Thousands of students walk past the aquarium by Marston Science Library’s third-floor elevators every week. Some worn-out studiers pause to appreciate the creatures’ calming presence before getting to work, but few know the fishes’ stories or who ensures the ecosystem runs swimmingly.
Rainbow fish, tiger barbs, corydoras and a small army of snails call the 150-gallon Marston tank home. It’s one of three on campus installed and maintained entirely by UF students in the Florida Aquaculture and Aquarium Club. Every two weeks, members of the club maintain the tanks, sometimes partnering with community service organizations to get more students involved.
At one hands-on cleaning demonstration Feb. 24, some members siphoned about a quarter of the tank’s water into a nearby sink, while others used toothbrushes to scrub excess algae off of the water filter and aquatic plants. One volunteer used a magnet to drag a paper towel along the tank’s glass, wiping away grime.
As the tank was refilled with new tap water, Ariella Jacobson, a 20-year-old UF natural resource conservation junior and president of FAAC, rummaged through a plastic bin of aquarium maintenance supplies. She fished out a garnet-and-white bottle labeled “Prime” and held it up in the air.
“This is the most important thing in this whole box,” she said. Jacobson explained Prime is a water conditioner, which makes tap water habitable for the fish by neutralizing chemicals like chlorine and killing potential parasites.
“Fish are not just picky about the water,” she said. “They die if there’s one thing wrong with it.”
Jacobson knew nothing about fishkeeping before joining FAAC. She was primarily interested in working with turtles and seals for her career, but “fell in love with fish” once she learned how to care for them.
“They’re very diverse,” she said. “We’re getting up to 36,000 described fish species — it’s more than any other vertebrate in the world… You can learn a lot about other vertebrates by studying fish.”
Jacobson used to own four goldfish and four cherry barbs (a vibrant red, minnow-like fish), but she realized she didn’t have enough room for them in her own apartment. Now, they live in the 75-gallon Health Science Center Library tank.
“I go and visit them, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I remember you! Spartacus, my good friend!’” she said.
Servicing the tank takes about an hour, and supplies are bought with FAAC’s club funds. Jacobson estimates supply costs to be $200 to $250 a year, which is mostly covered by a pool of funding from UF Student Government. Paperwork issues have held up student government funds for the past two semesters, she said, so FAAC has recently relied more on fundraisers to pay for supplies.
The club’s most popular fundraiser is the once-a-semester “jarquarium” sale. Jarquariums are repurposed glass jars containing plants, substrate and the occasional snail, offering adopters a simple way to appreciate an underwater ecosystem within their own home.
Aspiring fish keepers should be mindful of the minimum space requirement for their aquatic friends, said Hannah Hellein, a 20-year-old marine sciences junior and FAAC’s secretary. Proper aquariums are often too bulky for student housing, even for seemingly small fish.
“I have pea puffers, which are the size of your fingernail,” she said. “You’d think, ‘No, they don’t need a lot of room.’ One pea puffer needs five gallons.”
Among the Marston tank’s tenants, only one of the scaled residents has an official name: My Guy.
According to the story behind the name, a student came up to the aquarium to take a video on his phone a few years ago.
“Ayo, this is my guy,” the student allegedly said while filming, referring to an angelfish who had a particular habit of following spectators around from behind the glass. “He comes up to me every time I come over here.”
And so, the fish was dubbed My Guy.
My Guy, a 6-year-old freshwater angelfish, loves the camera and knows his angles. Yellow-crested with stylish black spots, he invariably shows up in social media posts of the aquarium.
“He’s kind of a survivor,” Chloe Lynn said, her goldfish earrings catching the light. The 20-year-old UF biology junior is FAAC’s vice president. She helps maintain the Marston aquarium in addition to tanks at the Health Science Center Library and Florida Sea Grant, a UF-based coastal conservation program.
Out of several angelfish the FAAC ordered for the Marston tank, only My Guy arrived alive — and with a fighting spirit to prove it.
“See how fat he is?” Lynn said during the volunteer cleaning session, pointing at My Guy. “It’s because he scares away all the other fish to get his food,” adding that he likely lost one of his bottom fins battling another fish for dominance.
“He’s kind of an a**hole, honestly,” Lynn said, shaking her head.
In addition to taking care of the fish, FAAC decorates the tank throughout the year according to various holidays. Members drew on paper hearts that adorned the tank’s exterior for Valentine’s Day. Upcoming ideas include four-leaf clovers for St. Patrick’s Day and a fish-safe pumpkin placed inside the tank for Halloween.
FAAC installed the Health Science Center Library’s aquarium in 2019 and Marston’s in 2021. The club was originally founded to install an aquarium at the Reitz Union Bookstore before drafting proposals for tanks at other locations. However, the bookstore tank was never filled with fish.
“Over the years, somehow we lost hold of it,” said Lynn, the club’s vice president. “It’s not ours anymore.” Lynn believes the tank will be destroyed soon as part of a rehaul to the bookstore.
“I would love to get control of it again,” she said. “It would be awesome.”
Contact Pristine Thai at pthai@alligator.org. Follow her on X @pristinethai.
Pristine Thai is a university general assignment reporter and a third-year political science and journalism major. Her free time is spent attending classical music concerts or petting cats.
