What I am going to talk about is not the Nemo the clown fish who was lost in the sea.
I am going to talk about a fish I have named the clown.
It is one Gold Fish in our tank who has an erratic swimming style.
Most of the time he is OK (I am not sure whether male or female) but he seems to be in some erratic posture that I sometime think the fellow is dead or going to die.
In one occasion he was virtually dead, I decided to change the water late in the evening since with poor weather conditions the brown and black algae were growing in abundance. I had only few buckets of water (left out for chlorine to evaporate) to replace and was barely enough for the fish to swim.
Then I went to Colombo for 2 days thinking when I return clown would be dead with few others.
Presto my water change had worked they were in good condition.
Few days later the clown was dancing in erratic fashion and quickly changed water thinking the water was polluted again.
The air pump was not working.
Just today when I looked at the fellow he is still the same.
Now I am convinced this fellow has some problem with its swim bladder which helps the fish to balance with the air inside them. Come to think about the way the gold fish is built and how the fins are positioned without a swim bladder it could never float let alone swim.
I was never fascinated by Gold fish and had never kept a gold all my life and never have observed them in detail except looking at them in aquariums.
On the contrary my wife (that is why she is my wife-sometimes likes the exact thing I hate) loves gold fish but she has never kept them or studied them (fish altogether) as a kid.
The fish tank has a big partition one for her fish and one for my fish.
My ones live in absolute nature without a glass to see them and I only know that they are active when the males make bubble nests to care for eggs. That part has water plants and I rarely change water since the ecosystem is well seasoned.
My wife's part has all the gadgets some working and some not working that is where the water pollution is occurring and frequent.
Because she is not well versed with the subject the fish vendor dish out all the sick fish.
We have three with cataract (two of them are gold fish) one is the clown fish with bladder problem, the other with problem with the fins.
What alarmed me was that one fish which had the running disease (Fish Tuberculosis) and infected several others before its demise.
When I told this she had second thoughts about the fish keeping but disease or not I will not sacrifice a fish and let natural events to take control.
Worse come I make little quarantine.
The clown fish I have is due to congenital swim bladder problem.
There are many theories about erratic swimming of gold fish this one is different and unique and I begin to love this fellow for his dancing habits sometimes upside down ( like our politicians make our life upside down with economic up and down turns).
I won't give this clowned gold fish for even gold.
He keeps me amused unlike our politicians.
If you are shopping for gold fish look for a clown fish like what I have to keep you amused in the coming year.
Our politician will make us cry with another local election.
When they come this time round I will greet them with my downside up or pretend to be mad with their dry jokes.
Have I got any choice?
