Fish-keeping is quite a popular trend these days. You may want to give life to your dull living room by decorating it with an aquarium, you may want to distract your child – who actually wants a dog – with a goldfish, or you may really love how peaceful it feels watching fish swim. The reasons can be endless and there is no harm in keeping fish in your home as long as you have the right setup to accommodate them. A tiny fish bowl is no place for aquarium fish, regardless of the type. There are many reasons why you should refrain from keeping fish in tiny, treacherous fish bowls.
1. Round Bowls Have Less Surface-To-Air Ratio
Like any other living being, even fish need oxygen to survive. Fish can breathe in oxygen when it is dissolved in water. The more the availability of dissolved oxygen, the easier it is for them to breathe. In a round fish bowl, the surface area of water that is exposed to air, the surface-to-air ratio, is lesser than that of a rectangle aquarium, allowing less oxygen to dissolve. Keeping fish in big aquariums keeps the dissolved oxygen levels up.
2. Small Fish Bowls Don’t Have Enough Space For Filters
The best way of oxygenating water for your fish is by using filters, but there is hardly space in fish bowls to accommodate one. Not only do filters oxygenate the water, but also remove solid waste from it. They prevent the waste from decomposing and becoming toxic for your fish. Filters also save you the hassle of changing the water regularly.
3. Temperature Cannot Be Regulated In Fish Bowls
Since fish bowls are quite tiny, it becomes very difficult to regulate the temperature of the water in it. You cannot fit a heater without overheating the water. Many of the fish you keep as pets are usually tropical and need warm water to survive, but the size of fish bowls allows the temperature of water to fluctuate easily. Warm-water fishes are best kept in bigger aquariums.
4. Fish Bowls Make It Easy For Fish To Commit Suicide
It may sound weird, but fish may become suicidal when they get depressed. Anyone would be depressed if they had to live out their entire life in a tiny fish bowl, so why should fish be any different? The open top makes it easy for suicidal fish to jump out and suffocate on the floor. Even dust particles and toxins from the air can easily end up in the water and can poison it. If you have a cat, it may harm the fish when it’s too hungry to wait for you to serve its next meal.
5. Fish Bowls Don’t Have Room To Explore
Fish are made to swim, but when they are kept in a tiny bowl, they hardly have any room to do so. They don’t get any space to explore. All they can do is swim around in circles. There should be enough space for some hiding places, where they can go if they are scared or want to spend some time in the dark, away from all the eyes staring at them.
6. Bowls Distort The Fish’s View
Looking out of a curved glass is not the same as looking out of a flat one. Curved glasses tend to distort your view. So the fish in your bowl sees blurry, distorted figures moving around every time it looks out. If you were to put yourself in its place, you would know how unpleasant it feels.
When you buy a fish from the store, it is your responsibility to ensure that it has a good life. Let it LIVE in an aquarium and not merely SURVIVE in a fish bowl.
