Today I finally got round to cleaning the aquarium. Or rather, I didn’t really get round to it—I just couldn’t pretend any longer that I hadn’t noticed the green streaks on the glass.
I have a large aquarium. It’s beautiful when it’s clean. When it’s dirty, it’s just big. That’s the state it’s been in for the last few weeks, whilst I heroically walked past it thinking ‘tomorrow’.
Tomorrow turned out to be today.
I took out everything that could be taken out. Stones, decorations, bits of driftwood that I’d once spent ages choosing and which are now covered in a film of grime. I temporarily moved the fish into a basin — they swam around there looking so offended that I felt guilty. Although, you’d think I was just cleaning up, doing a good deed.
I cleaned the glass with a special scraper. That’s the part I dislike the most — you have to scrub, scrub, scrub again, and then look at the light and discover there’s still a bit left here. Then it takes ages to change the water, keep an eye on the temperature and the chemicals. In short, it’s a whole process.
It all took about two hours. Maybe two and a half — I didn’t keep track of the time, because it’s the sort of job you can’t just leave halfway through.
But then I put the fish back in, switched on the lighting and just stood there for a while. The water’s clear, you can see every little pebble, and the fish are swimming as if in a jewellery shop window. It’s beautiful. Really beautiful.
It’s for moments like this that I put up with the whole process. An aquarium in the room is like a living painting on the wall, only you don’t have to wash the painting every month. Well, almost not.
Next time I’ll drag it out until the very last minute, just the same. I know myself.
