I live in a densely populated student neighborhood characterized by a lot of moving in and moving out, and when either thing happens, stuff gets discarded -- typically on the area between the sidewalk and the street -- and the rule is that it's free for the taking. I'm not much of a green thumb (quite the opposite!), but I have occasionally felt sorry enough for discarded houseplants to take them home. Sometimes they do well, other times not.

But by pure accident, I stumbled upon a winning formula which has now dramatically resurrected three near-dead houseplants which were so far gone I almost felt like a bag person for bothering to pick them up and carry them home.

The secret? Aquarium water! My cichlid tank contains two Jack Dempseys and one Flowerhorn Trimac, and they generate so much waste that their water has to be changed to prevent the fish diseases which an excess of nitrogen invites. I had been simply siphoning this water into ten gallon plastic storage bins and out of laziness, just leaving it out on the deck till I needed the bin for the next water change, and as it was right by the dying throwaway plants, I thought, why bother with the sink or the hose? So I just started dunking each entire flower pot into the bins and let them soak for a while in the dirty fish water.

I swear to God, these plants turned around so fast that you'd have thought I was a professional horticulturalist. And I have no idea what I'm doing.

I guess it should come as no surprise that the aquarium water is an excellent form of fertilizer for houseplants, but really, this stuff produced miraculous results, and it comes custom premixed! From a professional who knows:

People always notice how healthy, green and shiny my plants are. While partly it's a firm knowledge of how to raise houseplants, my main secret is the fish water. That dirty, icky, smelly water is pure nutrient nirvana for your flora - both inside the house and in the garden.

I wish I'd thought to take before and after pictures of all the plants, but I did find one of them in a picture taken shortly after I found it (slightly more than a month ago):

That had been lying on its side in a pile of discarded clothes and empty paint cans. Mind you, I know nothing about plants, and I didn't know what it was. Had I known, I probably would have thought twice, for it is a "Croton." The name sounds like a Science Fiction title and it is not supposed to be an easy plant to care for:

Contrary to its' hardy looks, Croton is a fussy plant that requires constant care.

Before bringing home a Croton from the garden store, you need to consider the needs that this plant requires.

I always thought you had to have a magical "green thumb" to make plants thrive and I always assumed I didn't. Was I inadvertently succumbing to "magical thinking"? Some say the phenomenon ("psychotronics") is real, and some say it isn't.

While it is possible that my thumb has suddenly turned invisibly green, the "magical" results I've seen from dirty aquarium water make me strongly suspect that the process has less to do with the imaginary thumb colors as with simply figuring out what the plants need and giving it to them.