How To Keep An Aquarium; Simple Do's and Do Not's

As I pointed out in Tuesday's outing here, in a vague attempt to keep me from going completely off my rocker I bought an aquarium. Before we go any further, yes I am aware that that is serial killer logic. Anyway, I bought it because it's quite nice to be able to stop working for 20 minutes or so a day and go and preen over it. It is quite relaxing, mildly therapeutic and the tank itself looks kick ass.

However, that is what it is like today. I got the thing at the end of October and only just now is it behaving itself. Up until recently I have had cats, some of my best friends have dogs and a few people I know have horses. Let me tell you something, none of those animals require half as much attention as a sodding fish tank.

Now, I admit I should have probably done some research before I henced forth with the aquarium lifestyle, but I'm a bit of a dullard. When I picked up the tank, I thought it would be as simple as buying the tank, filling it up with water and chucking fish in it, throwing some food in every day and cleaning it from time to time. Oh how wrong I was.

You have to play the chemist by preening over the thing and checking water chemical levels, you have to add bacteria and check on the health of your fish, you have to change the water and clean it religiously, you have to clean out the filter, make sure the heater is working and all sorts. It is more needy than a child.

So, for anyone out there who feels like buying an aquarium would be a good life move, please look at my simple “Do and Don't” list. It will likely save your life one day, son.

DO buy a big tank. They are a tad more expensive, but they are also a metric fuckload easier to keep. With a smaller tank, any chemical imbalance will show itself much, much quicker and kill off all your fish.

DON'T listen to people at a big old chain store for advice. Most garden centres have an aquatics bit that employs people who actually know about fish, not just morons who manage not to poop themselves in public.

DO, however, buy your big items such as the tank and gravel from a large chain pet shop. They will be considerably cheaper than any small aquatics shop.

DO read absolutely everything there is to read about the Nitrogen Cycle – the process that turns ammonia (aka poop) into nitrites (aka deadly poison) into nitrates (aka not so deadly poison). Establishing that cycle properly, and this is isn't an over reaction, will be the difference between whether your tank lives.... or dies.

DON'T put too  many fish in at once. The more fish means the more poop means the more bacteria you will need. And let me tell you something, that stuff takes bloody ages to grow. In the meanwhile, while it is growing your fish will be being made rather unwell.

DO, wherever possible, steal the insides of someone's filter. A lot of the friendly bacteria you will need is on those pads, so if you can either nick one off a friend or puppy dog eye a shop into giving one to you, do it. Take that bad boy home and shove it in your filter along with the existing media.

DO find a friend who keeps the same sort of fish as you. Whether it be being able to have of their filter media to taking baby fish that they don't have room for in order to stock your tank cheaply, they will be invaluable.

DON'T buy fish based on how big they are when you buy them, get them based on how big they will get. Yesterday I really wanted to buy this cute little 'shark' type fish, until the knowledgeable man pointed out that it would eventually be so big it would struggle to fit in my tank..

DO buy fish according to their needs – some need a big shoal, some can only have one male to a tank and some need lots of females around.

DO buy a good water-chemical testing kit. Decent drop kits are £12ish per chemical you need to test for, but each will do you for well over a year.

As this has already gone from being funny to being a public service announcement, let me give you the simple 4 step guide to fish keeping

1. Buy an aquarium, put in a shit load of gravel and your decorations, fill it with water, turn on the filter and heater and leave it be
2. Wait 5 days, buy some water drop kits and a few hardy fish. I recommend 3 Swordtails (2 females, one male). Oh, and always add a product to the water that takes out the chlorine and other crap.
3. Feed them sparingly and check your water chemicals every day, adding bacteria booster as per the instructions. First the ammonia will spike, then the nitrites. If at any point you get over 2ppm of either, or a bacteria bloom (it will look like someone threw milk in your tank), do a 50% water change.
4. When both ammonia and nitrites have spiked and gone back down, add a few more fish at a time. After each addition, both readings will go back up and come back down.

If in doubt about anything at all, ask someone who knows their stuff. Much like driving and sex, everyone has to have an uncomfortable and unceremonious first time.

Things I Do To Keep Myself Sane

When people ask me what it's like working from home, I tell them that it is better than being thrown groin first into an oily pit of supermodels. I don't have a boss looking over my shoulder, I don't have to get up at a set time so long as I stick 10 hours a day in and I don't have to commute anywhere further than down the hall and downstairs.

In actuality, it's pretty dull. I don't have co-workers to chat to. I don't have a boss to hate on. I just sit at my desk with a justin.tv stream going all day and mainly churn out press releases and short web content articles that don't allow for dick jokes. When you also factor in that I can often go for a few days without actually leaving the house, you get a pretty solid picture of my life. I call it the 'struggling writer' lifestyle, where as many others call it the 'sad sack' one.

To combat this, I've build up a number of protocols to keep my from bouncing off the walls in sheer madness. The 3 I use most are -

1) Facebook

I hate Facebook with all my soul. I hate the fact that it makes me feel self conscious that I only have 200 friends. The fact that I actually know all 200 of the people and could easily invite them out for a beer is neither here nor there. I also only have 98 photos. I just don't take a digital camera with me on nights out and cannot be bothered to edit, label and tag entire reams of photos.

However, I find myself increasingly using it to talk to people. Back in the day, everyone used to use MSN Messenger. Today, I have about 9 people who are still old school and are logged on at times. Therefore, I am left with little option but to log on to Facebook if I want human interaction. I hate it, it makes it look like I enjoy Facebook. Also, it makes it look like I do nothing all day as I'm always on Facebook.

2) Fish

I bought an aquarium. I will admit, I am a little bit of a fan of various animals and figured that buying an aquarium would give me something to do. Where as in an office, people often go outside and smoke or make rounds of tea to take a break, I have no such luck. I can smoke at my desk and I don't like tea. Obviously, the logical thing to do to get me away from my desk for 10 minutes at a time was to buy an aquarium to tend to.

I regret nothing. Sure, it costs £150 odd to set up a decent tank and put fish in it, but it is tremendous fun. One of my fish is even named after Nat Coombs, the guy who hosts the NFL On Five coverage after a few emails got read out on air. I recommend fish keeping to everyone and will probably write an idiots guide to fish keeping on Thursday.

3) Taking The Laptop To The Pub

I admit that this is probably cheating a bit, but it works. Although a vast majority of my time is spent doing jobs for other people, I do try to make sure I have at least a day a week where I don't have to do any paid work so I can work on my own stuff. Along with churning out some gibbering rubbish here thrice a week, I write a fair old bit of stuff that doesn't see the light of day straight away. I've got one book manuscript that is doing the rounds until someones decides to recognise my genius and publish it, I'm a solid start into another and I'm also working on a charity book.

For all of these things, I don't need the Internet, email and such. Nor does it matter if I'm under the influence while writing them, as I edit my work to a stupid degree at times. So I pack up my laptop and head off to the pub.
Speaking of which, it is beer o'clock. See ya'll later!

There is something wrong about buying Miley Cyrus things late at night

I saw the weirdest person ever on Friday night.

I know that an awful lot of the general population out there are certifiable nutjobs. I'm sure that I'm probably one of them. But on Friday I managed to see the person who is quite possibly the freakiest one out there.

I didn't really want to spend any money on Friday as I had a pricey one planned for Saturday, so I just trundled round to my buddy's place to chill out, play some video games and the like. Come midnight, the inevitable trip to a Supermarket took place.

I must confess, if I have to go shopping I do go late at night. I hate everything to do with supermarkets during the daytime. I hate the traffic to even get in the car park. I hate driving around for 10 minutes until you end up parking in a part of the car park that must be in another post code. I hate walking all the way to the front door past dozens of now empty spaces. I hate all the people in there. I hate queing to pay. I hate then having to lug it all back to my car and I hate that at least one item will go off while I'm stuck in traffic on the way back home.

At night, you can get in and out inside 10 minutes flat. It is brilliant. Except, you don't half get some right weirdos. In a way it is just downright hilarious, and in others you really do fear for the human race.

Although this time I wasn't doing the full midnight shop, I still went through enough of the shop to see some of the wack jobs. One, though, took the cake.

I was thumbing through some Xbox games with my mate, as one oft does at midnight, when this guy dressed all in black wandered into the section. He looked a little bit like a sleazy Michael McIntyre, and had the full long black coat, black suit, black shoes and black shirt and tie job going on. He then proceeded to buy a fistful of Hannah Montana (aka everyone's favourite jailbait Miley Cyrus) CD's and wander off.

This creeped me the hell out. I know that there is probably something a psychiatrist could read into about me looking for cheap video games in a supermarket at midnight, but someone who looks like they want to be a hitman in a gangster movie buying products aimed at 12 year olds must take the biscuit.

Now, for a gratuitous picture and we are done...