I used to keep fish when I was a teenager. A fifty five gallon aquarium acted as a sort of nerdy footboard to my bed, dominating my room. I kept discus. So while my peers were listening to New Kids on the Block and learning to smoke, I was doing water changes, carefully, to avoid having a soggy comforter. My reward? Long hours of watching two expensive fish beat the snot out of each other. It was rather like watching two fifty dollar bills fight. A couple of times my discus bred, but they always decided that a quick snack was more important than the continuance of the species. But still, I loved them and was devastated when I heard from my mother, who had offered to keep them for me when I moved to California, told me she'd carted the whole lot off the pet store.

She wasn't too pleased when she heard I'd recently started another aquarium. "You aren't getting into THAT again?!", she said, as if THAT were a drug addiction or antisocial habit. I told her, yes, I was. As part of his bid for 'husband of the year', my husband, Richard, had bought me a sixty gallon aquarium, complete with stand, filter, and a lighting system that illuminated our entire living room like a visitation from the planet Neon. I assured my mother that I would not be keeping discus this time, just some peaceful, low-stress schooling fish.

I should have known better. If you ever want to simulate having an aquarium, dip your shirt sleeves up to the armpit in lukewarm water, give all the money you currently have in your wallet to the creepy guy at your local fish store, and then take an advanced course in organic chemistry taught by two professors with rival theories. (This is for fresh water, of course, for salt water you will want to add some salt to the water on your shirt and give all the money in your bank account to the local fish store owner directly.) I didn't tell my mother that I was planning on a planted aquarium again, she'd probably sign me up for an intervention.

The hobby had changed a lot in the ten years I'd spent out of it. Undergravel filters had gone from a high-tech must-have to derided obscurity. New fish were available and some old favorites unobtainable. Discus had become cheap, and in many cases, quite stunningly ugly. Plus the heater I'd bought was cranking my tank temperature up to 90 degrees when it was set to 70. It was really more of a sauna than an aquarium. I felt I needed help. That's when I found Aquachat.

I signed in as 'fishless', as I thought that described me pretty well. I received a lot of advice and was soon, ironically, learning to fishless cycle my tank. This involves going to every hardware store in the county looking for plain ammonia. I think perhaps this is some kind of initiation ritual. If you can look all those hardware store clerks in the eye and tell them you need plain ammonia to simulate fish pee so you can grow bacteria in your tank, you are worthy of the hobby. Some of the clerks started to edge away, probably to call the police in case I was a terrorist trying to make explosives. "No, this kind won't do", I'm say, "It has to be plain ammonia, not scented, not colored, not sudzing, not low-carb, just plain."

Eventually I found the elusive ammonia and set about dosing my tank with it and testing so I could bear witness to the fabled 'cycle'. I spent so much time talking about my 'cycle' and mixing up colored vials of fluid that my friends thought I was pregnant. Non-fish people just didn't get it. They couldn't understand how I could have had a fish tank for a month and still not have any fish to show for it. My Father-in-Law told me "Just put the fish in it, that's what we always did." I reminded him that, according to my husband, most of his fish had had shorter shelf lives than a tuna sandwich. They'd also added a crayfish as a 'friend' for their fish, with predictable results. This was later the subject of a kindergarten essay by my husband. I think the moral of the sad story was to not want friends, which explained a lot about my husband's later life. I hoped to spare him future trauma.

My boss tried to take an interest. When she found out I was still 'fishless' she asked "Oh, will you have a sponge?", I breathlessly started telling her about the sponge on my intake before I realized that she was talking about the living kind. She has a disturbing penchant for Sponge Bob Squarepants. I explained that sponges were saltwater and that I could spend money quite fast enough with freshwater. She asked what I was going to name my fish, and rather than explain that schooling fish all look alike, I promised to name all the ones with long eyelashes after her.

Now my tank has cycled and I am happily awaiting the assortment of tiny fish that is the inspiration for my name. We will see how low-stress they will be.