Tucked away underneath the theater near the lost and found and across the hall from the chemistry classroom is one of the hidden gems of the Lick-Wilmerding campus: the school’s resident fishtank. While sometimes ignored by members of the Lick community, the tank and its owner have a history that is well worth learning about.
Before coming to Lick in the summer of 2012, Brooks worked in the pet industry. He owned two separate pet stores, one in Alameda and one in Oakland. He worked with birds, reptiles, and fish, working long and strenuous hours to keep his animals healthy and his equipment well-maintained. “Running a pet store really is a labor of love because the animals never stop no matter what day of the year it is, Christmas day, New Years…” Brooks explains.
“It took a tremendous amount of time. I spent a lot of 12-14 hour days, in the store from seven in the morning to nine at night.” The work that came with owning the stores ranged from caring for the animals’ daily needs, to breeding the animals and buying animals from wholesalers. Brooks describes breeding the animals as one of the most interesting and rewarding parts of the job. “I knew where the animals came from, I knew that they were high-quality, and I knew I wasn’t taking from the environment. I could really put my stamp of approval on the animals… there’s a big sense of pride that comes from that.”
Brooks is extremely experienced with owning pets after working in the trade for so many years, and has ended up learning to care for almost every kind of animal, including dogs and cats, parrots, many kinds of fish, and even a dwarf speckled cayman. Brooks explained that the cayman was one of the most interesting pets he ever owned. “It was given to me when it was 3 feet long. I actually got him to take fish from my hand and got him tame enough to be able to pick him up and take him outside.”
Some of the aspects of the pet trade were frustrating for Brooks included dealing with many people who were unprepared for the responsibility and time that went into owning the animals. “You get a lot of people in the pet trade that do a walk-in impulse buy,” he explains. “ They really don’t understand overall what it’s going to take. I’m a firm believer that if you buy an animal you should be prepared to give it a forever home, and some of these animals can live longer than people do, so it’s a big commitment.”
The problem of animal abuse is extremely prevalent throughout our country, and Brooks recalled many incidents of inexperienced pet owners who were unable to deal with the long-term commitment that came from owning the animals he sold, especially the commitment of owning birds. “I can’t tell you how many people would buy a bird, then come back a year to a year and a half later and were just unable to deal with their adult animal.”
The reasons for returning these pets are endless and sometimes can be very trivial. When cellphones were first released, many parrot owners couldn’t cope with their pets imitating the ringtones. On top of this, many people who bought fish were incapable of keeping them alive for any length of time, or would simply forget about the fish and leave them to die.
Gillian Ashenfelter, who teaches Lick- Wilmerding’s Marine Ecology course, discovered that Brooks was experienced with fish shortly after he arrived at Lick. Brooks had just left his pet store and was excited to set-up the fishtank.
Brooks took one of his tanks out of storage. He filled it with a mix of South American and African Cichlids, an aggressive but hearty breed of fish that are extremely popular.
One day Brooks arrived at work to find post-it notes from students alerting Brooks to the bodies of fish lying lifeless in the tank. The trouble in the fishtank, Brooks explained, was caused by one fish, a South American Red Devil fish. “The fish get really big and territorial. There comes a point where there will be an alpha fish in the tank, no matter what I do. I wasn’t around 24 hours a day to watch them; one male fish was so fed up it would rather beat up the other fish than share a tank with them. Fish died in fish battles, and the Red Devil and the catfish were the only ones left standing. I knew that I would never put another fish in there with that alpha, so I took [the Red Devil] and put him in a 50 gallon tank at home.”
The fish that are currently in the tank are the spawn of the previous fish, a triple crossbreed that Brooks said he has never seen before. After culling off the more aggressive ones and leaving them at home, Brooks put about a dozen in the school’s tank.
Brooks suggests there might be some interesting new things coming to the tank. Brooks intends to diversify the tank in the near future, including adding more colorful fish that are more visually appealing.
“The red devil incident showed me that students really do observe and learn from having the fish tank. I really didn’t notice that the kids were paying that much attention,” he said. “ That’s really cool, it makes me feel good, like I’m passing on some knowledge.”
