How to Make Fish the Easiest and Most Educational Pet You'll Ever Own

People never believe me when I say I've never cleaned my fish bowl.  But I swear it's true!!  And I've had it for almost a year.  When I set up my fish bowl, I was taking a limnology class.  Limnology is the study of inland bodies of water, such as lakes and rivers.  The course inspired me to create my own mock ecosystem in a fish bowl.  I like to think that it had a positive impact on my understanding of the course material, but at the very least, it has entertained the crap out of me and my boyfriend.  I imagine that kids would probably like it a lot too.  Setting up a fish bowl like mine is probably the best way to own a pet if you are either incredibly lazy or irresponsible. 

First things first, your bowl must be in a sunny location.  Ours is next to a west-facing window in our house.  Typically west or south-facing windows will afford you the most light.  Sunlight is crucial for the success of this project.  Fill the bottom of the bowl with rocks or something more creative.  It's important that the plants be able to grow roots into the substrate.  Rocks leave a lot of nice little spaces for them to grow through.  Sand might be too dense, but I haven't tried it.

Next, pick some plants.  I have a bamboo plant, a cutting from a pothos houseplant, elodia, and a couple of aquatic plants that I bought at Petsmart.  These plants will produce fresh clean oxygen for the animals in your bowl.  The animals will not be able to survive without oxygen.  If you look closely at the plants in my fish bowl, you'll see tiny bubble rising from the plants.  This is the oxygen itself.  When you see these oxygen bubbles, you'll know that the bowl is ready for animals.

Snails are the next step.  Snails will clean the algae and debris from the bowl.  Snails also self-regulate their population size.  They will reproduce rapidly and disappear.  This is because they eat each other when there are too many of them.  My bowl has one fish in it.  She's a molly of some type.  Originally we had a guppy also, but the molly ate him.  We didn't want to torture any more fish, so she's the only one.  It's probably not a good idea to have more than two fish unless the bowl is very large with lots of plants.

If you have a sufficient amount of plants, you will literally have to do nothing to maintain your bowl.  Once, I went out of town for a month and my friend who was house-sitting completely forgot about the fish bowl.  The molly didn't get fed for an entire month, but she just nibbled on plants and algae.  We do feed her occasionally (when we remember), but it's certainly not necessary.  Honestly, I think she prefers the vegetation.