Flash Back!!

[M|L]

I just rediscovered my old photo albums and saw all the "mini-monsters" that I kept back in the days of pfish (2004 mostly), so I thought I'd share:

My first ever datnoid from Wes (Rare Fish):

My first silver tiger:

My first thin bar:

I've also kept Indos and New Guineas but I don't have any photo records...

My first tigrinus (also from Wes):

My JAU cat:

My spotted shovelnose (very rare: Pseudoplatystoma corruscans) the main difference I've observed is the stubbiness of the cadual/tail fin on this species versus P. fasciatum and P. tigrinum:

This is P. corruscans:

This is P. tigrinum (notice how much longer the tail fin is):

My bacu:

My juruense (all black):

Very cool fish (forgot the name):

We all know no tank is complete without a bichir:

Impressive top water predator - african pike (I find this fish to be much more attractive than the african tiger fish which I got later on):

I had a school of 8 or so of these amazing barbs:

This was just within the summer of 2004 (I was 15 years old). I also kept during the time, mbu puffers, florida gars, jardini arowana, tire track eel, motoro rays, giant bumble bee cat, several cichlids, clown knife, black arowana and I'm sure I left some out.

 

[south coast nelly]

great selection

 

[unknownuza13]

Wow that first dat Very very nice

 

[santoury]

Awesome!
Those barbs may be dauphani.

The unknown fish is a Distichodus lussosso

 

[DiXoN]

Wow that first dat Very very nice

ML spec possibly. LOL

very nice collection i think i followed the buying of all these fish.

 

[M|L]

I've come to keep many wide bars (much thanks to Li, forum members, and forum vendors) but only a few have come close to the quality of my first. The bars were not "perfect" but the color was unmatched, the bars were solid black and never faded. It was hand fed, and very tame.

 

[davo]

Some great pics, you've had a great collection. The first dat looks great, fantastic colour.

I'm sure it's hard to tell which of the different species the tiger shovelnoses they could currently be as currently described, and I imagine tail shape probably wouldn't help too much in correctly ID'ing a species. It's really unknown as to how many of which species have been imported and due to most of them being young, it's almost impossible to ID them at all.

 

[cichlid savage]

Nice collection. Do you still have any of these?

 

[M|L]

I've kept many (maybe 8 or so!!) tiger shovelnose and as far as I know there are 3 distinct species and only one (P. tigrinum) is commonly available.

The spotted shovelnose (P. corruscans) was definitely different even at that size. Unfortunately, one of my fish ate the thing 2 days later!! lol So I was unable to have anymore updates. I was one of the few that bought the fish from WaterLife, and I've never heard from any other buyers of that fish since. As far as I know, it was the only shipment here of that species ever.

I sold everything that same year to Jon Rare (and some others, I don't remember), and in 2005 I kept a small Peruvian rhomb... then I switched to mub puffers, widebar datnoids, african tigers, FRTs, clown loaches, Lates sp., perches, and a whole bunch of others. I will see if I can dig up any more pictures of the collection I had following this one.

 

[Gr8KarmaSF]

Gr8 thread....at 15 and already a true monsterfishkeeper!

Looking forward to more pics from the past!!!