FREE Lots of free tanks
- Thread starter Fiat4
- Start date
I think it is 5 posts on mfk. It needs to be on forums that count for posts, like cichlid subforum or polypterus subforum.
In Sept. 2019 I woke one Thursday morning with the worst acid reflux I had ever experienced. Nothing helped and the pain got worse. So I headed to the E.R. of our local hospital. About hours later i wwas in an ambulance on my war to a major regional hospital having been informed I had had a heart attack. The upshot was I needed triple bypass. The following Tuesday i had the surgery having spent the time in between being stabilized.
I had 20 assorted tanks running years round at the rime including severalrnreeding groups of pricey plecos. But I also had 8 more summer tanks set ip essentiall outside. These would need to bet taken down and the fish moved inside as cold weather was coming on. It was time to scramble. My brother got on the phone to one of the admin board member of my fish club looking for help. I gave my brother explicit feeding instructions and a feeding schedule to protect the fry while also minimizing feeding the rest to make his life easier.
My fish club folks jumped in to help. I was able to get people to do water changes etc. every 3 weeks or so. When I came home a week after the surgery I was still going to be useless for a number of weeks. At least I was soon able to take over feeding and even do some simple water changes where i could use pumps and refill with a hose connected to a sink faucet.. You will find they tell you not to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for some time. Like most of us in the hobby, I had some methods in place for doing things. I was able to explain these to the club members who came to help.
After a few weeks at home I was able to do a lot more than I had expected. I use a lot of pumps but I clean media out in a bucket of tank water. I use 2.5 gal buckets for this filled with about 2 gals. These get dumped into a toilet or utility sink. I had to siphon 1/2 of the bucket into another bucket to make sure I was not lifting more than a gal. The biggest surprise in all of it was I got sent to cardiac rehab PT. This ran for about 12 weeks. it was intended to get me back into shape. Everybody there was recovering from some form of heart surgery including one gent who had a transplant.
The point is I never had to get out of the hobby because of the bypass which was great because I did not want to w"retire" if I could avoid it. I was 71 at that time. I still have all 20 tanks today. I knew when Covid hit I would die if i got it., Aside from the bypass I have COPD from 45 years of smoking before I quit and I also have high blood pressure. We were lucky.smart and got a supply of N-95 masks early on. Between them and becoming a hermit for over a year until I and my brother, who shares the house with me, both got both shots of the Pfizer vaccine.
The point is, many Covid long haulers seem to improve gradually with time, You may still have some good fish keeping years ahead. Because of covid I stopped selling my pleco offspring, but they did not stop spawning. So at the age of 73 I am again going to set up six summer tanks so I can resume selling a lof of tank raised B&W plecos.
My tanks range from 5.5 gals to 150 gal. What makes it harder is the house has no basement and my 20 tanks are spread over two buildings and 4 rooms (the summer tanks make that 5 rooms). I am still managing to keep it all going despite my breast bone having not healed properly and my refusing the seriously invasive surgery they wanted to do to fix this. Doing it would have meant I had to leave the hobby. I was not ready for that quite yet.
I wish you good luck with your surgery and a good recovery. With any luck you may discover that down the road you can resume keeping fish on some level.
I had 20 assorted tanks running years round at the rime including severalrnreeding groups of pricey plecos. But I also had 8 more summer tanks set ip essentiall outside. These would need to bet taken down and the fish moved inside as cold weather was coming on. It was time to scramble. My brother got on the phone to one of the admin board member of my fish club looking for help. I gave my brother explicit feeding instructions and a feeding schedule to protect the fry while also minimizing feeding the rest to make his life easier.
My fish club folks jumped in to help. I was able to get people to do water changes etc. every 3 weeks or so. When I came home a week after the surgery I was still going to be useless for a number of weeks. At least I was soon able to take over feeding and even do some simple water changes where i could use pumps and refill with a hose connected to a sink faucet.. You will find they tell you not to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for some time. Like most of us in the hobby, I had some methods in place for doing things. I was able to explain these to the club members who came to help.
After a few weeks at home I was able to do a lot more than I had expected. I use a lot of pumps but I clean media out in a bucket of tank water. I use 2.5 gal buckets for this filled with about 2 gals. These get dumped into a toilet or utility sink. I had to siphon 1/2 of the bucket into another bucket to make sure I was not lifting more than a gal. The biggest surprise in all of it was I got sent to cardiac rehab PT. This ran for about 12 weeks. it was intended to get me back into shape. Everybody there was recovering from some form of heart surgery including one gent who had a transplant.
The point is I never had to get out of the hobby because of the bypass which was great because I did not want to w"retire" if I could avoid it. I was 71 at that time. I still have all 20 tanks today. I knew when Covid hit I would die if i got it., Aside from the bypass I have COPD from 45 years of smoking before I quit and I also have high blood pressure. We were lucky.smart and got a supply of N-95 masks early on. Between them and becoming a hermit for over a year until I and my brother, who shares the house with me, both got both shots of the Pfizer vaccine.
The point is, many Covid long haulers seem to improve gradually with time, You may still have some good fish keeping years ahead. Because of covid I stopped selling my pleco offspring, but they did not stop spawning. So at the age of 73 I am again going to set up six summer tanks so I can resume selling a lof of tank raised B&W plecos.
My tanks range from 5.5 gals to 150 gal. What makes it harder is the house has no basement and my 20 tanks are spread over two buildings and 4 rooms (the summer tanks make that 5 rooms). I am still managing to keep it all going despite my breast bone having not healed properly and my refusing the seriously invasive surgery they wanted to do to fix this. Doing it would have meant I had to leave the hobby. I was not ready for that quite yet.
I wish you good luck with your surgery and a good recovery. With any luck you may discover that down the road you can resume keeping fish on some level.
