Monday, June 30, 2008

All wet


In my younger days, I loved fish and fishing, and not just fishing in Idaho's wonderful waters, but keeping them in aquariums as well. From 1973 to 1977, I owned and operated an aquarium shop, where the 75+ aquariums and a pond held the mundane to the exotic; from guppies, goldfish and the lovely and delicate neon tetra, to saltwater fish, arawanas, and the massive arapaima gigas (one of the largest freshwater fishes in the world); my arawana and arapaima shared a 250 gallon home-made tank with an immense black pacu, plecostomus, and amazon catfish. the arawana ate goldfish, but the arapaima ate just about anything; goldfish, koi, dead rats... it was about 30" long when it died, seemed to have choked on a overly large goldfish. I sold the aquarium shop not long after that.

anyway, I've not thought about that for a long time, but I had told my son as a child about the arapaima, and I don't think he really believed me. Last week excitedly on the phone he told me about seeing one at the National Zoo; an eight foot long one!



The picture my son took on his cell phone, while not bad, doesn't quite capture the "scale" of the arapaima.

so I found this picture... it does.



See why I had a desire to go fishing for one of these? But I never did. A whole new line of fishing opened up while I was fishing instead.

3 comments:

  1. I was just saw a report about the Lion fish escaping from aquariums in Florida (probably during hurricanes.) It seems it is quite an invasion and they are spreading like wildfire.

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  2. You seem to have multiple talents, Mark. Fish! I used to have a tank full of guppies who at their young but that's as far as I got. One day a visitor took it into his head to spray the flies in the house. The fish went tummy up. That was the end of my involvemnen. Like you, though, I got interested in other kinds of fish.

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  3. other talents... hehe!

    but what could be more useless than to be the regional expert on repairing the Matchless half litre one lungers! It seems to have morphed into a four-wheeled, slow moving variety, that is a little more down to earth, metaphorically speaking!

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