Zen and the Art of Nature Aquariums

What is a nature aquarium?

Many years back I met this lady who had some Ping-pong goldfish. She came from a well-respected family and lived in an exclusive village in Quezon City; she was welleducated, very much refined in poise and stature, and all she wanted was to offer the best food to her pet goldfish. She had bought all the major brands of goldfish food that I suggested to her, yet she wanted more. So I suggested what has always worked well with goldfish breeders: live tubifex worms. We met up in Cartimar where she bought her first bag of live tubifex worms. She even found these little critters cute as they wiggled in their ball formation. I gave her instructions on what to do and she hurriedly went home to feed her goldfish. Two hours passed, then she texted me that the goldfish absolutely loved the worms. The next day, I gave her a call to check on her tubifex feeding program. I didn’t even have the chance to say hello when she screamed, “Angel… Ang baho (It stinks)!!!” I said, “Of course, what do you expect? They come from waste water trailing of pig farms in Bulacan.” Kaboom! She never fed her goldfish live tubifex again. I guess feeding live tubifex worms didn’t work well for her. But this is not the case with fish breeders. Tubifex worms are a staple diet for breeder fishes and their young. Breeder fishes are given live tubifex worms to fatten them up and prepare them for breeding. The females become gravid with eggs when fed live tubifex worms. The young are also offered this live food as they grow faster on this diet, as compared to when they are fed commercial fish feeds. There must be some advantage to feeding live tubifex worms to fish, as our commercial fish breeders are highly successful in their endeavors. They will attest that feeding live tubifex worms plays an important role in their success.