ok, no matter how good of a parent you are, accidents happen. i don't care what anyone says, you can be the best, most watchful, most disciplinary parent around, but you just never know. in that light, i like mfd's idea about surrounding it with a baby gate. however, that could get annoying and may take up too much space. all of our fish stuff is locked up underneath the tank in the stand, along with all of the wires and the power strip, so there is no way our daughter can get to it. the top of the tank is covered, and too tall for her to get to without having something to climb on. the couch is right next to the tank however, so she can get to the side of it. i'm not too too worried about it because she'd have to be standing on the back of the couch to really get into the tank, and i would definitely catch her before she got that far. so i guess just keep all of the dangerous stuff like chemicals and fish food out of reach or locked away, make sure there is no way for a small child to reach the top of the tank, and just teach, teach teach. fishies are for looking, not for touching! that's what we tell our toddler when she starts tapping on the side of the glass. she doesn't do it much anymore, so hopefully when there is actually fish in there, she's learned not to smack on the glass, or we may have some very disturbed fishies