Years ago, my girlfriend (now my wife) bought a small five-gallon aquarium… and promptly set it up on the floor of her apartment.
“Why did you put it on the floor?” I asked.
“So I can see the [Fishes] properly,” she smiled.
Never did I understand how she kept her “floorquarium” going, until the day we flew to Vietnam to visit her hometown. Searching for interesting Fishes in homes, markets, ponds, and streams, I realized that most Vietnamese people don’t keep aquaria – they prefer Zen-like, planted ponds.
Thus, the mystery of the “floorquarium” was finally solved. In the eyes of my wife, it was a pond!
VIEW FROM THE TOP
Though the majority of ornamental Fishes end up in aquaria, Koi, Goldfish, and a few of our other finned friends have been selectively bred to look striking from above. For generations, these Fishes have been kept and bred in ponds.
Not everyone has the space to keep Goldfish and Koi though, especially since Koi can grow three feet long. For pond-lovers with limited space and a modest budget, there are pond pots – vessels made of plastic, concrete, or ceramics that can house not just Fishes, but both aquatic and terrestrial plants as well. These are crazy popular in Vietnam, a country with a historical affinity to combined gardening and fishkeeping.
Long known to sustainable agricultural enthusiasts, Vietnam’s traditional VAC farming system is a traditional food production system that combines livestock farming, aquaculture, and horticulture. The initials VAC (Vườn Ao Chuồng) can be translated as garden, pond, and livestock pen.
For centuries, Vietnamese (especially those living near Vietnam’s most fertile regions – the Red River and Mekong Deltas) have cultivated Carp and Catfish in ponds. In the same plot, they cultivate fruits and vegetables while keeping Pigs and Chickens.
A portion of the fruits and vegetables are used to feed the Pigs and Chickens. Their poop is then gathered and chucked into the pond, where the Fishes are fattened (just don’t think too hard about what they eat). Though this idea might be a bit hard to swallow for some, this closed-loop system is an amazingly efficient way to produce food.
Perhaps the Vietnamese people’s love for ponds stems from this age-old tradition.
INSPIRED BY TRADITION
In Vietnam, we visited numerous homes and establishments where pond pots took pride of place. My wife’s family also has a pretty cool pond pot at home. With miniature limestone cliffs coated with moss, it looks a bit like Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay or our very own El Nido.
moss, ferns, and bonsai ficus plants. Tiny ceramic bridges, temples, and pagodas add a touch of tranquility, while Guppies and Swordtails add color and motion. (Gregg Yan)
It even has nifty ceramic bridges and tiny pagodas, like a mountain diorama come to life. Pond pots liven homes while helping regulate temperature (notice how it always seems a bit cooler near a pond). Being half-terrestrial and half-aquatic, pond pots deftly combine gardening, fishkeeping, and diorama building into a single hobby.
You can adorn your pond pot with tiny glazed figures of people and animals, plus structures like houses, temples and pagodas. You’re limited only by your creativity when making miniature scenes. There are even little boats (complete with ceramic fishermen) that can float across your pond.
Of course, what brings ponds to life are the animals – in my wife’s family’s case, a colorful, fluttering assortment of livebearers like Guppies, Platies, Mollies, and Swordtails.
(Gregg Yan)
FLORA AND FAUNA FOR POND POTS
In Vietnam, pot ponds usually brim with livebearers, which makes perfect sense. They’re inexpensive at only around PHP 10 each, hardy as hell, eat anything (algae, diatoms, bacteria, and most especially the Kiti-kiti or Mosquito larvae bound to settle in the pot), and multiply swiftly to keep Fish populations relatively self-sustaining.
For flora, you’ll have thousands of options. Terrestrial plants range from delicate forest orchids and bromeliads to hardy and fast-growing vines like golden pothos. Water plants include the usual aquatic plants like bacopa, cabomba and vallisneria, plus floaters like water lettuce and duckweed, which you can fully appreciate from above. Larger, deeper pond pots that can accommodate a muddy substrate can include a plant special to Vietnamese – the lotus.
“The lotus is Vietnam’s de-facto national flower. It symbolizes purity, resilience and the calm and noble spirit of our people,” explains my wife Ngoc. “We have a saying in Vietnam: The lotus flower lives in muck – but it never ever reeks of it.”
Though not yet as popular in the Philippines and other countries, the creative possibilities offered by pot ponds are endless. I first likened them to a “poor man’s Koi pond” but found that their allure is altogether different and far more complex, requiring an understanding of both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
Inspired, I built a small pot pond out of an unused plastic Megabox back in Manila.
That old “Floorquarium” really made me realize how there’s so much more to fishkeeping than viewing Fishes eye-to-eye. Truly, the view from the top is every bit as interesting.
Vietnam’s de-facto national flower and is said to symbolize the beauty and noble spirit of the Vietnamese people. Most pond pots in Vietnam have at least one lotus. (Gregg Yan)
