This Should be Brief but Interesting

I hadn't expected to hear from my Tasmanian correspondent again before Christmas.  The last time I had seen her she had been attempting to "prepare" her Christmas turkey and the turkey looked like it was winning.  In fact a more accurate statement might be "I hadn't expected to hear from my Tasmanian correspondent again."  So my surprise when her face, admittedly adorned with scratches and sticking plaster, popped up on my screen was so complete that I almost choked on my ball gag.

"Is this a good time?" she asked.  I hastily disentangled myself from my, ahem, Christmas decorations and indicated that I would be with her as soon as I could possibly could.  After a brief but expensive interlude I invited her to give me the latest news from points south.

"I'm getting into aquaponics," she announced.

"Aquaponics?  Isn't that something to do with fish?" I asked while I googled frantically.

It is indeed.  Aquaponics, apparently involves keeping a bunch of fish in one tub and a bunch of plants in the other.  The plants are watered and fed by pumping the water from the fish tank into the plant tank.  Lest the fish feel a little dehydrated the water is then pumped back again before they start gasping for breath.  Essentially you create a fish/plants feedback loop so that both plants and fish can flourish without too much effort on your part.  Something that takes even less effort is not doing it at all.

While I'm fully supportive of my correspondents efforts to diversify her skill set there were a couple of points which, for the benefit of the fish, I thought needed raising.

"You kill fish," I said. "Your nickname is the mad goldfish butcher of old Hobart town.  What maniac would entrust you with the lives of fish?"

As it turns out the sort of maniac who would take a turtle to Canberra in a bucket.  He is moving to that ill omened city and while his turtle is making the journey with him his aquaponics set apparently required more buckets than he was prepared to purchase.  Thus he has granted the whole set up (two bathtubs, some plants, some piping and a bunch of very doomed fish) to my correspondent to do with as she wishes.  She in turn has promised to do her best to keep the fish alive or at least not actively kill them.  I wonder if she included her dogs in that promise.

The dogs, my correspondent agreed, would be difficult.  Fortunately the one big enough to get into the bathtub with the fish is dopey and amiable whereas the one that would cheerfully go on a piscine killing spree tomorrow is too small to get in.  This at least is my correspondents fond hope.  I could see half a dozen ways that could go horribly wrong and that's even before you factor in her children who combine an artless, childish curiosity with a streak of cold blooded ruthlessness that can give me the creeps even at several hundred kilometres distance.

Still the set up, the plants, the fish and most importantly, the water have all arrived and been installed in various unoccupied parts of my correspondents back yard.  The plants are apparently succulents.  Succulents can best be described as lazy cacti.  They don't have spikes and they don't grow in deserts and once the fish are all dead they won't be growing in my correspondents back yard either.  Speaking of dead fish the below photo was taken just a few hours after everything was installed and I think can be considered the writing on the wall.

Yep, definitely doomed.

In the meantime my correspondent is currently enjoying that brief period between fish acquisition and fish death.  In the longer term the most that can be hoped for is that the whole setup provides the basis for a particularly gruesome science project at school and a couple of cheap meals for the dogs.