Outdoor Sports and Games

by Claude Harris Miller

Any transparent vessel capable of holding water, even a Mason jar will make an aquarium from which a great deal of pleasure may be derived. The old way of maintaining aquaria in good condition required a great deal of care and attention. The water had to be changed at least once a day if running water was not available, and altogether they were so much trouble that as a rule owners soon tired of them.

Modern aquaria are totally different. By a proper combination of fish and growing plants we can almost duplicate the conditions of nature and strike a balance so that the water need never be changed except when it becomes foul or to clean the glass.

These are called “self-sustaining” aquaria and they are the only kind to have unless we can furnish running water from a public water supply. Self-sustaining aquaria are very simple and any boy or girl living near a brook can stock one at no expense whatever.

The method is as follows: First cover the bottom of the aquarium with a layer of sand and pebbles to a depth of about two inches. Then plant in the bottom some aquatic or water plants that you have collected from a nearby lake. Any kind of water plants will do—the kind of plants boys always call seaweed, even a thousand miles from the sea. In collecting the plants, choose small specimens and obtain roots and all.

If you can find it, the best plant is fanwort. Other good kinds are hornwort, water starwort, tape grass, water poppy, milfoil, willow moss, and floating plants like duckweed. Even if you do not know these by name they are probably common in your neighbourhood. Fill the tank with clean water. That taken from a spring or well is better than cistern water. After two or three days, when the plants seem to be well rooted, put in your fish. You may keep your aquarium in a light place, but always keep it out of the sun in summer and away from the heat of a stove or radiator in winter.

The nature student will not attempt to stock up his aquarium immediately. He should always leave room for one more fish or bug. One year I started with a lone newt and before the summer was over I had thirteen sunfish, pickerel, bass, minnows, catfish, carp, trout, more newts, pollywogs or tadpoles, five kinds of frogs, an eel and all sorts of bugs, waterbeetles and insects. I soon found that one kind of insect would kill another and that sometimes my specimens would grow wings over night and fly away. But to learn these things, even at our own disappointment is “nature study.” If we knew it all in advance, we would not have much use for our experimental aquarium.

Always keep a few snails and tadpoles, for they are the scavengers and will eat the refuse stuff and keep the glass free from greenish scum. Boys and girls are almost sure to overfeed fish. This is a great mistake. The best standard feed is dried ants’ eggs that can be bought for a few cents a box at any bird and fish store. Do not feed pieces of bread and meat. Study what their natural food is and if possible get that for them.

If your fish seem sickly, give them a five-minute bath in salt water every day for a week. The kind of an aquarium above described is intended to fill an entirely different purpose from the usual gold fish globe. In your excursions you will find all sorts of queer looking eggs and specimens. Some of the eggs are so tiny that they look almost like black or white dust on the water. Another kind will be a mass like a jellyfish with brown dots in it, still others will be fastened in masses to the under side of a leaf in the water or perhaps on the bottom. What are they? That is just the question and that is why you will carefully collect them and take them home to await developments.

Always keep an accurate note-book with dates and facts. Also keep a close watch on your specimens. Sometimes they will hatch and be eaten by the other bugs before you could read this chapter.

A nature student will need some part of the house that he may call his very own. Here he can keep his specimens, his aquarium, his herbarium and what not. Around the wall he can hang the twigs with their cocoons, oak galls, last year’s wasp and bird nests and other treasures. He should also have a work table that a little glue or ink will not injure and a carpet that has no further use in the household. Usually one corner of the attic or cellar is just the place.