World of Pots: Picturesque underwater world

Fancy having a water garden and a picturesque underwater world at home, right in the sitting room?

Well, with a small capital upfront, you can design and own a water garden right in the sitting room of your house. Then you can sit back and enjoy beautiful picturesque underwater world after a hard day's work in the office.

I am not referring to those outdoor types of garden where you have to spend hours under the hot sun to clear wild grasses and trim and water the plants. Anyway, if you don't live in big houses with huge compound, there is no way you can have your own garden and do your gardening chore. For people like us who stay in apartments, the type of gardens that are suitable are the ones inside big enclosed tanks. In these tanks one can plant aquatic plants and keep some exotic tropical fish. Lots of possibilities exist on how to set up a attractive aquarium. There are no limits to your fantasy and caring for an aquarium is a beneficial way to relax during your leisure time. Don't forget, when everything works as planned (I mean the plants are growing and the fishes are striving), you still need to do your weekly task of gardening work like trimming the plants, putting in fertilisers and feeding and caring for the fish; and also not to forget changing water regularly.

What is so special about this water garden? As I said earlier, you can design your own aquatic tank. I mean you get to plant the aquatic plants you like and choose the tropical fish you would like to have to make the tank come alive. If you put in effort you can see the fruits of your labour. Imagine your family members and yourself gather around the tank and admire the greenery and underwater life over a cup of tea. If you have small kids, what a good time to cement bond and build friendship with your young ones.

Keeping tropical fish is no easy task. You have to make sure that water in the tank is clean and free from chlorine. A good filtration system is needed to ensure that organic wastes are effectively filtered out. Both internal and external filters are adequate to do the job. Then you need the air pump to deliver the oxygen that the fish needs to survive. From young, I have always been interested to keep gold fish, angel fish and other tropical species such as guppies and swordtails. But to keep and maintain a tank full of aquatic plants and fishes is quite a challenge to many beginners. This is because plants need carbon dioxide and sunlight to survive whereas fishes need oxygen and hate strong light. If you get the chemistry right, the plants take in carbon dioxide and sunlight to produce oxygen in the process of photosynthesis. So the tank system will achieve a state of balance where plants consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen that the fish needs. The excrement from fishes also serves as a source of fertilisers for the plants.

Once you have an aquarium of aquatic plants and fishes that flourish well, the only maintenance work required is to change water regularly, trim the plants if they grow too thick and care for the fishes. Tap water contains chlorine and it has to be stored in pales over night before mixing with water in the tank.

My aquatic tank

Now, lets look at the essential equipment needed to set up an aquatic tank. First, an aquarium tank of 3 to 4 feet long, a filtration system of internal/external filters (optional, as the wastes form fishes can act as fertilisers for the plants), long tubes of light (the one that give out the equivalent of sunlight) and a cylinder of carbon dioxide with tubings and regulator valves. You also need plenty of sand to lay at the bottom of the tank to grow the plants. The sand should be arranged like a slope from the far end of the tank to the fore ground. In this way the sand will not reduce the tank view from the front. Aquatic plants (from aquarium shops) are planted in a way such that bigger ones are at the back and smaller plants at the front of the tank . Rocks or wood can be added to blend well with the plants. Then fix up the tubings in the tank for the supply of carbon dioxide (aquarium shop may offer advice in this aspect). Then put up the lighting and the tank will be ready for putting in the fishes. Before that, let the system runs for a few days to achieve equilibrium. When the plants are striving, you can see they breath out streams of tiny oxygen bubbles from their leaves. This is photosynthesis at work, what a lovely sight. When this happens, put in a few fishes to check if they survive. After that, the tank can be populated with any tropical fishes you like such as the neon tetras and angel fish. Don't forget fishes are very territorial, large ones do eat up the smaller ones, etc. Sometimes, people like to put in a few hundreds of those tiny neon or cardinal tetras. These fishes have splendid colour in their bodies. It is quite amazing to watch a large school of fishes swim from left to right in the tank. Angelfish are easy to keep too. You may get some good quality angelfish and they can also lighten up your aquatic tank. These angel fish swim elegantly around and they don't create any disturbance to the tranquillity of the tank. However, they should not be kept together with neon or cardinal tetras, as these tetras are a delicacy for the larger angelfish. I once put in a hundred neon tetras together with 2 angelfish. After sometime I noticed that the population of the neon tetras was dwindling. Until one day I saw with my own eyes that the larger angelfish eating up one tiny neon tetras. By that time, my tank was left with a few dozens of tetras. Never put any gold fish in the tank as well. Gold fish are notorious for aquatic tank as they will sure turn your tank upside down when they go round looking for food to devour. They are forever hungry and their clumsiness in the tank surely upset the objective to create a peaceful environment of tank life.