Keeping It Fun
by Grant Gussie, Calgary Aquarium Society
Originally published in The Calquarium Volume 42, Number 3, November 1999
Aquarticles
The aquarium hobby has a high rate of drop out. It always has had, and probably always
will have. Persons who drop out of the hobby will give you lots of different reasons for
it: lack of time with a new job or increased family commitments; moved on to other
interests; difficulty of moving tanks to new home; etc . But the fact is that for all of
the dropouts, the aquarium hobby had stopped being fun.
There are many reasons for the aquarium hobby to stop being fun. All of them are
however avoidable.
The most common hobby killer is also the most easily avoided: lack of success. If you
are reading this article you have had at least some exposure to our aquarium club; and as
all its members can attest, fish can be kept alive, healthy, and reproducing. Success is
available to anyone who will take the time to learn the techniques, and you can learn
those techniques most easily by simply talking to club members and be willing to learn.
So you get over the initial "how to" hurdle of the novice and can now expect
your fish to grow and live out the normal lengths of their lives, and to even reproduce.
In all probability, you will then go through a "kid in the candy store"
phase. There are so many beautiful fish that you could keep, if only if you had another
tank. And of course, your previously-owned fish are now producing babies. More tanks!
Always more!
This can lead to serious changes to your living quarters.
Sensibly, all the new tanks should end up in their own room; hence that peculiar
invention, the "fish room". This is pretty much the only way to insure some
degree of domestic harmony…the lack of which is almost guarantied to kill your career
in the hobby.
And tank proliferation has another side.
Every tank you own requires maintenance. How many tanks can you maintain before that
maintenance becomes "work"?
Be realistic. Some club members have over 50 tanks, and although the sight of such a
fish room may make you drool, could YOU actually take care of that many? Or rather, how
many tanks can you realistically maintain and still enjoy it? When will raising that
catfish spawn be a chore you dread…rather than an enjoyable challenge?
And don’t be fooled into thinking that more tanks equals more profit. Turning your
basement into a "fish factory" will not mean that you can quit your day job.
Clearly a "fish factory" fish room can easily lead to burn out. Spawning and
raising the same fish over and over again because that fish has a ready market will not
keep you interested for long, especially since it is certain that, no matter how ready
that market is, it will not put you in fine wine and sports cars. It is very difficult to
make a living out of ornamental fish…this is a hobby and don’t forget it.
And it is a good one. Breeding fish is fun. It is a challenge. It is rewarding. It is
very interesting. It even does have its own (modest) financial returns. And it is not
excruciatingly difficult.
So keep it fun by not taking on more than you can handle. If you do find yourself
"working" rather than "enjoying", cut back.
Cutting back does however produce its own stresses. Your 50-tank fish room represents a
significant financial investment. Can you stand seeing 45 of those tanks laying empty
while you work with your five remaining active tanks? If not, can you sell the empty tanks
off at, what will certainly be, a significant loss without resenting the hobby’s
financial realities?
It is much better to not go over board in the first place.
You can also avoid burn out by pre-planning your fish room to reduce the maintenance
involved.
First of all, make sure your fish room has running water. Water is heavy. You
don’t want to carry it.
And the second thing is to seriously consider a central filtration system. That way you
only have to change water in one (very large) tank system, rather than in many individual
tanks. Ditto for filter maintenance. This gets rid of more labor than you can imagine. You
can therefore keep many more fish with very little more work.
But central filtration systems do have their own problems. You must quarantine your
fish before introducing them to your system. This means that at least one tank must be
kept isolated from the system. I know, I know. Every one says to quarantine fish and
nobody ever does…but when all your tanks are on one filter system, you have to. No
fooling. I’m serious. Nothing will cause "burn out" faster than watching 50
tanks full of previously healthy fish die.
And secondly, the books tell me some aquarists use stuff called
"medications". I don’t and never have, and don’t know anybody who
does, and quite frankly don’t think you should, but if you do, dosing a central
filter system is a royal pain.
You may even go one step further and build an automatic water change system for your
central filter system. This can be a good idea for a lot of reasons. But be careful and
make sure you keep it simple. Water change systems that rely on water level monitors,
valves, or timers are almost guarantied to fail (eventually). Instead, use a simple
overflow. Have a tap slowly dripping water into a tank, and have the water in the central
filter box flow into the sewer through a simple overflow pipe.
I would highly recommend that a plant filter be used for a central filtration system.
Fast-growing plants, such as temple plants (Nomaphila stricta) are very good at
removing nitrates and phosphates, especially when coupled with a continuous drip water
change system. Such a system, coupled with reasonable stocking rates, will keep your water
pure and algae growth low, so all you need to do is feed your fish!
Another thing to do to keep from burning out is to actively seek new challenges. If
swordtails are old hat, or you no longer think the world really needs a blue and gold
Cambodia betta, then move on to something else.
A lot of aquarists specialize within the hobby to some extent, which is fine unless
they completely ignore other aspects of the hobby or are unwilling to "change
specialties" if bored with their current one. Popular fresh water specialties include
catfish, rainbowfish, killifish, live bearers (with the subspecialties of guppies, sword
tails, wild types, etc.), cichlids (with the subspecialties of discus, Rift Lake, dwarfs,
etc. ), and aquatic plants. Marine specialties include corals and marine fish breeding.
Participating in another specialty will introduce you to new facts, fish, and people, and
can spark renewed interest in the hobby.
Another thing to avoid burnout is to find what is for you the right level of
involvement in your aquarium club. If you do nothing with your club but skim through its
magazine and go to the occasional auction, then your club won’t help your keep up
your enthusiasm level. Get more involved! You get out of a club – any club –
what you put into it. On the other hand, if you find yourself taking on more and more of
the club’s duties because no one else will volunteer, you are in vast danger of
burning out. Again, don’t go overboard! Look at our annual show, which didn’t
happen this year. Why? Because the few people that did all the work simply burnt out over
it. It is too big a job for just a few volunteers. If everyone did a moderate amount then
people will neither burn out from overexertion, nor drop out from lack of enthusiasm.
There is enough content in the aquarium hobby to last a lifetime. A child with a
bedroom goldfish could go on to spend an entire lifetime with aquatic creatures, all the
while never ceasing to learn about biology or animal husbandry. Or that same child can
spend a lifetime with an empty aquarium sitting in a closet. It’s all a matter of
keeping it fun.?
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