New to the MFK Community

shailadrh

Feeder Fish
Oct 9, 2014
3
3
0
Northern Utah
Hello!

I'm so excited to see a forum that has CURRENT posts. NO ONE I know, except my husband, likes fish, aquariums or has an appreciation for how amazing it is to have giant fish in giant tanks. I'm a 25 year old athletic female, with intermediate monster fish experience and think I look like a normal young woman. When I get off on tangents to people I work with or friends out about how excited I am about my tanks or dropping in live crabs for my puffers, etc. I get looked at like I should be living in a dark basement. That being said, I suspect this forum will be a lot of fun.

My monster fish past includes bichirs, puffers, and oscars. And I am adamant about thorough research before buying and ongoing studying while I have my fish.

Bichirs - 2 juvenile Senegals I raised from 3" to 10" before selling, an 8" Sengal into a 11" Senegal and a 7" into a 10" Ornate. I LOVED these guys and was so sad to see them go, but my puffers are my priority.

Puffers - These are my specialty. I currently have a Dwarf and 2 Green Spotted Puffers (not monster fish, but I'm very proud that my 2 Walmart puffers are currently 3" and very healthy, I've NEVER seen 3" fat GSPs, so I'm feeling confident that they will reach the full potential of 6" each). I also had Fahaka. He was my first large puffer and died tragically the SAME day I sold my bichirs to put him in the big tank. He was first in a 50 gal rimless cube tank with about 2" of space from the water to the top and.....jumped out. We'd had him for 7 months and restored him back to health after his previous owners abused him for the duration they had him - 6 months. He'd had severe internal parasites and looked like the Holocaust victim of fish. He was so beautiful with bold rd stripes developing the healthier he got and we feel so dumb for not having a top on his tank. It was my saddest puffer lesson to learn. My puffers will always have a tank in my home until they are old and die naturally.

Lastly, Oscars - My oscars were so much fun at first, but they grow up to be dumb fish in my opinion. I had 2 from 2" and raised them up to 9" before getting rid of them. My puffers have 1,000x the personality, so I got rid of them with the bichirs.

I'm currently venturing into the MBU world. This is my ultimate fish.

We just bought a baby MBU (5"-7", I pick him up tomorrow to know the exact size) and will have him in a 90 gal, fully hooded tank with a juvenile pike cichlid tank mate. We are planning to build a 9' W x 4' D x 3' H tank in our home to give him a good life and I hope he stays passive enough to have lifelong tank mates.

Follow me on Instagram - username shailadrh

Shaila
 

jclyde13

Blue Tier VIP
MFK Member
Jun 18, 2009
4,611
177
371
28
Louisville, KY
Such a great intro post, and 0 replies. Sad.

Anyway, it sounds like you've owned a lot of nice fish. And I can definitely relate on some level to the feelings toward oscars (though I do love oscars on their own merits). It's hard to go from having such inquisitive, personable fish like puffers, to more average fish. I went through that with my tire track eel. When he died, I sort of lost interest in fish for nearly a year, because I didn't want to just replace him, but I just wasn't as impressed with other fish for a while, after losing him.

Looking forward to seeing pics of that monster Mbu tank, in the future. That's going to be awesome, though I do often hear about aggression issues with Mbus, so I don't know about that.

Oh, and welcome to the forum! :D
 
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