I was at a student's house yesterday. This is the first time I've been to her home. It's a typical house in a typical residential tract. Nothing pretentious or ornate or hoity toit or keeping-up-with-the-Jonesy.
As we made our way to the modest unpretentious table, I was stopped in my tracks by THE most immaculate, most impressive, most magnificent fish aquarium I have EVER seen. Really, EVER.
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| Google image - student's is better |
That includes pet stores, doctor's offices, Chinese restaurants... even zoos. Okay, the zoo might have some more exotic creatures in their aquariums - and really, how cool would it be to have a tank full of piranhas in your house! - but this aquarium was truly stunning.
I recently blogged about my own aquarium shortcomings. Suffice to say that this girl's tank made mine look like a chum bucket at best. On that note, I did get a new hood light and am hoping for the best.
Eventually, I snapped out of my gawking state and complimented her on the state of her aquarium. There's actually quite a science to keeping and maintaining a healthy aquarium and I've still got much to learn.
She told me that she enjoys it too and that she has a smaller one (20-gal) in her room. This one is a 70-gallon fish paradise. I was impressed that she is the main fish keeper of the household.
Then we settled in to our studies, me assuming my coach / mentor / role model part, she assuming her pupil / sidekick / protege' one. As we sat there in the glow of the tropical inspiration, I was thinking it's good that she doesn't know about my tank of scum, sparsely populated with upside down gassy fish.
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8 comments:
Mark always wants a fish aquarium. We had one once. It was a nice aquarium on the outside. On the inside it was always green. I always have to remind him of how much work it is to keep a fish tank looking good.
That said, I'm always impressed when I see really impressive aquariums.
How impressive that she is "the keeper". It takes a lot of knowledge and dedication and responsibility to keep aquariums up (I'm guessing, because I have none of those qualities and my fish bowls and grow-a-frog houses always turned scummy). She sounds like she may be one of those students like the boy who wrote the one sentence essay - not doing very well in school, but intelligent none the less.
Yep, nice aquariums impress me too since I struggle so! Maybe you can somehow bribe Mark with the promise of an aquarium if he "behaves"?
I think you might be right, she definitely has skillz. I also learned the she grooms the four immaculately groomed schnauzers.
Wow, that's impressive. If I had fish, they'd likely be dead - so i'm with you! :)
It takes some amount of patience and dedication to keep up with a tank like that, so I'd give your student extra stars for hers. Especially since she is the keeper. I would guess she finds some sort of inner peace/zen in keeping up the aquarium. Not everybody's cut out to be an engineer or rocket scientist.
Better we keep some things hidden...
I join you in that tank-envy, I never did crack the secret of maintaining a see-through aquarium - it became downright embarrassing, people just had to take our word on it there were any fish in there. I gave up, or at least gave them away to more knowledgable enthusiasts, and settled for a tank of goldfish, instead.
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