The Plight of the Pleco

A sparkling, serene aquarium is a beautiful thing.  It's also one hell of a lot of work. A few years back I set up a small ten gallon tank.  Figured it would be nice to keep a few fish, listen to the soothing sounds of the gently cascading water, find the meaning of life in the sultry, hypnotic movements of a fantail goldfish.

Instead, I set up a death tank.  Everything that went in was belly up within 24 hours.  How could this be?  I was doing everything I was supposed to -- de-chlorinating the water, balancing the ph, avoiding overfeeding.  But every morning I'd scoop out the lifeless bodies and head to the pet store for more. People started calling me "fish killer" and I was wracked with guilt.  Was I keeping the tank too clean?

So I gave up on the neons, the tetruses, the mollies and the platies.  I even called it quits with the guppies.  It feels like the ultimate fish failure when guppies don't survive.  Instead I picked out a couple called Foxy Ladies (which turned out to be some sort of shark) and an algae eating plecostomus we aptly named Crapbag.  And miracle of miracle, not only did they survive, they thrived.  A little too well.  Pretty soon Crappy outgrew the ten gallon tank -- he could barely turn around -- and I upgraded to a thirty gallon.  And then the ick hit.  I added salts and medicines.  I spent more money trying to keep those freakin' fish alive than I would have if I'd just replaced them.  But it was all for naught.

By now they were all too large for the traditional 'burial at sea' (aka the toilet flush).  And in those days my daughter insisted everything had to be buried in the yard.  (During the winter they would go into a ziplock in the freezer.  I learned never to defrost anything that had RIP written on it in.) Crappy was so big by the time he expired that we had to fold his tail over to get him into a Pringles can.

I cleaned the aquarium and left it empty.  Then one day I decided to try again.  Just a few goldfish and another Crapbag.  Aquariums are kind of like child birth -- you forget the pain.  Everything went along quite nicely for a while.  Then I began to dread the days when a cleaning was in order.  Did I really want to spend two hours elbow deep in fish shit?  Because, despite spending their lives in water, fish are filthy creatures.  I'm pretty sure no other creature on earth produces as much excrement as a fish.  (Not something you want to think about when the lake bottom muck is oozing between your toes.)

Finally they all died off -- all except the plecostomus.  The light burned out and I didn't replace it.  The aerator stopped bubbling and I didn't fix it.  The filter got clogged and I didn't clean it.  The water is slowly evaporating and I've stopped adding to it.  And that damned pleco lives on.

But now I'm feeling bad.  As prehistoric as the thing looks, it's a living creature after all.  I'm going to clean out the tank one last time.  But that's it.  And as soon as he's safely tucked away in his own Pringles can, I'm getting rid of the aquarium.

Before I do something stupid and think....'hmmm, maybe some fish would be nice.'