Insomnia has been a part of my life for several years now. I have little names and excuses for it, like Sunday Night Insomnia, my most faithful friend who visits me regularly every Sunday night without fail. This is when I spend my sleeping hours ruminating over everything I've done wrong, a sort of start-up for another week of failure. Even when I have something to look forward to, insomnia visits so that I can be reminded that the outcome will fall well below expectations. The other nights of insomnia have pet names. but they pale in comparison to Sunday Night Insomnia. I decided to become proactive and set about to end this hold that insomnia has on me - without resorting to medication. I consulted a number of books and visited a number of websites and decided that the feng shui approach might work best. I painted my bedroom a dark, relaxing red; made light-blocking curtains and bought a new bed with a pillow top mattress. I cleared out the small television that I sometimes watched until I fell asleep. No BlackBerry allowed; no newspapers; no clutter; and no disturbing books or magazines. Cats allowed if they don't spend too much time grooming themselves or decide it's time to play. It worked for a while but I soon started having the usual insomnia and Sundays Nights returned to sleepless nights.
So, I decided to get an aquarium, another feng shui cure for insomnia. As a former aquarium owner, I knew the basics, so I was able to get a used tank and enough stuff to begin getting some fish. I decided to get low maintainance fish, so my first purchase was three rose tetras and two cat fish. I named the tetras Curly, Larry and Moe and the catfish were named Bert and Ernie. (Not very creative, but I didn't want to give them "special" names as they might not last long enough to grow into them.) They seemed do fine, swimmingly in fact if you'll excuse the pun. Buoyed by the successful additions to my pet family, I purchased three more fish: a trio of cherry barbs that I dubbed the Bronte sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Ann, but their behaviour soon gave me the impression that I had adopted a menage a trios. In fact their overall behaviour left a lot to be desired. They became very aggressive towards the docile Bert and Ernie who spent their time cleaning up the food dropped by the other, less careful fish. Frankly, I expected better behaviour from the Brontes, but some sort of detente was achieved and Bert and Ernie are once again vacuuming the tank bottom.
I began to enjoy watching the hi-jinks and beauty of my fish family as I dozed off to sleep. One day, however, after doing the requisite "exchange" of 30% of the water, I noticed that the tank was cloudy and it remained so until the next day when I started to panic that I had done something wrong. I went to the internet to a site devoted to aquariums and typed in "cloudy tank" in the search engine. There were any number of fixes offered in the forum, but when they wanted me to join, I groaned. Another clever "username" that I'd have to come up with. Can't I just find out the answer without having to wrack my brain for a username that I won't forget and a password (case sensitive?) I finally decided on fishbellywhite in honour of my legs in summertime and found out about something called algae blush and high ph levels and all sorts of other horrors that can befall an aquarium and its inhabitants. But nowhere was the answer to my question: does the fact that my cats drink out of the aquarium have anything to do with it? I, fishbellywhite would never ask that question on.this.forum. No way. I might be asked to leave for allowing cruelty to my fishes. Okay, so they all cower near the plastic shipwreck whenever one of my boys takes a drink, but they snap back pretty quickly once the cat leaves. He's not interested in them, but he does show a fondness for their flaked food and I have to shoo him away at feeding time. Ares (shown in the picture,) looks upon fish food floating on top of the water as a sort of soup du jour - a lukewarm Tetramin chowder if you will.
Well, the cloudy tank continues, but the fish are still enjoying their smoggy little home. It's those daily invasions by those monsters who steal their food and water that are what gets them angry. Afterward, they go berserk for a while, streaking around in the tank. One of the barbs goes into a death spiral - fins up, in an alpha state until the others calm down. Soon they'll be suffering from insomnia along with me.
