Fish, Feng-Shui & Good Health

SO YOU WANT TO KEEP A PET. Your kids are pestering you. But you don’t have much time to spare, and you don’t want too much trouble either. You don’t like them spoiling your carpet. You also don’t want them to bark at or bite your guests. And you also don’t have the energy to go chasing them all over the house or to take them for a daily walk. Finally, you don’t want high vet bills.

Have you considered an aquarium?

Yes, fish are just the kind of pets that not only keep you free from all worries but also add beauty to your living room. It is medically proven that watching fish reduces stress and anxiety and lowers the rate of heartbeat. Simply put, they give you endless joy and make you forget your tedium. Live décor catches the eye and soothes the heart.

But don’t get carried away too much. Keeping an aquarium involves certain responsibilities and calls for some of your precious time towards its maintenance, though minimal. The exotic aquatic backdrops, with fish swimming between rocks and plants, which you see in films, do need some care. Here’s a step by step guide to setting up a simple aquarium at home.

The most important part of an aquarium is, of course, the tank. Its size will depend on the size of the room and the space available. The bigger, the better, though most beginners make the mistake of starting with a small tank and soon realize their interest has grown, and so have the fish. A standard size is 24 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches, called a double-cube tank, which will hold about 50 liters of water. You can also get them in a bowl shape and in many other attractive shapes and models. You could even have one custom-made to suit your taste and space. As a rough guide, about two liters of water (aquarium space) is needed for one inch of fish length. So in the standard tank, you may plan to keep about nine fish, each three inches long. Again the novice gets so enthusiastic that he packs his tank like a can of sardines and gets most of them killed!

The next thing to be kept in mind is water. Most fish can adjust to a wide range of hardness, pH factor, and salinity of the water. Generally, tap water is sufficiently good for aquariums. If it’s good for us, it’s good for the fish too, unless it is overly chlorinated. If that be the case, aerate it first and add a de-chlorinating additive.

Your fish need air and clean water, more than food. Plants can provide the much-needed oxygen, but not enough of it. Aeration is the process that adds oxygen to the water using a pump. It can also create eye-catching effects by innovative use of air bubbles. In the wild, fish can survive in murky waters, but the same does not work in an aquarium. There are natural factors that control the growth of disease in open and flowing waters. At home, besides the unpleasant look, all your fish can be severely infected in a dirty tank. Filtration is the process that cleans the water.

Fortunately, a single pump achieves both the functions – filtration and aeration. It sucks in water from the tank as well as air from the atmosphere, mixes them and throws them back into the tank. In the process, it filters the water by passing it through a piece of sponge or cotton wool. In short, a 10 to 15-watt composite pump will be adequate for filtration, aeration with some striking upshot in our standard double-cube tank.

Most fish will die if the temperature of water goes beyond their tolerance. Each variety has a different temperature range; broadly 24 degrees to 30 degrees Celsius (76 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit) will suit most freshwater tropical fishes. A thermometer needs to be mounted in an aquarium. Again, do not be stingy on this small investment. It pays you many times over by cautioning you well before your fish either freeze or boil to death.

That done, where will your fish sit and chat? You need to put some gravels on the bottom of your tank. It gives a natural feel; besides, fish wastes sink below the pebbles, giving the bed a tidy look. These are available in different colors and sizes. Even plastic and glass pebbles in attractive colors can be used. If you happen to pick up pebbles from the beach, make sure they are cleaned several times before putting them in. Fish have a habit of nibbling on the stones. They are known to have died of swallowing small ones. It is safer to select stones one centimeter or more in diameter.

A word of advice here: after putting the stones in the aquarium, fill it with water and allow a day or two for the dust to settle before letting the fish in. Never put the fish in first and drop the pebbles over them. It’s likely to have the same effect as putting the fish in first and pouring the water next.

Now that the aquarium is ready, it’s time to buy the fish. Your local dealer will have a variety of them on display – goldfish, black moore, tetra, betta, angel fish, mollies, carp, discuss, silver dollar, eels. In your excitement do not buy a pair of each and place them in the tank. Forget Noah’s ark; most of them will fight to the death. For a start, I recommend goldfish or carps. They have bright colors, need the least care and aren’t expensive. How about eight goldfish and one black moore? It’s a feng-shui charm for wealth and good luck; we’ll talk more about it in a while.

Your aquarium looks great, doesn’t it? No, it doesn’t. There’s no light in there. Most fish and plants need light – fish for warmth and plants for photosynthesis. Aquariums have a built in slot for placing tube lights without getting them wet. A special fluorescent tube should be used to light an aquarium for at least 10 hours a day. Lighting also helps reduce formation of algae.

Aquariums are available with all necessities built in – air and filtration pump, lighting, even pebbles and some decoration pieces. You may be tempted to buy such a ‘turnkey-aquarium’. They are inexpensive too. But a caveat here – in case of any fault you’ll have to carry the whole gadget to your dealer, who could say you’ll have to buy a new one.

Location of the tank is a matter of taste and also depends on the space available. A good table with a waterproof top is needed. Once placed it takes effort to move it. They may look smaller than your 25-inch television, but can weigh up to four times more – it’s all liquid. So decide on the location as soon as you bring home the glass box. Make sure a plug point is close by.

Coming back to feng-shui - this ‘science’ advises us where to position auspicious objects for best results. Place your aquarium in the career corner of the house, where water element rules, and never in the fame corner, where fire rules, unless you want your pet obsession to extinguish all your fame. Where are these corners? That’s another topic. To put it simply, place it close to the main door to your house.

For your aquatic creatures, any time is dinnertime. They will eat anything, even stones, as we said earlier. Out of great affection for your pets, do not throw in tidbits from your own dish. It’ll only create more waste and rot that’ll affect their health. It’s strongly advisable to give them proper fish feed. These are available in different forms – flakes for small fish, pellets or sticks for medium or big fish. Feed them twice a day and just enough that they can finish in a couple of minutes. Do not over feed them. Your pets will lovingly gulp down everything you drop in and create more waste for you to clean up.

With all that I have said so far, you don’t believe it’s a hassle free pastime, do you? Well, to keep yourself, your family and of course your fish in good cheer, the efforts are certainly worth it and, in any case, are less than those required for cats and dogs. Now if you are a feline or canine lover, you got to pardon me. Let me clarify.

Here’s a list of what you need to do – spend five minutes each day to feed them, fifteen minutes every alternate Sunday (or any day you are free) to change one third of the water, another fifteen minutes every two weeks to clean the filter and finally, one hour every four months to clean the tank completely. That’s not asking for much of your time in return for a rewarding experience and for lowering your stress levels!

A few other tips for maintenance: If the water looks cloudy or murky, it’s time to change it and clean the filters. If it happens too frequently, you are perhaps over feeding them. As soon as you detect any symptom of disease, contact your dealer, who in most cases can offer a solution. Additives are available to cure most known ailments and also to keep your aquarium germ and bacteria free. If a fish is severely ill, it’s better to be cold-hearted and remove it from the tank, than to have the infection spread. Other fish will most certainly start feeding on a dying fish and catch the disease. These are sad moments for pet owners, but one has to go with nature. In any case, with care fish in aquarium live longer than their counterparts in the wild, where 60 per cent of small fish end up as food for larger ones.

Now for some beautification of your aquarium – here’s where your choice of a bigger aquarium comes in handy. You could place toys operated by air bubbles or add some landscape like a rock cut cave. You could add a few plants, either real or artificial. Your fish will love it. You could even throw in a couple of plastic fish – they look so real no one will know, not even the inhabitants in there.

Now good luck with your aquarium. If not wealth, it is sure to bring you health. So sit and chat with your fish, after a hard day's work. “If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales,” so said Oliver Goldsmith.

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