Refurbishing the Aquarium at Our Daughter’s School

Volunteering has always been an important part of the alternative school system in Toronto, and, what with our daughter in her fourth year in a Toronto alternative school, my wife and I finally decided it was time to pick up the slack and make a contribution. We’d both been feeling guilty that our professional lives kept us out of the classroom, but luckily we were able to find something we could do on our own timetable that has made a big difference at the school.

There’s alway been this big old aquarium, 72″ x 18″ x 24″, that you see as you come in the front door of the school, but in recent years it’s been looking a little sad. It hasn’t had proper lighting for months, for starters, and I don’t think it’s ever had a proper cover. So I approached the Parent’s Council and begged to be allowed to fix it up. Luckily, they gave me the green light.

Two dutiful and beautiful angelfish stand guard outside the castle, liar of the ridiculously humongous plecko.

Penny and I spent a good month making sure we had a solid plan. Step one, after getting as much of the dirt out of the tank as possible, involved getting a decent cover. We couldn’t find a commercially produced canopy to fit such a mammoth opening, so we opted instead to get a custom piece of plexiglass cut (mad props to the fine folks at Plastic World).

Once the plexi was fit in place, we had a big day out at Big Al’s Aquarium Services in Scarborough. We picked up two 3-foot long lighting fixtures and a boatload of fish: four plecostumus (or is it plecostumi?) (three young ones and one giant eight-incher), three blue gouramis, three variegated guppies, three red swordtails, three angelfish, three kuhli loaches (the kids call them eels), and a little school of about twenty neon tetras. All the fish were transported immediately to the school and acclimated to the tank, and all seem to be thriving in their new environment.

The tank is massive, however (well over 100 gallons), so it still looks a little sparse. We’ve also donated our three red-tailed black sharks, who were far too confined in our tiny aquarium, and some of our snails as well (good riddance, you asexually reproducing freaks!). Also, one of the other dads has a few decent community fish he wants to donate as he transitions his tank from fresh water to salt water, so the more the merrier.

Most of the fish are fairly young with good growth potential, so hopefully they’ll grow a fair bit. Also, the swordtails give live birth, and we’ve got male and female representatives of the species, so maybe we’ll have a little population boom soon.