Exotic fish don’t belong around here

The only fish people should go out and buy are on ice in the market: haddock or halibut, swordfish or smelts, cod or catfish. No one should wander aimlessly into a pet store, leering at – and longing for – aquariums full of exotic fish in bright colors found only when snorkeling off Key West, Fla., or Bermuda. That’s why they’re called tropical fish; they don’t belong around here.

Over the years, we’ve learned that sad fact after flushing away dozens of innocent fishies that came into our home in a water-filled plastic bag and a week or so later left in a swoosh around the toilet bowl.

But here we are again, calling the store owner for advice and reading “The Guide to Owning Goldfish.” The four new fish, which we affectionately – and ambitiously – named Gladys Knight and the Pips, have been huddling on the bottom of the tank for a week. They don’t swim around gaily and they don’t bob up to the surface to nibble on food or take in some fresh air. They just cling to each other and the bottom.

“You have to really work to kill goldfish,” the pet store owner said after our third telephone conversation.

“Oh, it’s no work.”

What is work is keeping them alive, adding a few drops of some chemical with very fine print on the vial to “prevent fish loss,” adding freshwater salt, adding one-tenth of a tank of new water every few days, adding a filter and pump, feeding exactly 10 minuscule pellets every other day and changing the charcoal filter once a month.

Once a month? Gladys and her pals won’t last that long, not around here, known as the “killing fields” for a large group of fish belonging to the family Cyprinidae. Many aquarium cyprinids are warm-water species, but goldfish and koi are essentially cold-water fish.

They look too cold in our well water, though, snuggling up to each other in a motionless hover near the right-hand corner of the tank’s bottom, then gliding in unison to the other corner where they’re again suspended, despite the periodic finger-tapping on the glass to see if they’re alive.

Maybe a lighted fluorescent hood will help the aquarium. The guidebook suggests that the hood part of the fixture serves to reduce evaporation as well as keeping the fish in the tank. “Yes, many a goldfish has been known to take a suicide leap out of the tank,” writes the author. Fat chance when these won’t even skim the surface.

But then he’s the guy who recommends feeding goldfish twice a day, whereas the pet store owner insists overfeeding is the biggest cause of fish mortality and that every other day is plenty. The guidebook writer, Spencer Glass, says he uses one of the flake foods in the morning and at night (get this) he feeds his goldfish greens.

“Goldfish thrive on greens,” he writes. “The easiest way to prepare these foods is par-boiling,” and he suggests a gourmet diet of zucchini, peas, spinach, watercress and various assorted green vegetables.

Maybe a little mess of turnip and mustard greens will bring Gladys and the Pips to the top of the tank, to where the clear water bubbles and the aquarium plant sways and where fish are supposed to swim. If they stay on the bottom much longer, the rest will be “fishtory.”