The Making of a Cichlid Maniac
The Making of a Cichlid Maniac
Written by Tuesday, 09 July 2002 00:00
Fish keeping is a fascinating hobby. For a start, it keeps you on your toes. The serious fishkeeper develops (if s/he hasn't got them already) a series of excellences of character such as self-discipline (would you dare skip a water change even if you felt dead beaten on the day?), responsibility, punctuality (yes, the fish have to be fed at certain times daily), resourcefulness, selflessness, imaginative financial approaches (extra cash is always better spent - or shall we say invested - on the fish), extremely high observation powers coupled with deductive reasoning and so on. Add to this the amounts of knowledge acquired in order to properly keep your wards and you will come to the one and only proper conclusion: aquarism builds character.
Us aquarists know this. The occasional trouble is that others don't necessarily see it this way. And by others we don't just refer to people in general. We mean "significant" others and more specifically "other halves".
In "fishy" sites we get to discuss our own views and issues. Amongst them, there are occasional discussions of strategies to "convince" our better halves to see the world the way we do. A new tank will always look much better than any settee - who needs a settee anyway? Well, we thought for a change it would be good to listen to the other side too (it pays to know your opponent's arguments). So we asked the wife of a fellow hobbyist, John, to tell us her side of the story. The way she sees this, the minute the first fish passed the house threshold her peace and sanity suffered a fatal blow. It is called the making of an aquarist.
It all started with a goldfish (doesn't it always?) The little fish arrived home as a present to their son. Pets given to youngsters always end up being cared for by parents and this one was no exception. The exception was that on this occasion John took an interest in it - to the extreme point of getting involved in looking after it. Women tend to get suspicious when men change their behaviour and start helping out at home but on this occasion our non-aquarist friend didn't (and paid for it ...).
At first, there were no signs of what was to follow. John slowly but surely became the sole carer of the little goldfish - a very welcomed contribution to the household chores. One day he suggested smilingly that they should get a better home for the little goldfish and forget the fish bowl. Nothing special, just a small aquarium with the very basics. His still unsuspecting wife requested his help with this project; he had a technical mind so he would be of great help in the pet shop (Can you imagine that? She asked him to go to the LFS with her ... what was the woman thinking about???) They went to the pet shop together and the rest was history. The shopping list for the day included a tank, a filter, an air pump, a heater, a fluorescent tube and some information leaflets. The presence of the heater in the shopping bag was a mystery at the time; like all mysteries it was to be clarified in the not so distant future.
Next day the tank was already setup (complete with the heater) and John was busily downloading, printing and reading information about fish keeping on the internet. He shared his newly found interest with all and everyone around him. Questions starting with "did you know that", followed by clauses imparting fishy information, were being darted left right and centre to unsuspecting friends and visitors. In the next few days subsequent unforeseen and unannounced visits to the LFS proved particularly fruitful: tiger barbs, red blood parrots, blue botias, firemouth cichlids and, naturally, more tanks started appearing in various corners of the house. Still, things were under control. Water changes were done using buckets and despite their frequency, they were carried out with respect to the rest of the property: carpets, floors and furniture remained damage - free.
You get a dog, you start noticing other dogs. John started "noticing" tanks; soon after he wanted more and bigger. The idea was carefully "sold"; a big tank (one big tank) would be a nice decorative feature in the living room while the maintenance of this gem would be entirely and solely his responsibility. Who would refuse something for nothing? (Beware of men when they come with presents.) After a couple of months, a 500 lit. tank was in place. A new tank didn't just mean more new fish. It also meant more new "gadgets". As this was supposed to be a "planted" tank (did you know things like that existed?) an investment in new lighting, carbon dioxide injection and some other apparently absolutely essential paraphernalia was deemed necessary. Game, set and match lost.
From there on things went rapidly downhill. Every so often the equipment needed upgrading, the fish needed different company or new friends, the fish food was manifestly of low nutritional value so additives started appearing, "common sense" (whose?) required that back up equipment and supplies were a must in case there was an emergency ... the list was endless. Not so slowly and without a shadow of a doubt the house started turning into a pet shop. To top it all up, the traditional bucket used for the water changes was abandoned. The replacement method, two hoses, (a mere mortal wouldn't even suspect that it is better to take the aged water out of the tank while simultaneously adding new water to it) was not as damage-free as the bucket (either that or John started paying more attention to his fish than to the rest of the house). Strong words were exchanged at the first sight of spills on the carpet, followed by John's solemn oath that such a sacrilege would never happen again. Well, it didn't. Next week the carpets were rolled up and transferred to the other side of the living room (where they happily lived ever after), while a smiling John was spilling water and various other coloured liquids all over the floor.
After the fury of the first months things seemed to settle. Fish keeping became a prominent part of the household routine with John fully immersed to it and his wife keeping a polite and cautious distance. But the apparent balance was not meant to last. John may not have been getting new species or tanks but he was reading about them. He was keeping the tank population low, just in case he run across “that” fish which would shake him. As long as this didn’t happen he could still be described as a hobbyist. A serious hobbyist, perhaps, but not the African cichlid aficionado he was to become later. His visits to the pet shop brought home nothing more than the usual items on the shopping list, which was rather reassuring. After a while the security relaxed. Major mistake; in one of his usual shopping trips John run into a shining blue fish and its partner, happily swimming in a small tank among other fish. The creature had a name: it was called “electric blue hap” and it was an African cichlid. That was it. The pair joined him on his trip home and got comfortably placed in the big tank. Shortly after making sure the pair had settled, John rushed to the computer. More downloads, thousands of pages, and tens of books started appearing in his study. The bookshelves got rearranged (for the first time in known history); the fishy books were offered the lower shelves (so they could be handy) while everything else was moved to the outer space where it wouldn't be in the way of hand trying to reach fishy books.
With a newly found dedication, John spent all his time at home studying, asking questions, experimenting with water and chemicals and checking tens of parameters daily. Even his vocabulary and way of expression changed from normal to “fishy”. No matter what the issue was, each discussion ended up with a lecture on fish (at best) or African Rift Lake cichlids (at worst). Say for instance you were naive enough to ask him to fix an electric outlet; he would ignore your request and inform you that it just occurred to him he needed to change the mains board to make sure his tank would be on a separate circuit (mental associations are the strangest thing). The transformation from a fish hobbyist to a cichlid maniac was evident to everybody but him.
The moment that actually sealed this change was a Sunday morning several months later, when the electric blues spawned. John spent the whole day in front of the tank, oblivious to all around him, just encouraging his pal (the male) to do his duty. He subsequently subscribed to some fishy fora for help and ordered more books. Having expanded his personal library to the stage he could easily start a public one, he was complaining that there were not enough books to read on cichlids. He made new friends through the internet; all of them were as affected by this cichlid disease as he was. He started spending more and more time chatting and exchanging ideas with these people until, finally, the female released. An ecstatic John removed the fry with unprecedented levels of care and tenderness and started a second routine: checking the raising tank at least twenty times daily. The fry were fed 8 times daily, the water was changed every other day and John was non-existent to all but his fish. As for the fish they must have been extremely happy - if not enjoying themselves with his mother duck behaviour!!
Soon after the "fishy" things started multiplying mysteriously (nobody saw them actually arriving at the property). You could find them everywhere: in the fridge, in cupboards, in the spare room - just about all over the house. And as if this was not enough, photos, paintings and "pearls of wisdom" regarding aquatic life started appearing, all nicely framed, on the walls - a "subtle" reminder that this was a serious thing ...
And oh yes it was! Much more serious than would meet the eye - even after the eye had feasted on all the boxes, filters, foods, wood, stones, the special little pots and jars were home made food was being prepared for the precious little darlings and everything else that only a perverse imagination can cram into a house built primarily - if not exclusively - for the comfort and convenience of human beings. The next revelation which hit the unsuspecting humans in the particular domicile concerned the living conditions of the inhabitants of the 500 lit. tank: they were rapidly deteriorating. Were they now? Why did it seem that the humans' living conditions were deteriorating as the fish's ones were improving by the second? Well, the "guru" explained, the fish were crowded in the 500 lit. tank so .... "So what??? And who says they are crowded? They have more space than anybody else in this house! And in any case it is not them who have to jump over boxes of our stuff every time they need to get from the bedroom to the kitchen to get a drink. The fish are fine!" proclaimed the opposition. This was the beginning of World War III, packed with action: strategy (being sweet to distract the opponent but uncompromising when the hot issues were tabled), spying (using friends and family to find out what the other side was up to), negotiations (proposing solutions to apparently facilitate the end of hostilities but in essence to promote each party's personal aims), embargo (you are not bringing anything in this house if we don’t change the curtains first), casualties (some heroic items including crockery are still, to-date, receiving honourable mention) ... you get the drift.
The "solution" was no more solution than it was plain defeat for the non-cichlidophile party. John got his tank - and in the process he turned the house into a workshop. Good move! Once constructed the tank was greeted with a sigh of relief. It became a symbol of temporary yet much desired peace (John became noticeably less impossible to live with) and a living room which didn't look like a tip. But as life has it you solve a problem and another one crops up (have you noticed how to some people the words “aquarium” and “problem” are synonyms? If you say “big” aquarium it simply means “big” problem). The problem this time was the new tank's furniture (oh yes!!!). What kind of sand, what kind and size of rocks, how many of them and the like. The solution was simple: an expedition to the seaside to collect sand and rocks. Why didn't it occur to anybody else that a whole army of people had to run like idiots in the middle of a freezing winter by the seaside to collect, examine, match by colour, size and shape, pack and disinfect in the open all these stones? And the cunning bit was (hope you are ready for it) to collect more than we needed and store them at home (where precisely at home)?? The thing is, one may need these things in case a hospital or emergency tank is required. (Oh yes, the fish need a hospital too. It sure felt like the stones collected were enough to build a whole city).
This is the never ending story. It never ended, it never will end. One can only hope that new and unexpected issues will crop up at convenient times, preferably not in the middle of the night, on public holidays or during weekends. With the notable exception of John, who seems to think all of this is normal, everybody else around him feels they are in the middle of a “cichlid storm”. You simply never know when the next “cichlid” hurricane will hit you. You just have to be prepared and assume it can happen any time. If ever there was a reason to enjoy routine, that was it.
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