Aquaria: Outward serenity hides lurking savagery
Aquaria: Outward serenity hides lurking savagery
By James Penha
JAKARTA (JP): In contrast to pet dogs who constantly make demands on their owners (Touch me! Feed me! Comb me! Let me sleep on the couch, the bed, your arm), or pet cats whose independence infuriates their hosts (I'll be out prowling the neighborhood; if a Tom calls, tell him you never heard of me), fish are pets that soothe, calm and relax their owners. That's why dentists and doctors so frequently install fish bowls opposite the lava lamps in their waiting rooms. Patients of psychiatrists -- I am told -- often face aquaria as they recline on couches unburdening their souls.
The huge and beautiful fish tanks exhibited by aquarium merchandisers at Jakarta's various malls do distract frenzied shoppers from their sprees and cause them to pause and follow the easy swirls of an angelfish or the languorous waving of an anemone. The price tags on these massive menageries are less relaxing, though.
Shopping the supermarket bulletin boards, I found a fully- equipped second-hand aquarium for sale at a reasonable price -- one much lower than my total annual bill for Relaxa, herbal tea, jamu, massages and weekends at Sambolo. If this setup could calm my jittery Jakarta nerves, I figured I had found a bargain.
Pak Ikan Hias, the aquarium specialist I hired to organize and maintain my fully-equipped sea world, persuaded me that if I wanted my fish and coral to live long, contented lives, I should provide more lighting, more powerful air pumps, and a big black machine to simulate ocean currents. I of course wanted to make my fish happy so they could keep me happy. Now, as the owner of an even more fully-equipped and expensive set-up, I felt confident I should soon be even more fully relaxed.
I made a deal with Pak Ikan Hias. For a flat fee, his service people would visit my house every month to replenish the water, clean the tank and replace the plants, coral and fish.
Replenish the water? Apparently, pumps replenish the air in an artificially fishy environment, but domesticated sea water wears out in time.
Pak Ikan Hias left me with fifteen friends. I lugged my lounge chair close to the glass, curled up and watched life glisten for hours. I slept well that night, even through the electrical outage that terminated my air con at 1 a.m.
The fish slept too. Very well. Permanently. Not only the air conditioner had been terminated. When the electricity shut down, the aquarium pump stopped oxygenating the water; my fish -- all fifteen -- smothered to death. Dead fish, like Salvador Dali clocks, draped the rocks and coral.
Pak Ikan Hias's guarantee was as good as his word. By phone, Pak Ikan Hias said his crew would replace all the fish when it visited me again in a month. A month? Yes, that was the deal, but I didn't think I could bear watching a lifeless tank for 30 days. Memorials have a way of making me remember.
I made my way to the Mahakam aquarium center near Blok M and bought twelve new fish: a couple of cute clown fish, a zebra, two pretty blue fish, a triggerfish with a perpetual smile, and six other fish I don't quite remember since they died within the following week. More blackout victims? Not on their lives. For I made sure to invest in a battery-powered emergency air pump. No, this time my tank was attacked -- by fungus, the milky way of the deep.
Over night a galaxy of white specks appeared on the fins of my fish. Within hours the plaque spread to bodies and eyes. Every successive morning, I transferred another stiff fish or two from tank to toilet. In those sad days, salad tongs calipered more than just anchovies in my house. I learned to use a long kitchen fork to get at the corpses nestled under rocks. Maneuvering my arm in these funeral rites, I also learned that mourning schoolmates bite -- even the hand that feeds them.
A friend who has had an aquarium for years urged me to buy a special fungicide with which to treat the tank daily. I did. When I saw those telltale spots on Smiley (as I had named the triggerfish), I netted him and forced him to live for a day in a gayung (water scoop) I had fashioned with fungicide and sea water into a medicinal Jacuzzi. Smiley survived, as did five other hardy soles.
But the psychological and emotional effects lingered in me. Whenever I passed the aquarium, I nervously examined every fish as if the tank window were a magnifying glass. I needed to assure myself that all fish were safe. Any bit of detritus clinging to their skins, any abrasion from a run-in with a coral, looked like fungus and sent me pouring more powder into the tank. It took one fully deathless fortnight to convince me that the epidemic had been conquered.
Hoping to anticipate other catastrophes, I bought an apparatus to keep the water temperature constant, and I learned how to assure the right pH for the pHish. Only then did I try to introduce a new animal into the tank.
I spent Rp 10,000 (US$4.33) for an intriguing iridescent fish. It lasted one hour in its new home. Over invigorated by his return from the brink, and perhaps a bit overprotective of his fragile environment, Smiley took it upon himself to defend his borders against the new immigrant. It was over in an half hour. The body of the new fish sparkled briefly under the fluorescence before it plummeted to the gravel below. Smiley showed no remorse; he failed to understand the irony I discerned. I stared at him. Was this how Dr. Frankenstein glared at his monster?
Smiley has never ceased serving as a self-ordained St. Peter protecting his heaven against interlopers who belong elsewhere. Any fish I introduce to the tank is bumped and cornered by Smiley. But he kills selectively. It took me several weeks to understand the pattern: if I bring home a fish costing more than Rp 8,000, Smiley dispatches it immediately. Cheap fish do not raise his ire.
It occurred to me that I might have a calmer environment if I were to exile this self-declared lawman from the tank. Alas, Smiley wasn't the only vigilante.
Smiley paid no mind to the pigfish I bought for Rp 5,000, but an old blueband took an immediate -- and deadly -- dislike to him.
A placid utopia to soothe the savage breast? Hardly. An aquarium is more like a penitentiary filled with savage beasts. And the inmates are in charge. The warden can only stare, befuddled, and seek solace from... perhaps an ant farm might prove relaxing.