Aquarium Fish

A Story of How I Caught the Fish Keeping Bug

Keeping Pet Fish or Aquarium Fish in a fish tank or pond is not only very rewarding, but dead easy! Fish don’t smell, are long lived, are easy to care for, take up very little space, can be inexpensive and suffer from few illnesses. Now isn’t that the perfect type of pet?

From the age of six I have kept pet fish. My Dad was an enthusiast and I caught the bug (and plenty of Aquarium Fish!). I kept freshwater goldfish and koi fish in ponds and I had all sorts of Aquarium Fish.

In the beginning I would ride my bike down to the local muddy river and stalk the tiny guppies, juvenile brim, shrimp, tadpoles and mud skippers with my scoop net. My trip home, balancing a bucket on my handlebars, saw only the toughest freshwater fish making it to my fish tank. 

As I grew older, my seventh grade school teacher would take me down to the local fisherman’s jetty, where we tossed baited small meshed crab nets into the ocean to pull up all sorts of prizes. We would rush the little fish back to his classroom aquarium and to my home fish tank. Purple cardinals, wrasse, crabs, lobster, trigger fish and yellow and black football fish happily darted around our aquariums.

As an adult my hobby keeping pet fish continued to grow. I was very fortunate to live on the exotic tropical Cocos Islands. The crystal clear waters were teaming with marine life and it wasn’t long before, armed with a net, I donned my mask and snorkel to collect colourful tropical fish and other marine creatures.

Now this can be a difficult task chasing tiny marine fish in amongst jagged reef and corals. To make the job easy, I would use a syringe and squirt clove oil at my targeted tropical fish. This would temporally paralyse them just long enough for me to scoop them up. My

Aquarium Fish thrived in my saltwater aquarium. Maintaining water quality and temperature was not a problem. I never needed to test for imbalances or impurities or run a heater. I simply ran a quality biological filter and changed a few buckets of water every week straight from the ocean across the road from my home.

My most prized tropical fish was the rare and endemic Cocos Island Pygmy Angel Fish (worth an absolute fortune in the city aquarium shops). My tropical aquarium also sported beautiful Red Banded Cleaner Shrimps, juvenile Scorpion Fish, iridescent Blue Damsels, Domino Damsels Humbugs, Fire Gobies, Clown Fish and the brightly coloured juvenile Red Coris Wrasse.

My fish tank was the talk of the town and it inspired other islanders to begin keeping Aquarium Fish.

Keeping pet fish in an aquarium is only as complicated as you choose it to be. Keeping tough freshwater aquarium fish captured from the local river is dead easy. Tropical freshwater Aquarium Fish darting about your living room fish tank would be awe-inspiring; however, perhaps your ultimate dream is to own an

exotic marine Aquarium Fish teaming with living corals and anemones.

There is a fish tank for ever yone. Maybe you too will have a striking pet Cocos Island Pigmy Angel Fish.

People from all ages can enjoy keeping Aquarium Fish… why not give it a go!

Cocos Island Pygmy Angel Fish