For the past two years, I have researched the universal crisis of coral bleaching with the intent to advocate and raise awareness among my Chinquapin community. My partner Kacie Horton, Chinquapin’s high school dean and head of the science department, and I embarked on the start-up and maintenance of a donated 175-gallon saltwater tank from the second semester of my sophomore year up to the end of my junior year. Reflecting on our time with the tank, I wanted to share this story about our determination and persistence under pressure.
I like to tell this story a lot. It also reminds me of how much I loved the Aquarium. But before I write about it, I want you to ask yourself what kind of issues could possibly arise while maintaining an aquarium. You might give the fish too much food? Yep, that could happen. You might forget to even feed the fish? Definitely a possibility. You might give them too much love and attention? That’s impossible. How about, having an ant infestation around your aquarium that caused you and your partner to be overwhelmingly stressed for about two hours?... Now wouldn't that be something?
Hear me out.
There are already so many factors that can stress you out while maintaining an Aquarium that you can see. Imagine the ones that you can’t.
I remember leaning onto the counter next to the aquarium to watch one of our fish dig into the sand when I felt something crawling on my hand. When I looked down, I saw a tiny ant weave in between my fingers, trying to find its path again. I shrugged it off.
Two days later, I saw more ants, so I got out the bug spray. Three days later, the ants still came back. This is when I started to get a bit concerned. I thought that maybe following one would lead me to where they were coming from. When I did, I followed them down the counter, up the tank, and somewhere in the middle, they disappeared.
Looking closer, the ants were disappearing under a black plastic lining that separated the top of the tank and the bottom (known as the sump). I promptly took off the lining and under it were rows of cubicles that stretched from one end of the tank to the other. Bringing the cubicles to my eye level, I was dumbfounded to say the least. The fourth cubicle was completely congested with an ants nest. Immediately, I called Kacie for help. She reacted the exact same way.
We couldn’t use bug spray because it could get into the tank. We couldn’t spoon them out because the cubicle wasn’t big enough to put a spoon in. We also didn’t even have a spoon.
It was then that we went into the Bio closet to find some form of solution and what a solution we found. We took two water guns, filled them with water, and shot the ants from one end of the cubicle to the other. While one of us shot the water from one side of the tank, the other was holding a trashcan and napkins to collect the hundreds of ants that oozed out. We did this for about thirty minutes before Kacie looked into the bottom of the tank and saw that some ants had fallen into the sump.
To put it mildly, we freaked out.
Any aquarium fanatic could tell you that even the tiniest unwanted element in your sump could create a massive chemical imbalance in your tank. We then had to do what we called a water change. On a normal week, water changes take about two hours to complete. We have to put filtered RODI water into our can, heat it to precisely 78 degrees fahrenheit, add salt, mix it thoroughly, turn off the tank, take out 40% of the water in the sump, put the newly made water inside, and turn the tank back on. On this day, we had to do it as fast as humanly possible. Five minutes could go by and the contaminated water could have circulated the entire tank. Not good.
But we did it. We did each and every step as it should.
Once the entire fiasco was over, Kacie and I hoped for the best. If we had done anything wrong, the tank would have reacted the following day or week.
A day passed: Nothing
A week passed: Nothing
Even in high tension, we did a good job, and we did a good job because we did it together.
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