Garden Ponds are a great way to enjoy your California backyard

Indoor Aquaria The indoor aquarium is rapidly coming to the fore for its decorative value and there can be little doubt that a well set up aquarium is a delight. On the other hand, to see a poor goldfish die a lingering death in the confines of a jam jar is an abomination. Yet it would not be an exaggeration to say that, literally, hundreds of thousands of goldfish die in this manner annually.

The aquarium need not be particularly large, but it is important that the water is oxygenated and that, even then, there is not more than an inch of fish to the gallon of water. The ideal aquarium should be as close to Nature as possible, not only from the fish's point of view, but from the artistic aspect, also.

The best size for the indoor tank is two feet long, a foot wide and a foot deep. This will accommodate a good variety of aquatic plants, and, as the fishes will have a reasonable area in which to swim, they will both look and thrive better. Nevertheless, it is possible to convert a smaller tank, or even bowl, into an efficient aquarium ; in fact I have seen aquaria of less than half the size given that have excelled many of the larger kinds. The secret in maintaining the very small types is to have a few small fishes only, and it cannot be doubted that a healthy ' tiddler ' is streets ahead of the large dolorous kind that are always ailing.

Still, whether the aquarium is just a bowl- this is the least suitable, by the way-or an all-glass rectangular tank or one of the elaborate affairs so popular now with glittering metal frames and a clock set in the cover, the method of ' setting up ' is the same. I will give details, then, of the procedure of setting up the ideal tank referred to earlier in this chapter.

The tank itself should be made of quarter- inch plate glass set in a frame of welded angle steel ; the bottom should consist of fairly thick slate. The price of such an aquarium may be anything from twenty shillings to twice that amount, according to quality.

To set up this aquarium a quantity of sand, sufficient to layer the bottom an inch and a half, should be procured and well washed in a bucket of water until the water is not clouded when the sand is stirred. Water plants, although they obtain most of their nourishment from dissolved matter in the water, will root and grow better in loam. If loam alone layered the bottom of the tank the water would be foul looking and in any case the bright, clear look that sand gives would be lacking.