Gay Boy Thailand

Oops

I must talk to Chalerm about the saltwater aquarium. I don’t want to see more fish go belly-up or having to fork out money to buy new ones every two weeks. Read the rest of this entry »

Exile in Malaysia

I am not sure which country I live in now. Is it Thailand or Malaysia?

I have half-heartedly looked at cheaper Bangkok apartments on the Internet. I found one that looked promising. It was called Metro Park Sathorn. I asked Chalerm where it was. Chalerm searched for it on Google and came up with a map in Thai.
- Is here! said Chalerm.

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Oops!

I have a bad feeling about Nemo and the saltwater aquarium project.

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Nemo

Chalerm has moved the fishes from the big aquarium to the small aquarium, where the turtles used to live. The turtles are in exile in a plastic bowl in the kitchen.

This leaves the big aquarium empty. When I asked Chalerm what he was up to he said:
- I want Nemo.

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The maid surprised me by coming in at 9pm, carrying a large garden hose.

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I gave Chalerm money to buy a new aquarium.

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Chalerm has gone to Anyburi to visit his grandmother. I miss him terribly. This is strange. Am I addicted to him? I haven’t missed anyone like this since I was a kid and missed my mother when she was away.

I spoke to Chalerm today on the phone. He said I can go to Pattaya so I don’t have to sit home alone. I said I am not sure. I could go but money flies when I am in Sin City.

The aquarium is leaking. So this is why there was often water around it. Poor Chalerm has tried to hide this from me. This explains that guilty look on his face when I asked him one day where the wet mess came from. He has bought a leaky fish tank and is hoping I won’t notice.

But now I have noticed. With customer service being what it is in Thailand I don’t expect anything good will come from going back to the fishmonger in the soi and try to get him to honour the “warrantee”. Not after three weeks, anyway. Maybe if we had done it the same day.

I looked at other thanks in a shopping mall. The first tank was 350 B. 990 baht can get us a bigger and nicer one. I consider buying a new aquarium and putting it up so Chalerm can be surprised when he comes back.

Three days later and the new fish are still alive.

I don’t think it is any golden touch I have that Chalerm doesn’t have. What probably happened was that the aquarium has stabilised after 2-3 weeks, with the right kind of bacteria now living in the water.

When I bought my aquarium in Farangland the seller was strict. She said I had to set up the tank first, put in water and pebbles and then wait. Next I could put in plants which she gave me from an established aquarium, containing the correct bacteria. After all this and still more waiting, I could get a few fish. This process took a week or two.

I had forgotten about this procedure and I can’t imagine the fishmonger in the soi advised Chalerm to do it the slow safe way either. So Chalerm brought home fish and plants and everything at once, and disaster followed.

Reading about aquariums on the net I realise ours is overcrowded. But that is too late to do anything about, we will have to change the water frequently and hope for the best.

It is nice when the fish tank works. The fish swim happily around. Chalerm gives them food and counts them every morning. We had no more defections since the plastic top came on.

I went to the fishmonger in the soi and bought five zebra fish (10 baht per fish) and five tiger barbs (five baht per fish).

I felt some of my old interest in the aquarium hobby come back as I bought the fish and released them in the tank. I let the plastic bags with the new fish float in the tank for a while, then mixed water from the tank with the water in the bags to let them get used to their new environment. They were disoriented and stressed at first but calmed down quickly. Chalerm predicted their imminent death but I hope not.

The tiger barbs are fun to watch since they are so naughty.

3 fish are now alive. The two bottom-feeders and another one. I have spoken to my boyfriend about buying more and he thinks that is ok.

Today was Chalerm’s last day of exams this semester and he will have a couple of weeks off. He might go to “Anyburi” to spend the holiday with grandmother and the rest of the clan. I consider visiting him there but I should not stay too long. It gets boring for me in the village.

Chalerm says we can instruct the maid to feed the fish if we are away.

When I had an aquarium it was a large one - 200 litres. His is 10 litres maybe. The dirty little secret is that a big aquarium is easier to keep than a small one. This has to do with water quality, which is easier to get right in a larger tank.

I will buy some more fish and see how it goes.

Chalerm’s aquarium project is not going well. Of 23 fish he has bought, first 13 and then 10 more a week later, only four are still alive.

Some died because they jumped out of the water – which again has to do with the top cover that “someone” sat on and broke when setting up the aquarium. Others have gone belly-up without explanation.

Chalerm got a new top cover so at least we no longer find fish on the floor in the morning.

I bought my aquarium when I was Chalerm’s age. I did it the farang way. I went to the library and read all the books about aquariums that I could find. Chalerm is doing it the Thai way, which is do it first and find out how later.

I suspect the Bangkok tap water is to blame. I have offered Chalerm to fill the aquarium with bottled water but he didn’t want that.

The aquarium crisis is a sensitive issue in this house. I am not allowed to interfere or offer my overbearing farang advice. Chalerm had taken five of the biggest fish out of the tank one night and I woke him in the morning, pointing out that in the small bucket the fish were going to the surface, gasping as they do when they are short of oxygen. Chalerm said he did this deliberately to kill them. He looked angry when he said that so I believed him.

It turned out his anger was not a case of fish murder impulse, but annoyance that I poked my nose into the affair. Soon the fish were back in the tank. He had taken the big ones out because he feared they ate the smaller ones. He points to bite marks on fins as evidence.

The only fish to do well and prosper in the aquarium are two bottom-feeders. They are fish with a vacuum cleaner mouth and they eat the algae that grow on the inside of the glass.

I wonder if I should quietly buy some zebra fish. They are the easiest to keep. Scientists use them as the watery equivalent of lab rats. With an 80% casualty rate the first two weeks our aquarium is the survival of the fittest.