What to do with an empty aquarium

About eight years ago I won a jumbo gift certificate to Petsmart.  I used it to buy an 80 gallon aquarium, because I’d grown up with aquariums and always loved them (my father used to breed angelfish).  The aquarium has beautiful maple trim and cabinetry, and looks really nice, but I’ve lost interest in the upkeep.  It’s got two massive filters and a UV light to kill microscopic bad things, yet it still feels like I’m always cleaning it.  There are no fish in it right now (the last one died about six months ago), and I don’t want to fill it with fancy goldfish (I get too attached and they’re fragile fish), and it would cost a fortune to tweak the aquarium for a community tank.  I removed all the gravel and keep the tank very “minimalist” because goldfish are so messy and hard to keep clean, so without fish, it’s just a big glass box filled with water.  One of the problems with keeping an aquarium here is the dry air, because the tank loses about half an inch of water per day, so it’s not even a full glass box of water at the moment.

I just don’t know what to do with it from this point forward.  I don’t want to get rid of it, but I have neither time nor inclination to maintain an aquarium.  Our water here is so bad that it’s killed a couple of fish, too, so it almost seems unethical to subject fish to that again.  I can’t put the aquarium “in storage”, because it’s just too big and would take up room we don’t have.  It’s set up in the living room, the first room you see when you come through the door, so it doesn’t look very good when it’s just full of water and hard water deposits.  I was leaning towards a terrarium setup, aka, a glass tank filled with dirt and plants, but I want it to be a reptile/amphibian-free terrarium.  Just plants.

Are there any terrarium experts on board?  Is it even called a “terrarium” if it doesn’t have animals in it?  I’d love to fill the tank with different types of orchids (it’s so easy to control the lighting, I think orchids would do well), but returning to our hard water issue, I’d never be able to “flush” the orchids completely, and I’d eventually have quite a buildup of minerals and salts in the soil.  I don’t know if any plants can handle that, or if there’s anything I could do about it.  I did some reading and some folks will just keep the plants in their pots, adding some moss to disguise the ugly parts, but I think I’d like something more permanent.  Here’s a photo of a ‘Wardian case” (those orchid folks need to make up fancy names), but it’s just not as natural-looking as I’d like:  Wardian case.  To me, it looks like a science fair project.

I’m doing some web searches as I write this, and evidently a terrarium has plants, and a vivarium has plants and creatures.  I thought I’d pass that along, in case you didn’t know, either.

If you know of any good websites or books about terrariums, or have any experiences (good or bad), I’d love to hear them.  I wish I could just close my eyes and wiggle my ears and have the project completed… I want a nice centerpiece for the livingroom, and I don’t feel like doing the work on it right now.  At the very least, this weekend I guess I’ll take all the filters apart, wash them, drain them, make notes of what replacement parts I’d need in the future, etc.  It could take me weeks of scrubbing to take care of the hard water deposits, so I’d might as well start to tackle those as quickly as possible.

It’s sort of sad and funny that of all the pets we’ve had, “Bob the oranda” made the deepest impression on me.  It was Bob’s illness, and my inability to help him, which has turned me off owning goldfish.  I guess there should be a few “fish vets” in town because of all the aquariums at the casinos, but I wasn’t able to find one when I wanted to do surgery on Bob to treat his swim bladder problems.  I think goldfish are adorable, but I can’t watch any more of them die as I stand by helplessly.  When my terrarium is done, I’ll have to name it “Bob Memorial Gardens” or something.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 07/19 at 07:59 PM

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  1. Awww I’m so sorry to read about your beloved Bob.  I totally understand, I love my fantails Gandalf & Gollum (Gandalf is my blue oranda, I have pix on my blog. Even a video LOL). 

    Except that you need to make sure the soil is moist (and I know you said you have really dry air) I’d recommend a tarantula.  They’re really neat wink

    What about mini-cacti?  they do get beautiful flowers.  I think a terrarium would be really nice.

    Someday (when I don’t have young kids) I really want to do a salt aquarium.  It is so relaxing to watch my fish when I feel crappy or I can’t sleep (because I crashed during the day).

    Posted by Angel  on  07/19  at  09:52 PM

  2. I would plant your orchids in roomy pots, covering the pots themselves in dirt, with various sizes of pots so you get multiple levels of dirt.  Then plant something that creeps in between that isn’t so labor intensive- or even moss. Something that will forgive you when you have to remove a pot. You may even want to “double layer” the pot- nestle it in a barely larger pot- to help with removal. Or paint the pots and make them Pretty for the ones that are visible.

    Me? I’d plant catnip and dill and chives and chocolate mint. It’s a garden I can have that I can keep a lid on and keep the cats out! I’d LOVE that.  If the dirt gets too terrible, you can always replace the dirt from the whole terrarium if necessary.

    Posted by Georg  on  07/20  at  11:01 AM

  3. Angel, I’d happily have a snake of some sort, but Flippy would leave me.  As for tarantulas, I think there are probably some just a few feet outside our front door, and I’ll be happy if they stay outside where they’re happiest wink We’ve got a nice cactus garden on our front lawn, and many of them get flowers in early summer—they’re really very striking.

    Georg, the idea of an herb garden is interesting. I’m not rejecting it.  It would make the cats happy, that’s for sure… they love the cat grass and catnip I’m growing on the kitchen counter.

    I forget to mention that when I lived in San Francisco, I briefly had a terrarium filled with carnivorous plants, like venus fly traps and pitcher plants.  I can’t recall what happened to it, but the plants must have died if I don’t still have them.  I’ll have to ask Flippy if she remembers.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  07/21  at  02:18 AM

  4. I’ve still done nothing with the poor aquarium.  Too many projects and too little me…

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  10/26  at  04:01 AM
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