Ping

My beautiful orange goldfish in a bowl with orange rocks is a lovely "home accessory", and he's also a living creature who breathes, eats, poops and grows!
So, Ping is soon moving into a new apartment: a BabyBiorb 4 gallon aquarium.


Goldfish are one of the few fishes that can live in a bowl without filtration and an air pump. The others are Bettas (or "Siamese fighting fish") and paradise fish. Even so, their water needs to be changed very frequently, and eventually they will outgrow the bowl. (And please do not email to yell at me and tell me I am a fish abuser... I got this information from The Animal Connection on Judah St in San Francisco - blame them!) I started with this bowl, which is actually a vase, some orange glass pebbles without sharp edges (from Crate and Barrel), a bottle of tap water conditioner, fish food, water plants, two tiny snails, and finally added Ping. Goldfish will nudge and nibble on their water plants, so I often buy new ones. (It's good to think of the plants as more a salad for the fish than a fish houseplant... that way I don't get mad when the plants fail to thrive and eventually get torn apart!) The snails go round and round and eat leftover fish food, the plants recycle some carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, and the pebbles... well, he likes to poke at them looking for fallen flakes of fish food.

Friends and acquaintances have asked me if I like dogs and cats...why not a dog or cat? Because hamster poop and fish poop is about all the poop I want to deal with, thank you very much! I do like dogs and cats, as long as their poop belongs to someone else...If I wanted to deal with big, hot steaming poop I would have a baby.

Watching a fish swim around is so much more relaxing than watching TV. I have a fish as one alternative to TV (books are another), not as an alternative to a dog!