Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Overwhelmed by fish!

So I proceeded down the path of "doing right by my fish" by choosing to research as much as I could about how to take care of fish in a freshwater and brackish environment.  Since I knew very, very little about it there was a lot to find out.  I went to the library and took out a stack of books, I joined 5+ forums, read countless websites and even contacted the gal at All Experts who helped me with my sick fish.

This resulted in me becoming a little obsessive.  Not because I wanted to but because there is SO much information out there and pretty much all of it is contradictory:
My molly is a sailfin. My molly is not a sailfin.  My molly is a sailfin/regular molly hybrid.
Mollies should be in freshwater.  Mollies should be in brackish water.  Mollies should be full marine.
You can use table salt in your aquarium (btw, you absolutely should NOT).
Thinking about substrate?  Well, here are 2,000 options!
Cycling your fish tank?  It'll take 24 hours.  It'll take 2 weeks.  It'll take 6-8 weeks.

This is just a sample.

So, I had to have a little talk with my husband to help me reorganize my mind.  I'm normally a really organized person.  I'm a list maker and a researcher.  I help my friends and family all the time with research because normally I'm really good at it.  But something about this...maybe because I'm dealing with living things (and many of you know I can't even kill a bug...unless it's an earwig.  Oh, and I can now smoosh the hell out of pond snails without remorse) and I don't want to make bad decisions.  I don't know.
Anyway, I am in the process of rethinking how I think about all this so that I can finally get moving on this process.  And start living a normal life again. :)

No comments: