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If you can, go native

Take a break from colours and shapes

CATCHY FISH Giant gouramis are a colourful choice

Think of a fresh water aquarium and you think of goldfish, angels, discus, arrowana, Siamese fighter fish besides a host of other colourful ones. But these fish aren't native to India.

See the alternative that's wholly Indian: Blue Panchax, Indian glassfish, the much-reviled snakehead, giant Gourami, giant Danio, Barbus tetrapgus and Rosy barb. Once you decide to go native, the advantage is obvious. You can throw out your thermometer, heater, the Ph test kit, filter and you can feed your fish rice, palak and whatever you are eating.

Zebra Danios fish males have blue and silver stripes, Gouramis in all their varied hues and shapes are also native to India and can be seen in their environment in shallow river and lake waters and Rosy Barbs do live up to their name with their silvery bright colour. It is not parochialism that should help your choice, the fact that some of the fishes have been modified so much that they hardly resemble their ancestors who were taken out of their environment.

Besides those listed here, there are a host of freshwater fish from India that can be found in our rivers and lakes and they will give you the joy of creating a perfect environmental statement. To replicate nature, which should be the aim of a good aquarist, you can pluck a few vallisneria, crypts and hygrophila difformis plants that you can find in rivers and lakes and complete the statement.

Of course you can make a perfect contra-environment statement by keeping a school of GloFish. GloFish happen to be first genetically modified fish that are available to the aquarists and it so happens that the basic genes of Zebra Danios have been used to create this environmental curiosity.

The choice is yours.

SERISH NANISETTI

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