My husband decided to take down his 120 gallon saltwater aquarium and needed to take his remaining livestock to a pet store that handles fish. That meant we took an impromptu trip to the closest [large] city– Wichita Falls. He’s been thinking about it for a while but just today decided to go through with it.
An aquarium, although beautiful, takes a tremendous amount of work. You practically have to be a chemist to keep it running. My husband would say, “We’re recreating the ocean.” It’s beautiful and expensive and requires incredible dedication to keep it healthy.
But for the last year our aquarium hasn’t been well. I imagine it’s a lot like any other ecosystem. When things get out of balance in the aquarium, things get ugly. And it’s next to impossible to get it all back.
The aquarium was a great conversation starter when we entertained. It’s always fascinating to children who visited and it can be relaxing to just watch. It’s amazing—the variety of fish and corals, and all the different living creatures.
It’s amazing how attached you can become to fish. It’s not exactly like giving away the family dog, but it’s harder than you might think.
This aquarium has been in our house for 5 years. We’ve been tending to and caring for these critters daily for 5 years. If we traveled, we had to make arrangements for the fish while we were out. When we remodeled our kitchen we had to plan around the aquarium.
We’re scuba divers and it was thrilling to see reef fish in the wild. I was a diver before meeting my husband and he was an aquarium hobbyist before he became a diver. Our two separate hobbies were brought together with the aquarium project. We will miss our aquarium, but it’s also freeing too. And we know Dot [vlamingi tang] and Bozo [clown fish] will find new oceans to cruise and cleaner water to swim in.
The Arcadian Experience 