Friday 28 November 2008

New pets

If you still remember, I promised YK a marine tank at home. He had been longing for one for many months. Now that his exams are over, we finally went out to an aquarium all the way in West Coast to take that plunge.

The 3-ft tank finally arrived last weekend. Setting up the tank was a rather complicated process. It has an overflow system. The bottom cabinet houses the sump tank, protein skimmer, pump, additives, test kits and fish food. Don't ask me to go into details because I know nothing. This is YK's baby.

The tank was empty for several days. Then we added in 30kgs of live rocks and waited for few more days before putting in the sea creatures. We wanted to 'test water' first, so we put in the more hardy varieties like the clown fish and cardinal. SK wanted a hermit crab (cos they're so cute), so we bought a tiny one for him. YK's in love with the copperband butterfly which is quite a delicate fish to keep, so we started with one.

We bought a shrimp too (to clean the tank) but it didn't survive the night. The rest of the fishes are doing very well.




When I started reading about keeping marine fishes, this was what I found:
A
word of warning: starting and keeping a marine tank cause a serious change in human behavioural patterns - looking dreamy eyed at your tank for hours on end; phoning your loved ones (or anyone!) in the middle of the night to tell them about a new polyp, worm, glowing thingy about 1mm long, ... which you have just discovered; not buying new clothes, furniture etc. because your tank REALLY needs that new light, filter, ROCK, etc.... Oh well, maybe you won't get hooked so badly.

I can see it happening already, not with me but the boys. They sit in front of the tank for hours, spotting polyps and little thingy in the rocks, and insist I must come look at their discoveries.

Last night, they were dreamy eyed and so in love with the adorable pair of clown fishes. I think Rusty is no longer the blue-eyed boy in the house.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh no! But what does Rusty think of the fish? Or hasn't he noticed??? LOL... poor baby..he'll just have to get all his attention from mommy.

The World According To Me said...

I hope Rusty doesn't become jealous of those fishes and the attention that will now be focused on them!
I've always thought it must be quite therapeutic to watch pretty fishes swimming around.

The Real Mother Hen said...

Cute fishes you have in there! I like Nemo too :)

Amel said...

HI HI HI HI HI...Watching fishes can be SOOOOO relaxing! My Dad was unemployed once and he decided to have an aquarium as a hobby...turned out it became one source of income - for a while anyway. He raised fish and Mom helped him in creating very tasty food for them. ;-D

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