Overflows and Dead Snakes

Aquarium Setup #48 -- November 1996

This article originally appeared in the November 1996 issue of FAMA. 

Copyright © 2024 by Steven J. Schiff.  All rights reserved. 

YOU WOULD THINK, after having done it twice before, that I would have learned by now.  But, nooo!  Last night I did it again – overflowed my aquarium, that is.  I seem to be afflicted with some sort of innate stupidity which manifests itself when I’m changing water in the tank, and leads me to make the same mistake over and over again. 

Long-time readers of this column know that I am a strong advocate of regular partial water changes.  I think they are the single greatest factor influencing an aquarist’s success.  Failure to do them probably leads to more fish death and frustrated beginners dropping out of the hobby than any other cause.  Why is changing water so important?  Fish, like all animals, are constantly producing waste products.  Some of them you can see, like the little strings of solid waste that drop out of a fish’s vent.  Most are invisible – for example, the urine produced by freshwater fish, and the ammonia and carbon dioxide excreted through their gills.  These wastes end up in the water, and changing water removes them.  Without water changes, the fish are swimming in an increasingly concentrated solution of their own wastes.  Aside from being rather disgusting, this is an unhealthy state of affairs that can lead to sickness and death for the fish. 

Fortunately, this sad state of affairs can easily be prevented by changing the water.  Removing a fraction of the old, waste-laden water, and replacing it with new water, dilutes the waste products and keeps their concentration at lower, safer levels.  If this is done on a regular basis, waste buildup is kept in check, and the fish stay healthier. 

Naturally, as with anything that’s good for you, there is a downside to water changes.  Namely, they require work.  Not heavy labor, necessarily, but it is time-consuming, and may be a bit boring, and there are probably other things you’d rather be doing – like reading FAMA, for example.  However, as fascinating, informative, and helpful as this magazine is, doing water changes is more important, so I give you permission to go do yours before you finish reading this column.  Go ahead!  Go do it – we’ll wait!  I promise we’ll be here when you get back.  Just start with the next paragraph. 

There!  Don’t you feel better?  I bet your fish do.  As I was saying, water changes are a bit of necessary drudgery, and aquarists, being human, are constantly looking for ways to alleviate this drudgery.  One of the products invented to make water changes easier and more convenient is the Python^TM No-Spill Clean ‘N Fill^®, which, for brevity's sake, we’ll call a “Python.”  The Python is a gravel vacuum with a connector that allows you to attach one end to a household faucet.  The connector can be set to pump water out of the aquarium for the first stage of a water change, and easily be reset to direct water from the faucet back into the aquarium to refill it. 

The Python has certainly achieved its goal of eliminating much of the drudgery from aquarium water changes.  I’ve been using one practically since they came out, and I am very pleased with the product.  Before I got it, I was doing water changes the old-fashioned way – with buckets – and the Python is a quantum leap beyond that method. 

The Python, however, is what keeps getting me into trouble.  After draining the desired amount of water out of my aquarium with it, I twist a fitting, turn on the faucet, and refill the tank.  Here’s where my innate stupidity manifests itself.  Refilling my 70-gallon tank is a slow process because of its size, and while it’s filling, I usually wander off to watch TV or something.  This is inevitably my downfall, because no matter how much I try to keep reminding myself that I have water going in, I eventually forget about it.  Usually I remember (or am reminded by my incredibly tolerant wife) before it’s too late, but at least three times I have not remembered in time, and significant amounts of water have overflowed the aquarium and poured out onto the floor, damaging walls, carpeting, and furniture.  Since the aquarium is located in a living area, it creates quite a mess as well as significant inconvenience. 

(Here’s a good place to publicly thank my friend Dean Majorino and his mom, Rose.  Their wet/dry vacuum cleaner has always made my cleanup easier and faster, and they’ve lent it to me on a moment's notice at all sorts of odd hours.  Thanks, once again!) 

The worst instance of this incredibly stupid behavior was the one I committed last night.  This time I did not merely leave the water running and stroll into the next room to watch TV – no, this time I actually went upstairs and started to work on my computer!  Time passes incredibly swiftly when I’m doing that, and the overflow, although no worse in terms of actual volume of water spilled, was more embarrassing, annoying, and inconvenient than ever. 

Obviously, the moral of my story is:  DON’T LEAVE YOUR AQUARIUM UNATTENDED WHILE REFILLING IT!!!  My editor, Don Dewey, is a nice guy, but he probably won’t let me use a larger typeface than the one you just saw, so let me add a few more exclamation points for emphasis: !!!!!!!!!! 

Maybe one of these days, I’ll get this through my thick head.  It’s possible that I will, since this latest accident comes after a period of two spill-free years, but as we get older, we lose brain cells, and I expect to get stupider, not smarter, as time goes on.  So now, while I still have some brain cells remaining, it would probably be a good idea to get one of the water level alarms that I’ve seen advertised in FAMA.  That ought to help me stop the overflows.  Now, if I could just stop myself from losing brain cells… 

And Now For Something Completely Different 

I’ve written in the past on unconventional fish foods, and I’ve offered quite a few of them to my own fish.  My usual list includes stuff you’d expect fish to eat – worms, insects, slugs, spiders, etc. -- and quite a number of things you might not, such as lettuce, grapes, dandelion leaves, cantaloupe, Cheerios^TM, cookies, rice, peas, pumpkins, and pasta.  Most fish are hearty and opportunistic feeders which will eat anything edible that presents itself. 

I’d like to report an addition to the list of unconventional foods that fish will eat, and this one, while not particularly surprising, is quite unconventional.  On a recent morning bicycle ride, I noticed a freshly killed snake in the road.  It was a southern ringneck snake (Diadophis punctatus punctatus) about 11 inches long, and it had been run over by a car. 

Since my six-year-old son Jeremy is currently quite interested in snakes, and even has one as a pet (“Snakey” is its name), I decided to bring the deceased creature home with me to show him.  He was fascinated, but how much can you look at a dead snake?  As I was deciding how best to dispose of it, I realized that here was some fresh, pesticide-free, nearly-live food that my larger fish might enjoy. 

I cut the carcass into bite-sized chunks (a disgusting job, I’ll admit, but someone’s got to do it) and offered it to my larger cichlids and my tinfoil barbs.  They ate it enthusiastically, although the barbs, having less powerful chewing mechanisms than the cichlids, had more difficulty with it.  The flesh was soft, but the skeleton, which runs the entire length of a snake’s body, made it a more challenging meal than the usual earthworms I give them. 

Overall, it was a successful meal, but not one I’d care to repeat.  Let me state categorically that I am NOT advocating that you seek out and kill snakes for the express purpose of feeding them to your fish.  However, in this case, it seemed to be a way to have some good, however small, come from the untimely and unfortunate death of the reptile.