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What can you keep in fishbowls, my experience
What can you keep in a bowl, I mean one without a heater or a filter? I am told that this is one of the top ten most asked questions that fish store employees answer. A common answer might be feeder goldfish or bettas (also known as Siamese Fighting Fish).
I do not think either of those answers is all that good. Goldfish normally grow to more than a foot in ponds. The two inch fish in your aquarium has had its growth seriously stunted. If it were full size it would be about seven times longer and 350 times heavier.
Bettas are warm water fish which will not do well if you turn your heat down to less than seventy degrees in the winter to save energy.
I have kept a number of small fish that can take lower temperatures: White Cloud minnows, feeder guppies, platy variatatus, balloon mollies, zebra danios, salt and pepper cory catfish and flat head minnows. All have survived very well in bowls.
Paradise fish and blood fin tetras would also work well.
I have also kept invertabrates: snails, mystery and Columbian rams horn, and ghost shrimp. All seem to have adjusted well to bowl life, but I believe I lost one mystery snail to cold. This maybe the only animal I lost because I was keeping the animals in unheated, unfiltered bowls.
I currently keep five species of low light plants: two speicies of cryptocoryne, Java Moss, water wisteria, and an anubius. I have also kept three species of aponogeton, Java fern and horn wart. All three species of aponogeton thrived as long as I provided them with soft water. The Java fern survived for years before it disappeared. The horn wort died more quickly. The Crypts are doing well, my water wisteria is in trouble. I have a much more detailed discussion of low low light plants on another page.
There are very few web pages on keeping fish bowls, by which I mean keeping fish without electricty, in containers that can be easily lifted. When I started there was only one, fish bowls. This maybe the second. There are now quite a few more, but this one was early.
One of the First Web Sites on Bowls
There is very little written on the subject generally. At my local magazine store you can find three magazines on keeping fish in ponds, but might never find as much as a magazine article on fish bowls. This is true inspite of the fact that the majority of the people who keep fish in the U.S.A. and no doubt the rest of the world have fish bowls, not aquariums with various types of electric equipment attached.
Doing it Right
Many of the books, magazine, stores, and other sources of information claim bowls are cruel to fish. The Italians are so convinced of this that they are out lawing at least some goldfish bowls.
My strategy has been to keep the appropriate fish, invertabrates and plants that can thrive in bowls. I have generally found that most of the fish I have kept had little trouble living in bowls. Some species have breed, others simply grew and survived until I decided to take them back to the store many months, or even a year or so later.
New page under construction. How many fish can you keep in an aquarium or bowl.
Unrelated Pages on This Site
Humor Pages
More Califoria State Motto Jokes, etc.
Dim Bulb Lightbulb Jokes
The Lighter Side of Urban Camping
An Unreliable History of the Lightbulb Joke
Web Pages For My Friends
A Friend of mine makes wonderful Easter Eggs
Picture of Easter Eggs
This is the conversion story of an old friend. He struggled to write this before he died. He wanted it published. His friends decided to publish it on the web.
Conversion of an intellectual
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