Like a Fish Out of Water

There is nothing beautiful about watching a fish fight for its life and slowly die in plain sight.

You have probably seen this before. A trendy boutique, beauty salon, notary’s office, or coffee shop. On the table sits a small, round glass bowl filled with clear water. At the bottom, a few decorative stones, a plastic flower, or even nothing at all. Inside, a goldfish swims endlessly in circles, occasionally gulping air from the surface. What is wrong with this picture? Just about everything.

The very idea of using a living creature purely as decoration is deeply questionable from both ethical and aesthetic standpoints. Few would consider pinning a live cat to a wall or adorning a Christmas tree with hamsters. But fish, as we have come to see, are not regarded in the same way as other animals: they are dispensable. As a result, they can be placed in conditions where they cannot live, just survive for a limited time. Moreover, the only way a fish can communicate that it finds these conditions unbearable is to flip belly-up and die. 

The “serenity” of a fish endlessly circling its bowl is an illusion. Fish are cold-blooded, meaning they conserve energy and do not waste it on unnecessary movement. Under normal conditions, fish swim to migrate, reproduce, interact with other fish in a group, escape danger, or find food. In a bowl, it swims instinctively in search of an exit from its invisible prison. Swimming, it breathes intensely; levels of oxygen dissolved in the water drop, and the fish gulps the upper layer to avoid suffocating. It feels quite like a fish out of water.

A bowl of water is not an aquarium; it is just a bowl of water. Professional aquariums usually include five essential components absent in the container described above:

• Substrate (stones or sand)
• Live aquatic plants
• Lighting, often combined with heating
• An aerator (the device that creates bubbles)
• A filter for water purification

These are the necessary components that bring the aquarium closer to the natural environment in which fish are used to living. Even with these features, the aquarium is still a very limited space (in nature, fish usually live in much larger reservoirs), and its conditions are far from adequate.

Aquarists consider a lot of aspects: fish native to the Amazon and South Asia require different water acidity, different soils, light, temperature, water volume per fish, and so on. They also need different food: not everyone likes stinky crustacean powder. Of course, aquarium fish have changed their habits over decades of captivity and breeding, but there are no conditions that are completely suitable for each and every one of them.

For example, everyone knows guppies — small livebearer fish native to South America. In the wild, they live in overgrown, warm bodies of water with little to no current and are popularly considered “universal.”  The logic goes: they are low-maintenance, you can gift them to a five-year-old for their birthday, toss them into a 20-liter aquarium, and let them figure it out — they’ll adapt, maybe even breed. Next, someone will add tiger barbs — fish that, in nature, live in streams, love clean, oxygen-rich water, and need space to dart around. Then they will throw in an ancistrus so it can cling amusingly to the glass (though it will not live long without specialized plant-based food). And to top it off, a pair of angelfish — because they are so beautiful. Never mind that an aquarium of that size would be cramped for even one angelfish. But the fish swim, eat, live.

How do they feel? Probably like passengers crammed into a train compartment: spending a single night there might be bearable, but imagine a month or a year…

It is no surprise that fish often jump out of such “aquariums” and die. It is not suicide — it is their instinctive attempt to escape an adverse environment.

By their psychological makeup, most fish are hardcore survivalists. In their natural environment, they face floods, droughts, food shortages, diseases, predator infestations, and they have to be able to adapt to all of them. Wild cousins of the goldfish — crucian carp — hibernate under ice, burrow into the silt in summer, survive long periods out of the water, and are quite promiscuous eaters. But for no species of fish is it natural to spend most or all of their time in a small volume of stagnant water, without substrate or plants. So, while people might relax and relieve stress watching fish dart around in a jar, the fish themselves are stressed (yes, fish stress is scientifically proven) and suffering.

To avoid torturing your fish, start by reading a book on aquaristics. I emphasize: a book, not a Google search, since searching for anything related to aquarium fish online will bring up hundreds of ads from pet stores and manufacturers. There, you will read that anything is suitable for any kind of fish — just make sure to buy that “anything” from that specific brand or store.

A good book on aquaristics might sour your mood: you will need to step out of your comfort zone to follow its recommendations. Properly setting up and maintaining a humanely (towards fish) equipped aquarium is a long and tedious job.

Imagine needing a special kit to test the chemical composition of water! The fish species you are eager to combine will turn out to be incompatible, and simple solutions like plastic plants will be unacceptable. Even if you buy a spacious enough aquarium, it will likely become too small in a year as the fish grow. Tossing a bunch of colorful fish into a tiny volume of water and making them sparkle to liven up your home will not work. You would be better off with a plasma screen and a screensaver.

Companies and professionals who design aquariums for aesthetic purposes often care more about looks than the well-being of the fish. In contrast, in the broader context, being a professional aquarist is not as much about arranging pebbles according to feng shui but about ethics and responsibility.

“Remember that at the core of this hobby, we are ultimately responsible for the well-being of living creatures, and we should always act in their best interest… Even if other [aquarists] do not…,” reflects Canadian aquarist Derek Tustin. Whether aquariums are ethical in principle is a serious discussion, with animal rights advocates and fish breeders as obvious opponents; however, by accepting criticism and understanding societal trends in how animals are treated, professional aquarist associations are declaring as their priority the welfare of fish and ensuring they live in dignified conditions. For example, our own All-Ukrainian Association of Aquarists, although primarily focused on competitions, lists as one of its goals “promoting the humane treatment of animals and providing consultative assistance in creating optimal living conditions, as close to natural as possible.”

(Just in case, a reminder: “liberating” aquarium fish and other aquatic creatures by releasing them into ponds or rivers is very dangerous. It can harm not only the fish, turtles, and snails themselves but also entire ecosystems. Not only exotic but also native animals and plants should not be released after being kept in an aquarium. But that is a topic for another discussion.)

If someone takes on the responsibility of caring for a piece of aquatic habitat with its specific inhabitants, they should fully commit. This commitment is expensive and exhausting, ultimately limiting the community of aquarists to true enthusiasts and professionals who know what they’re doing. And the owner of a jar with a goldfish should be firmly told that they’re slowly killing their pet in plain sight—and there’s nothing beautiful about it.

The texts in the Columns section reflect only the author’s opinion and do not necessarily align with the position of UAnimals media’s editorial team.