Terra-cotting a cichlid tank, by Naga Siddarth

Terra Cotta in a Cichlid Tank

by Naga Siddharth
of Bangalore, India
Aquarticles

My love affair with cichlids began with a few jewel cichlids who loved to eat pellets.

Later, a friend of mine had to move out of town and decided that my tank would be a good home for a few convict cichlids he owned. My tank being a 3ft(L) x 1.75ft (D) x 1.75ft (H) was now suddenly overcrowded with 2 pairs of jewel cichlids and 2 pairs of convicts - a colony of territorial neighbours.

The tank before 'terracotting'. The white streaks on the right are bubbles from the powerhead

A tank that I had seen at a LFS had stocked a similar array of the piscean kind for over two years and so I set out to investigate. Needless to say, the tank had more rocks and hiding places than anything else - which the inhabitants enjoyed.

However, my woes started when a LFS wanted INR 50 (around a dollar) for every kilogram of rocks for such a setup. I definitely wasn't in the mood to spend that kind of money on stones.

One of my long drives out of the city recently brought me to a centre of folklore that exists around 70 kilometers from Bangalore. At one of the sections, I spotted artisans creating pottery called terracotta.

Artisans at Janapadaloka ('Folklore world' when translated)

Terracotta is the art of making pots, horses and the like out of a particular variety of clay that is absolutely red in colour and then firing it in an oven which makes the pottery insoluble in water - call it the magic of silicon!

A corner of the place with slightly damaged pottery caught my attention. Though totally useless to the artisans, it was absolutely useful for my cichlids! Lightweight, compatible with the colour of my tank's tubelight, insoluble in water, and providing a rather unusual theme to the tank, the terracotta pottery was an absolute blessing.

You call it broken, I call it aquarist-friendly!

The owner of the establishment was only too happy to get rid of the stuff for $2 and I managed to sneak it into the car when my family members weren't looking. The last thing I wanted was a lecture about why we could do without terracotta pottery at home, just like we could do without tubifex, blood worms and the million other life forms that always seemed extra-nutritious to my fish.

Back at home, I spoke to a friend to make sure it was safe to dunk the stuff in my aquarium after cleaning. I was advised to boil the pottery first to remove any fat/oil traces that might be present and which would leach. After 30 minutes of boiling the pots, I was ready to go.

The pottery birdhouse went in first. It was strategically positioned in the middle of the tank. I secretly wanted a jewel to take up residence in it, but then, you know cichlids. They don't do what we want them to. All the inmates treated the new addition with disdain. Thankfully, a convict couldn't hold back her curiosity and explored it. But, a convict being a convict, it was more attracted to the area under the birdhouse than to the inside of it!

The bird house - now home to a Jewel cichlid

Slowly adding the pots and other terracotta articles to the tank was interesting work. The whole idea was to make the tank look as though a ship containing terracotta artwork had sunk in it!

Convicts - now peaceful neighbours

Another view of the tank

Yeah, that's where the ship sank!

The next morning the fish were quite comfortably settled in to their newly decorated home. There was now minimal chasing and nipping, and each fish had its own territory.

The final cost of the project was thus $2 for the pottery and an afternoon of sneaky work to make sure nobody found out that I boiled terracotta in the kitchen! The outcome was a tank that looks gorgeous and cichlids that do not fight.

Try it out! - at least for the excitement of boiling the pots on the stove without getting caught!

This article is dedicated to the fond memory of Howard - a friend who I never met in person, but one who silently encouraged many others like me to write articles on aquariums.