Artbylea: A portrait of Alby the Molly

Soft pastel on mi-tientes paper. Side and top view of Alby the Molly. One for the muses.

"I have a tropical fish!"

"I have a tropical fish!"

The excitement and pleasure of this thought made me feel buoyant for days.

As soon as I awoke each morning I would spring out of bed and race to the kitchen to check the tank, always fearful I would find a floating fish carcass. Alby would swim to the top of the water, glassy eyes meeting mine, mouth opening and closing. It was a move I interpreted as both a greeting and an expression of hunger.

I would say "Good morning", turn on the tank's light and drop a pinch of supermarket fish flakes near Alby's head. Over morning coffee, I watched Alby eat and tootle around the tank, pearl white scales glowing under the fluorescent light, semi-translucent fins and tail twitching and flowing. It was a serene way to start the day.

Arriving home at night I would perform the same routine. Check fish is still alive, greet fish, turn on light, feed fish, watch fish.

I figured that my constant fear of finding Alby dead arose from the fact that I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I knew nothing about caring for tropical fish; maybe I was doing something, with good intentions, that could actually harm the fish. I didn't even know what type of fish Alby was.

I tapped "white tropical fish" into Google and quickly found an image of an identical fish. Alby was a Molly.

I read articles and discussion threads, trying not to feel overwhelmed by all of the new information and varying opinions. Water quality, it seemed, was the first thing to get right. I tried not to fret about harming Alby with dodgy water before the weekend came, when I could get to my local aquarium.

Michelle at Rayonne Aquarium was very thorough in her explanation of how to manage water quality. She offered me a full aquarium test kit then gently steered me away from it, telling me it was quite expensive and included tests that I probably didn't need to worry about if all I had was one Molly in a 90 litre (24 gallon) tank.

Michelle grabbed an ammonia test kit from the shelf behind the cramped counter and told me that the main thing to worry about was ammonia. Even if all your other water parameters are ok, if there's ammonia in the water, even a tiny amount, it might kill the fish. I took the ammonia test kit (I may as well have two) and, remembering some of the things I had read online, I picked up a PH test from the sale table.

The talk turned to food and I told Michelle about the frozen brine shrimp with spirulina I'd bought from a pet shop in the city. She recommended adding fresh veggies, like pumpkin, zucchini, lettuce and peas to Alby's diet.

While we talked, my eyes drifted to tanks stacked three-high around the outer wall and through the centre of the ground floor of the shop. Tetras, Plecos, Oscars, Silver Dollars and Goldfish swam prettily into view, prompting me to ask Michelle what types of fish could live with Alby the Molly?

"Nah-uh" she said, "You're going home to test your water first. Don't even think about putting anything else in the tank until you know that the water is good."

If I did discover ammonia in the water I was to do 30% water change today and again in a few days time. I left with my test kits and a bag of water conditioner, feeling well-armed to embrace this new hobby.

The first water test was fine - no ammonia and PH within the best range for a Molly. I did a 30% water change anyway just for the practice, then tested the water again. It was still good.

Over the next week I tested the water twice each day, in the morning and at night, building it into the routine; greet, turn on light, test water, feed, watch fish. Even with the addition of the test, it got old pretty quickly.

I wondered would this fish-keeping thing would be more interesting if I had two fish?

#tanktales

The first fish

Alby was my first and arrived unexpectedly one evening in September 2013.

Frantic knocking at my front door and loud high-pitched barking marked her arrival and the beginning of my passion for fish-keeping.

In retrospect, the moment I wrestled the dogs out of my path and opened the front door to greet an old friend was like opening a door to a new life. If my life was a house, I just opened up another room.

Darren smiled and said “Hello hun.” And thrust a clear plastic bag at me. “You have to take this.”

A white fish bobbed in the water that half-filled the plastic bag.

“My fish are trying to kill it. He can’t live with me anymore. You’ve got a fish tank, you have to take him. You don’t have a choice. If you don’t take him, he’ll die!” He beseeched.

I did have a fish tank. Correction, my daughter had a fish tank.

It was a 90 litre Perspex tank manufactured in China, that I found on Ebay while considering birthday present ideas.

The tank, along with 4 gold fish, was given to Darcy on her eleventh birthday. She kept it in her room and took care of the fish, until one by one they died and were consumed by the others. We fished out the remaining corpse (there was no one left to eat him) and left the tank where it was.

Months later on a weekend when we were doing a big clean up at home, Darcy re-arranged her bedroom and had no desire to keep the tank.

I re-arranged the kitchen at the same time, creating a clear space to put a secondhand cabinet I found at our local resource recovery centre (the tip shop) with the fish tank on top.

I spent some time that weekend Googling answers to questions like “how to set up an aquarium?” and made a trip to my local aquarium to pick the brain of Michelle, proprietor of Rayonne Aquarium.

I picked up some water ager, water conditioner, an ammonia test kit and a heater, having decided I wanted to try my hand at keeping tropical fish. They seemed so much more interesting, and more striking looking, than goldfish.

The most important thing I got on that trip to the aquarium was advice. Really good advice like:

•  Don’t use fresh tap water to clean your filter sponge, wash it in tank water. That way you’ll protect any good bacteria that may be living in the sponge.
• Regular water changes should keep the ammonia level down. Change a third of the tank water at a time.
• Test the ammonia level of your tap water, especially after a lot of rain. If the ammonia level is high, save your aquarium water change for another day.
• Don’t add unnecessary stuff to the water.
• Be patient and don’t stress.

I cleaned the gravel and the walls of the tank, put the heater and filter into position and plugged them in, and filled the tank with water. Using a small bucket I found at a $2 shop I slowly carried 90 litres of water from tap to tank.

When it was done I turned the fluorescent light on and sat back in a chair just looking at the tank. The gravel was in natural brown tones and there is a picture taped to the back of the tank. A few plastic plants and a barrel ornament that came with the tank when we first bought it. I tried to imagine it with fish and wondered about the sort of fish that could live in it.

In the following weeks I used my spare time to read a bit about tropical fish keeping. I didn’t have a lot of spare time though, my workload was a bit crazy. I was also wracked with indecision about the type of fish I would keep in the tank. The more I read, the more images of fish I saw, the more entranced and confused I became. It seemed to be a decision that was too big to make lightly and too trivial to focus on for too long. I kept putting it off as other matters both professional and personal of much more importance and urgency took my attention.

The tank sat empty for months with the filter and heater running, just in case I made a snap decision. In the fish keeping world that’s called “cycling” apparently. In reality it was just me being lazy and occupied with other matters.

All that changed when Darren turned up on my doorstep waving a fish in my face.

“C’mon. Let’s put him in your fish tank.”

“But I haven’t tested the water! Wait!” I protested, following his charge through the house from front door to the kitchen at the very rear. He was fleet of foot and I arrived in the kitchen in time to see him open the tank lid and tip the white fish straight into the tank. 

“Too late!” he cackled triumphantly. 

I moved closer to watch my first fish explore his new home.

“How do you turn the light on darls?” 

The pure white fish glowed prettily under the fluoro globe and we both exclaimed. He was so beautiful.

“He’s an albino,” said Darren.

“Let’s call him Alby then,” I decided. 

We toasted Alby with a cup of coffee and I made a mental note to buy some fish food as soon as possible.

#tanktales