a moment in the life of redpill as a kid freshwater aquarium

Sun Sep 25, 2022 4:45 pm

a moment in the life of redpill as a kid

my parents both worked but did provide me with some things I asked for.

the 1970s had a lot of things missing compared to today.

there was a local mall my parents took me to on a regular basis.

one of my favorite places in the mall wasn't the toy store as you might imagine but the pet store.

it was a standard pet store for the day.

I wanted a dog/puppy but my parents said no. They had to work full time and didn't want to care for it,
nor have to deal with any problems like poop or fleas.

I really liked looking at the fish tank.

I did chores for them and got good grades so they granted my wish.

We went to the pet shop in the local mall and got a 10 gallon fish tank when i was a kid, sometime in the 70s.

The pet store sold us the usual equipment such as plastic fish, a box water cleaner with graphite and water pump, an electric water heater,
under water thermometer,

plastic plants, fish food. this was freshwater. salt water is another kettle of fish entirely.

We had inexpensive fish like mollys and neons in the fish tank, I cleaned the tank from time to time, lots of

fish poop and fish flakes in the gravel of the tank. One child hood experience is that i recall one of the mollys gave birth

to tiny fish in the fish tank, though i think other fish may have eaten them.

later on i found a cray fish in a local pool, which is now a paved over parking lot, and put it in the fish tank. i also found tadpoles.

the fish tank had a violet-light blue colored fluorescent light bulb.

i enjoyed turning it on at night in otherwise complete darkness and would spend maybe as much as 20 minutes looking at the fish, on a regular basis.




over the years the original fish died, the crayfish found a way to crawl out of the tank and died. i got a gold fish that lasted several years before it died. the fish tank sides were always coated with a brown algae which was hard to clean and came back.

i managed to convince my parents to buy me a second fish tank, but this time it was used for a frog. i fed it crickets.

cleaning either was a very smelly unpleasant task. eventually the frog died.

by the time in high school i lost interest in fish tanks and after the gold fish died, i emptied it and never got another fish, which remains true to this day.

there are plenty of toads where i live but based on my previous experience and the bad smell i have no interest in keeping them as pets.

i still visit pet stores on a regular basis to look at fish tanks.

for me the thing about fish tanks is they are high maintenance, and they either get green algae or brown algae
and the gravel is smelly and gross with fish poop and decaying material.

back then looking at fish tank i saw the secret life of fish, kinda like a reality tv show. if i were a kid today i would have ipads and iphones.

so it was a time period of fish tanks, saturday morning cartoons, and plastic action figures.

btw the mall also had a store called the world of martial arts,

it had steel ninja stars and katana swords and real wood nunchucks and you could buy. not sure about the legality today this was during the height of the popularity of Bruce Lee. those ninja stars were razor sharp and made with real steal you could easily poke out someone's eyes with them.