IS THAT A NEMO FISH!!??

I die a little whenever I hear that question. A lot of people ask me this when looking at my aquarium, or if I happen to be with them near an aquarium with clownfish in it.

Not pictured: Nemo

You'd think that by now I'd have accepted the fact that most of what people know about aquatic life is based on an animated Disney film, but it's more than that. This question symbolizes the epitome of the differences between aquarists and people who just like pretty fish. I'm going to do my best to address this... dynamic relationship.

The Problem

The reason I love aquariums so much is because their beauty is limited only by the aquarist's own ingenuity, knowledge, and dedication. They're jigsaw puzzles, except your pieces have no perfectly fitting grooves, no edge pieces, and some of the puzzle will eat other parts of the puzzle for no reason in particular.

"You want him to do what with the puzzle?" (http://backstage.stylemepretty.com)

Ecosystems are complex; like telenovela plot complex. (Those are Hispanic soap operas where everyone ends up being related.) Successfully replicating an ecosystem takes an immense amount of care and understanding of how they work (ok, maybe not telenovelas), especially when they're aquatic systems.

Saltwater aquariums in a nutshell. (wikipedia.org)

For instance, unlike pets that live on land, I can't just go in there and sweep out Nemo's cage when it starts getting messy. Not to mention Nemo would die a horrific, tragic, excrement-filled death if there wasn't something to immediately break down his waste into something less toxic. I mean, fish literally swim in their own sh... waste.

Here you can see a fish excreting waste.

Saltwater aquariums go through an initial phase called "cycling". The whole point of this process is to create a biological filtration system of tiny, microscopic organisms that break down fish waste into less harmful compounds before they can kill the fish. The process takes about 6 weeks for new tanks, after which you can slowly add fish one or two at a time while the biological filtration works to keep up with the increased bio-load (we use this term to refer to the impact the organism's waste has on the filtration of the aquarium).

The reason we don't live in our own... waste.

Waste management aside, there's the whole ordeal of creating a community of fish that have similar diets, temperament, water quality needs, current intensities, lighting needs, depth preferences, and the list goes on and on. Like I said before, creating a successful ecosystem is complex.

The Ocean as Your Medium

Once you've mastered the whole "don't let everything crash and burn in a fiery (can it be fiery underwater?) catastrophe of fish juice" there's the whole process of making it appealing to the eye. This is what separates aquarists from commoners, and I use that term in the most endearing, non-condescending, compassionate, condescending tone.

I'm not really sure this picture applies to anything, but I just wanted you to appreciate that somewhere, at some time, a woman had to pose like this for a stock photo to be used in meaningless blogs across the internet. "Hollywood is great, mom!" (cainbrian.com)

Let me start by saying there is no "yellow fish" in the aquarium trade. Nor is there a green fish, a blue fish, or an orange fish. I'm not arguing semantics. I'm fully aware there are fish that are yellow in color. It's just not that simple when it comes to selecting a fish to fit the tank. You don't just close your eyes and randomly pick a fish from amongst a bucket full of candidates. Aquarium fish are not legos.

You really can find anything on the internet. (seankenney.com)

Like I was saying earlier, balancing an aquarium's inhabitants is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle; except the box only has a rough sketch of what the puzzle looks like on the cover, the pieces have all fallen into a glass of water, and some pieces randomly go missing. Living pieces just don't mesh perfectly. There are hundreds of fish of all different shapes and sizes with countless different quirks that set them apart from the each other. As an aquarist it's up to you to know about as many of them as you can, and then to pick ones that compliment each other and create a happy, balanced tank. The diversity of your medium is limited only by you.

"I just want a yellow fish... what's so difficult about that?"

The same thing that's difficult about walking up to a bar and ordering a "beer". Yea, odds are you'll get some carbonated water that tastes vaguely of alcohol, but it's not necessarily gonna go with your Wendy's classic triple with cheese. And combinations in both regards, aquatic and alcoholic, can end catastrophically. Let me show you a "yellow fish".

A yellow fish from different angles.

I feel like I'm coming off pretty judgmental. Let me rephrase: I'm being judgmental. It's not that you're wrong in saying a fish is attractive because of its color. I'd say 95% of the time the very reason the fish was picked was because of its color, but that's generally the final stage of picking a fish. It goes something like this: "Won't release chemical weapons on death? Check. Doesn't grow to 9ft? Check. Plays well with others? Check. Doesn't need 3 lbs of golden seaweed per week that's only harvested twice a year from the northern coast of Tahiti at low tide on a full moon? Check! IS IT YELLOW? CHECK! Let's get one and try not to kill it for a while!"

"He keeps mumbling 'yellow fish, yellow fish, yellow fish'... I don't get it." (decalsplanet.com)

Every organism in the aquarium trade has a certain level of care required to keep it alive and healthy. It's never just about a fish's color, or body shape, or swim style, or even about their temperament. On some level, there's always that "How easy can you kill it?" type of mentality. There are certain fish that are harder to keep than others, and like all great hobbyists we like to challenge ourselves by keeping these fish. They're like the holy grail of aquarium fish, and we love nothing more than showing them off to other aquarists. We're absolutely elitists.

I wear this metaphorical aquarium shaped hat all the time. (poachedmag.com)

But elitism aside, there's also that sense of accomplishment every aquarist gets when they take a step back from their living masterpiece and admire just how beautiful and seemingly effortless it appears. What you see when you glimpse an aquarium is the final frame of an epic drama of defeats and victories; a saga of luck and misfortune. It's the revised umpteenth edition of someone's passion laid bare for everyone else to see. The hours of scouring through internet forums, and aquarium books, and the infected cuts, and the nibbled fingers, and random stings, and spontaneous leaks, and the headaches, and all the countless defeats culminate into the scene you see in that one 30 second glance at the glass box of color.

Aquatic elitism (my tank).

Balancing the artistic appeal of an aquarium versus the public appeal is a huge challenge for aquarists. To a certain extent you design and stock your tank with what appeals to you, but if you're hoping to showcase a piece of nature for everyone to enjoy, then you have to understand that most people aren't going to care that you have two Zebramosa sp. living together, or that you have a booming population of copepods. Aquarists want to be artistically appealing; people just want it to be visually pleasing. The challenge of being an aquarist is doing both.

So when people ask me "Is that a Nemo fish??", I do my best not to get frustrated. After all, saltwater aquariums are pretty esoteric. I just ask that when you next encounter an avid aquarist, do your best to be as appreciative as you are inquisitive. A lot has gone in to showcasing that yellow fish as seamlessly as possible.