I've been looking at a lot of the threads in this forum and it's almost all people asking for help. I'm hoping this thread will make the forum a little bit more personal. I was wondering how everyone got addicted to fishtanks. Its doesn't matter to me if you have a 250 gallon tank or a 1 gallon tank.

i think this is a GREAT thread, I was first introduced to fish keeping by my parents as a very young child, 8 years old or so, they wanted to teach me responsibility as well as give me a bit of creative freedom and something productive to spend my allowance on. LOL i started out with a ten gallon tank on my dresser which i had a rainbow shark, a male beta, and several small tetra. This was the beginning of the addiction, as i got older into my teen years I started saving my money to buy a 55 gallon tank so that i could have something a bit bigger to work with, i bought the tank and set it up and had all tetras and plants in it until those "difficult" teen years started. it happens, i had taken the tank down and sold it so i could have extra money to put towards a car. it wasn't until about 9 years ago or so that i got back into fish keeping and have been keeping cichlids as well as community fish ever since, i now have a 125 gal, and a 55 gal tank. i am actually going to be setting up a tank in the upstairs apt for my neighbors and am thinking about giving them my cichlids at a fair price and switching my tank over to discus or salt water. just depends on the situation and what decision i finally come down too.

*Stands up* "My name is Brandon and I am an aquarium addict!"

it is nice to be able to help advise someone who isn't sure of something. I would rather someone ask an inane sounding question if they do not know or are unsure to make sure they are doing the right thing for their fish. I grew up with a small 5 gall fish tank with goldfish my mom ran for me and my brothers. when i hit my teen years with my saved allowance and got myself a 10 gallon. went to the pet store for some fish and saw for the first time some angel's. and the rest is as they say history. my new 55gal is the first tank in many years that hasn't been an angel tank. I realized i wanted more than the angel's and my luck with angels i can not have anything in the tank with them. for a few years i could not even have a pleco survive because 1 angel was so aggressive to any other fish.

Great Question! I became interested in FW aquariums when I lived in upstate NY near a stream. My stepmother got her PhD in marine biology and did her thesis on shrimp behavior, and since we had moved far from the ocean she started doing research on crayfish behavior. Because she had 9 aquariums with crayfish, I wanted to have an aquarium as well. Actually I got 2. One 30 gallon in my room with crayfish, minnows, and darters from our stream, and one on the balcony with a blue gill pond fish. Blue gill's are so beautiful in a fishtank, like mother of pearl. They're the kind of fish people catch and throw back when they're trying to catch bass. This aquarium on the balcony was an old glass battery case from something, and both tanks had a plant I called elodea, though I think it was anacharis, that I got from ponds in the area. I used a filter in my room aquarium that used an old Silent Giant air pump and an in-the-tank filter using only an air stone to create flow. I had stream crayfish which dig burrows under flat rocks and I would place a flat rock on the sand/gravel in the front corner of the tank. I would put three smaller round stones under the rock so that when the crayfish dug under the rock it wouldn't fall down, and then I could see into the burrow. I liked to watch them push sand out of their burrows and watch them molt. When they got too big I put them back in the stream. I didn't have an aquarium until I had my son 9 years ago, and we bought a 10 gallon tank and got gravel from the beach (I washed it a lot). I had dogos, darter like fish, and a bunch of others and used a Tetra-tech hang off filter for this. As the years went by I got interested in gars, an ancient fish that looks like an alligator with fins, and I have them in a 100 gallon tank with 2 huge power heads running the UG filter, and two large canister filters. I also have a mating pair of tilapia in each of two other tanks and I love to watch them dig holes in the gravel and do their mating dance. So far I've only seen the babies get to the stage where the father (I think) holds the babies in his mouth. Unfortunately, they eat their young before they get a chance to swim on their own, but one day I'll do it right! I want to get a 500 gallon when my gars get bigger, full of plants and wood, and I hope to buy a house by then. I live in LA now and I hate most of the people here. I hope to move back east to be closer to my parents in the next couple of years.

Dnimidej. I sent you a messege. Couldn't access your profile. If you can't find my messege send me a personal messege or a way to contact you if you want. Peter