How did you get into fishkeeping?

Jhncf

Plecostomus
MFK Member
Jan 23, 2014
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Scotland
I was in a store with a friend in august last year and saw a goldfish bowl, decided to buy it and stuck 3 small goldfish in it the next day with straight tap water and no filter etc.. Did a bit of reading the week after and found out about cycling. Decided to give the goldfish away and 2 weeks later I bought a 55 gal with mbuna cichlids, many tanks and alot of reading/experience later here I am, less than a year later having just ordered my 260 gal! So what's your story :D?
 

ascarbo27

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 5, 2014
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tampa fl
mine started when i got my moms 55 gallon when she moved and didnt want it anymore, contained 2 6inch pacu 2 bala sharks angel fish and 2 jewels. after doing research i imediatly put them in a 90 then a few weeks later bought my 220 gallon and gave all the fish away except one jewel. my journey was a dead end but now i have a huge tank :drool:
 

tlindsey

Silver Tier VIP
MFK Member
Aug 6, 2011
23,253
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Ohio
Started when I was 7 years old, my mother brung home a bowl with a pair of guppies after awhile mom upgraded to larger aquariums been hooked ever since:)
 

fatdoggy89

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Apr 19, 2009
98
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New York
got a little betta from school when younger, threw him in a 10 gallon and went to the lfs to get him "friends". ended up putting 3 baby tinfoils in there with him (clearly had no idea what i was doing). but that led to me getting a larger tank of cl to house the tinfoils as they grew and i became more knowledgable...

now I got 3 tanks running...
 

xraycer

Arapaima
MFK Member
Sep 5, 2013
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Had a fascination for fish behind glass for as long as I can remembered........or it's just part of my Asian genetic makeup :)
 

PDRed302

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Aug 4, 2011
1,521
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Fort Worth Texas
Bought my wife (girlfriend at the time) a 10 gallon with some guppies and mollies as well as a pet store employee recommended pleco. I Played no part in tank husbandry or stocking until after we upgraded to a 46 bow front about a year later and I decided to throw an Oscar into her community :D . Now many upgrades and years later she gets to enjoy the tanks and do none of the work.
 

ss720

Gambusia
MFK Member
Nov 20, 2005
768
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Norway
It's customary to keep 2 goldfish in a bowl when celebrating the Iranian new year.

So when I was a kid, they bought just that, and slowly i was buying mollys and guppys in my parents salat bowls and beer glass. And they finaly just bought me a 100 liters tank, then from elementary school to high school every 2-3 years getting bigger and bigger tank,and selling off the smaller ones.
And I ended up with a 150 gallon tank with snakeheads at 17 years old. Then I moved out, and went 7-8 years without a tank.

Got a job at a LFS and now I got the 190 tank i was drooling over when I was kid with everything I wanted and more. Boss gave me the 190 and the FX6 as bonus, and he even managed to get me plants and fish and eheim's for less then what the supplier wants for them.
 

that_fish_Guy

Peacock Bass
MFK Member
Jul 29, 2013
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CA
Well to start things off to make the story I'm about to tell less confusing I've always lived with my grandparents. My grandpa has always kept fish his whole life and it has always fascinated me. He kept tropical fish and before I was around he kept oscars. Fish keeping got too hard for him as he got older so he sold all of his tanks when I was still really little. Except for a full ten gallon setup he left in storage. Mind you we needed the storage unit because we lived in a mobile home at the time and we were not as well off as we are now. Well several years later it was time to move into a house an actual house and my grandmother and I went to storage and started cleaning it out. We practically decided to throw everything out and and she began to throw this old box away. I stopped her to have a look inside and it was the 10 gallon and it had all equipment inside and the stand was just under the box.i was 11 almost 12 at the time and I was so excited. I took it home set it up and proceeded to ask to go to the fish store. I must have got five african lake Malawi cichlids not knowing what they were at the time hehe without knowing a thing including goldfish and as time went on they of course didn't make it and I did some research and began to learn more and more.I eventual came up on a 60 gallon for free no stand just the tank and I got my first oscar which really started it all for me. I have always been fascinated with fish weather it's fishing since I was old enough to walk or fish keeping since I was 11. I went from calling fish by color like that blue one or that yellow one to calling them by species name and I feel like a nerd for it lol. That 10 gallon started it all for me and now I have too many tanks to remember some of them I still don't have space for so they are not even put up and I even have a complete intex pool setup with several 55 gallon poly drums as filtration which used to hold my RTC in. Which led me to my next interest in the hobby MONSTER FISH not just little 13 inch cichlids but the monsters like RTC and TSN rtcxtsn and much more to come hopefully. Sorry if I was a little off topic but that is basically how I got into the hobby or shall I say plague lol


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Oddball

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Apr 27, 2005
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Bama
I grew up spending half my life at the family's summer place in Montauk, NY. The property had 7 ponds along the 1/4 mile down the driveway. Across the road from the end of the driveway was a 2 1/2 mile x 1 1/2 mile lake and a smaller lake at the far end. Make a right at the driveway and reach the Atlantic beaches in 3-4 minutes. A left out the driveway for a mile brings you past 5 more ponds before arriving at a protected bay off the Long Island sound. There's also a huge lobster hatchery at the east end of the bay. I used to explore and snorkel all of these places. My grandfather kept a couple of slate-bottom metal-frame tanks and a 5 gallon pickle jar in the garage so I could 'play' at watching the things I'd caught from the area.
The first fish I ever kept was a mud-nose dace in a gallon bottle. That bottle also held a tadpole (we called it a pollywog) that I watched develop into a leopard frog. The first SW set up was to watch a clutch of eggs I collected at the bay develop and hatch into baby spider crabs. The next set up held baby flounders and several inch-long sea robins. My grandfather never kept fish so his recommendation to me was to learn what the fish need by watching and studying the fish where they live. Been doing it ever since he told me that in 1964.
 
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