Aquariums don't have to be a lot of work. Get them to set up a 20 gallon with live plants and a few small fish, and start it off with established filter media instead of a fresh cycle, and they'll have a tank that only really needs a fresh bucketful of water every two weeks, and feeding every day or every other day (a phone reminder can keep track of that for them, if they're forgetful). You could even have them put their lights on a timer so they wouldn't have to scrape algae either.
Hello; I use to tell folks that tanks are not much work as well. I played down the maintenance and found that most did not want to do the minimum level.
One fellow never changed the water of his 55 gallon tank, just topped it off. After the two Oscars died (two Oscars in a 55-I understand and another reason to avoid encouraging others.) and the tank sat empty for a few years he was considering having more fish. He had left the gravel and detritus in place and simply allowed the water to evaporate. He wanted to know if he could just add some water (not clean anything) and then add fish. I laid on heavy about how much work he had to do to clean the tank and gravel to set up for fish.
Perhaps the thing that most put me off from encouraging others happened in a school where I taught science. A little background. I taught Biology at the high school level and general science at the middle school level. At different times of course.
One thing I use to do was to set up a breeding trap and induce zebra dainoes to spawn. I would then have students observe the development of the eggs and early fry under scopes using dished slides. This worked out well as the fry could be observed and placed back into the grow out tank without harm.
I had a breeding pair of albino kribensis and one term did set up a breeding tank at a middle school. The spawning activity went well. (NOTE- could not place the eggs or fry on slides as they are larger and I did not wish to disturb the parents.) Students got to observe a different type of spawning and level of parental care. That was good.
After several weeks the fry were getting large enough to do something with. Some students asked if they could have some. I prepared a handout with instructions for care and requirements for a tank. I asked them to get the OK from a parent. I started giving the juvenile fish to what I thought were interested students and was somewhat pleased with the outcome of the whole activity. The pleasure did not last
Leaving school one afternoon I stopped by the water fountain near my classroom. There in the tub of the fountain at the strainer were several of the fry. (dead of course.) The students had just dumped them as soon as they left the classroom. More than one student by my count. I guess some students did right but that ended my fish giveaways.
I can add some more examples from over 50 years of being in the hobby if needed. At any rate I stopped encouraging folks to take up the hobby.
