My problem is that having a love for fish has caused a desire to keep them as pets. Routinely I find myself questioning 'why keep them if you love them'. It's a conundrum.
Getting into this hobby from a young age, with no good information and plenty of poor habits has caused the suffering and death of my fair share of fish. Maybe more than my fair share. I think many or most people here can relate to gist of this, it isn't a new conversation. I'm not suggesting I'm a murderer, as it wasn't intentional... maybe not even avoidable. But some of my progression certainly came at the cost of the life that I say I respect.
At various milestones in our fishkeeping, after learning a new set of information and techniques, we find ourselves questioning our former practices. What was once a perfectly normal method later seems barbaric or even torturous compared to the new info. This doesn't occur just once, for instance when you first learned what cycling a tank meant, and how to care for your bacterial colonies, but rather it is a cyclical process. For every new discovery, a layer of historical guilt is added to the sediment. Some call it motivation, I don't know what I call it.
It's a process which has caused me to look at what I do now with my tanks and fish with an almost paranoid level of suspicion. By almost paranoid, I mean completely and totally paranoid. I can't help assume some new info is lurking right around the corner which will make me realize, yet again, that my current practices are somehow primative, retarded and cruel to the things I claim to love. Lately I've been battling an infection in two groups of fish; the first illness of any type in my tanks for over 5 years. It has really brought to the surface these thoughts again.
After those early and middle years of hit and miss fishkeeping, mostly without proper knowledge or instruction, I finally become wise enough to keep stable environments where fish live indefinately, without serious issue or illness. In the last 5 years or so my knowledge has increased exponentially as good internet resources have blossomed. The problem with this progression is that it leads me to believe that I'm still wrong, right now. Probably about everything.
So now, everything is a question again. I feel more nubby now than I did at age eleven when I setup my first 10gal 'torture chamber'. All of this together raises the old doubt of whether I am the guardian or the warden of these sweet little creatures. I no longer trust my own opinions about anything (which is where my lamest questions come from). Every step now reminds me of the noob I always was, and reinforces the notion of the noob I will always be.
Somehow I still feel like moving forward and keeping fish, and doing what I can. I still want to expand my knowledge and acquire more tanks and fish, for some sick reason. It is completely selfish to do so, for what appears to be little more than expensive room decoration. The only difference now is that I realize fishkeeping is really about being a good caretaker, and is even more about the human involved than the fish. And, when it comes to caring for delicate life, that aforementioned human still feels like a total noob.
Getting into this hobby from a young age, with no good information and plenty of poor habits has caused the suffering and death of my fair share of fish. Maybe more than my fair share. I think many or most people here can relate to gist of this, it isn't a new conversation. I'm not suggesting I'm a murderer, as it wasn't intentional... maybe not even avoidable. But some of my progression certainly came at the cost of the life that I say I respect.
At various milestones in our fishkeeping, after learning a new set of information and techniques, we find ourselves questioning our former practices. What was once a perfectly normal method later seems barbaric or even torturous compared to the new info. This doesn't occur just once, for instance when you first learned what cycling a tank meant, and how to care for your bacterial colonies, but rather it is a cyclical process. For every new discovery, a layer of historical guilt is added to the sediment. Some call it motivation, I don't know what I call it.
It's a process which has caused me to look at what I do now with my tanks and fish with an almost paranoid level of suspicion. By almost paranoid, I mean completely and totally paranoid. I can't help assume some new info is lurking right around the corner which will make me realize, yet again, that my current practices are somehow primative, retarded and cruel to the things I claim to love. Lately I've been battling an infection in two groups of fish; the first illness of any type in my tanks for over 5 years. It has really brought to the surface these thoughts again.
After those early and middle years of hit and miss fishkeeping, mostly without proper knowledge or instruction, I finally become wise enough to keep stable environments where fish live indefinately, without serious issue or illness. In the last 5 years or so my knowledge has increased exponentially as good internet resources have blossomed. The problem with this progression is that it leads me to believe that I'm still wrong, right now. Probably about everything.
So now, everything is a question again. I feel more nubby now than I did at age eleven when I setup my first 10gal 'torture chamber'. All of this together raises the old doubt of whether I am the guardian or the warden of these sweet little creatures. I no longer trust my own opinions about anything (which is where my lamest questions come from). Every step now reminds me of the noob I always was, and reinforces the notion of the noob I will always be.
Somehow I still feel like moving forward and keeping fish, and doing what I can. I still want to expand my knowledge and acquire more tanks and fish, for some sick reason. It is completely selfish to do so, for what appears to be little more than expensive room decoration. The only difference now is that I realize fishkeeping is really about being a good caretaker, and is even more about the human involved than the fish. And, when it comes to caring for delicate life, that aforementioned human still feels like a total noob.
