same pond.
How often have you seen Killies and guppies in Tupperware when space runs out. I have seen a group of guppies that lived outdoors for years in a clay jar in a shaded spot corner of the garden. This was in southern India where the weather allows such things. In Wisconsin you would have had guppies ice-cubes as soon as winter came around.
In college I met quite a few fish nuts that went to extremes to keep fish. I knew a guy who paid extra rent so that he could have an aquarium in his dorm room instead of a roommate. The aquarium housed two large red Oscars in a 175 gallon tank along with an ever dwindling, nervous school of minnows. Another guy built a mini pond complete with fountain on the floor in the corner of his dorm room. The floor was concrete, so all he had to do was build a wall of bricks, plaster with mortar, apply sealant and voila, mini indoor pond with fountain. He had the same room for years and I don’t know if he got his deposit back.
I once saw this tank that was built with marble slabs, the front was glass, all the other sides were marble. The tank held about 30 gallons and had never been moved. It stood where it was built. It was beautiful to behold and one can only imagine what it weighed, if you remember what a stainless steel frame slate-bottomed tank weighed, well more than that.
I used to frequently visit a fish breeder that had a large portion of his back yard covered with rows of concrete water troughs, arranged side by side. The tricky part was, that in order to pick out fish you had to make your way by balancing on the one brick wide trough walls. Fortunately the troughs were only a couple of feet deep, so there was no danger of drowning if you slipped into one, just the danger of going home in sopping wet shoes.
In my college dorms back in India, there were days when the water supply would shut off for a few hours at a time especially in the summer, so every dorm was equipped with a water storage tank. These tanks were usually concrete and could hold about 700 gallons. One of the custodians used the water storage tank as his private aquarium to hold a trio of large catfish. Of course the tank could not be drained to use the water so if the dorm ran out of water, you could always blame the catfish.
More than one student was tempted to go fishing for catfish, and strangely enough as long as I lived there nobody ever did.
Ponds are built in an array of shapes and sizes, I always advise people to build deep and make sure to have places for the fish to hide. I am sure you know someone whose pond fish got eaten by raccoons. In India it’s herons and kingfishers that are the predators. Can you guess how the kingfisher got its name?