Evening star., 1934-11-16
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

thinks his charges will eat, and place
this in the palm of the left hand.
Then with the thumb and forefinger
of the right hand he can take out
small pinch, and sprinkle this along
the water at the front line of the
aquarium. The wider it Is spread, the
more chance the timid feeders have of
getting their share, and the less of 1t
will be knocked down to the bottom
always to be avoided If possible.
Another wrinkle at feeding time is
to go around and wipe off first the
under surface of the cover glasses
whereon vapor may have collected. If
this is not done some of the water
surely will trickle down the lid as one
raises it. Water and fish foods make
rather gummy mixture. II the
wiping is done first, feeding them be-
comes a pleasure to the enthusiast as
well as to the fishes.
When plants, especially anacharis,
need reSetting or trimming, as they do
every two or three weeks If growing
properly, a good wrinkle is TO place a
sheet of florists pale green paper on
the window side of the aquarium until
they start growing again.
ANY disturbance of the status quo
of a successful aquarium. such as
changing the planting, or adding new
fishes, or even taking some old ones
out, runs the risk of causing the free
living forms of green algae to take a
sudden squirt, shortly causing the wa
ter to become nice pea green, which
is healthy for the fishes, but not so
good to look at.
The precaution Of cutting down on
the light by the method advocated
here will in most cases prevent this
from happening. Many enthusiasts
dislike to do anything to successful
tank, owing to this chance of change,
brought about by changes, but this is
the wrong attitude, as even the best
aquarium needs plenty of attention,
and don't let anybody tell you 1t
doesn't. We knew a man once who
said he never touched his tanks, and
that was the truth-he hired another
at $40 a week TO do the necessary
work for him.
Another good wrinkle is to keep at
least one specimen of Trichogaster
trichopterus, popularity called the
three-spot Gourami, in every tank as
a scavenger.
This fish is handsome, well behaved
and hardy, but his best feature is his
unique feeding habit, which makes
him much better scavenger than the
snails, tadpoles, catfishes and weather
fish often used for the purpose Of dis
posing Of excess food.
This comes about because this Gou-
rami feeds both off the surface and
the bottom At the surface he simply
opens his mouth wide and sets up
suction which draws to him the food
from large radius, including all the
finer particles, which most medium
and large sized fishes will not eat.
Then after he has cleaned up the
entire surface the Gourami descends
to the bottom, and, standing on his
nose, proceeds to pick up all the larger
bits which may have fallen TO the
sand Nor does he root, as the little
catfishes. sending up clouds Of mulm,
but daintily picks up the food piece
by piece, not disturbing grain of
sand.
The Rosy Barb also may be said to
be good scavenger, in respect to
food, but its habits are SO boisterous
that it stirs up the sand almost as
badly as a catfish. Surely the en-
thusiast who values the clearwater
aquarium will select fishes (after he
has had his fling at trying them alb
which will not feed or otherwise live
in manner to stir up the mulm which
must be, in some measure. at least,
on the floor Of every tank which
aspires to be called good.