Fish

Monday is fish tank cleaning day. The Tropical Fish belong to my son but guess who has to clean the tank each week? It takes me anything from 30 mins to 1.5 hours depending on the number of jobs that need to be done and each week I dread doing it and then find myself being sucked in by the task, wanting to make the tank look perfect.

I siphon out 3 buckets of water, change the top layer of the filter, dismantle the pump and check it's clean, clean the algae from the front and side glass and remove any dead bits of plant. Then I make up 3 more buckets of clean water (with chemicals to make the water safe) and put the 30 litres of water back into the tank. Wipe the lights and put the pump back on and the job is done.

I'd like to have a beautiful planted tank like the ones in my son's Practical Fishkeeping magazines but it's much more difficult than it looks. My plants don't exactly thrive and there is always algae on them. Strange that I can rescue almost any house or garden plant and lovingly nurse it back to life, but aquatic plants don't seem to respond the same way.....

Oh and the Beastie at the top is my son's favourite fish - a Golden Nugget Plec. It eats most of the plants and produces masses of pooh out the other end - messy messy beast!