Hey y'all. I signed up for this site sometime last year. I think it took like 10 months or something for the email to finally come in for my account approval. Weird.
I've been keeping fish for about thirty years, since I was a wee one. I was an assistant manager at a pet shop when I was a teenager, and worked with a girl there that would become my wife. So as you can imagine, wife and kids are also very much into my critters.
I loved fish for so many years. All kinds of fish. Not so much into goldfish or tropical community fish. But cichlids, oddballs, north american natives, etc. were all cool.
I made the mistake a number of years ago of turning my hobby into side $$. I dedicated all of my tanks to breeding angelfish for the pet trade. The $$ coming in regularly was pretty good at first glance but the hourly wage breakdown was not so encouraging. I wasn't so into angelfish, just looking at something that has a consistent high demand that most people are skittish about breeding regularly. Angelfish have an undeserved reputation for being tough to breed successfully (they lay eggs fine, but the eggs fungus easily without the right handling).
Well all that time focusing on one hum-drum species sort of killed the hobby for me. I moved back to Raleigh a few years ago and didn't break out a tank from storage until this year. The 55 gallon sat next to my desk with nothing but a daphnia culture in it for months. Today I took my kids to the LFS, led them to the cichlid section, and their favorite fish (without any prompting from me) was the much maligned Oscar. I got two of those, plus a Polypterus senegalis that the kids found (good eye!) They wanted more but I explained that these three fish would grow big enough over the next year or two to demand something bigger than the 55 gallon tank so it should be an interesting test of their patience to watch this nearly empty tank fill up with only three fish.
When the kids are grown and I get their play room (biggest room in the house, in the basement right on the slab) that's when I get to build my dream tank. That's a number of years away. For now I'll be content with lowly pet shop sourced tanks and species that can be contained in something "only" 200 gallons or so. I'll live vicariously through some of the other maniacs here until then.
I've been keeping fish for about thirty years, since I was a wee one. I was an assistant manager at a pet shop when I was a teenager, and worked with a girl there that would become my wife. So as you can imagine, wife and kids are also very much into my critters.
I loved fish for so many years. All kinds of fish. Not so much into goldfish or tropical community fish. But cichlids, oddballs, north american natives, etc. were all cool.
I made the mistake a number of years ago of turning my hobby into side $$. I dedicated all of my tanks to breeding angelfish for the pet trade. The $$ coming in regularly was pretty good at first glance but the hourly wage breakdown was not so encouraging. I wasn't so into angelfish, just looking at something that has a consistent high demand that most people are skittish about breeding regularly. Angelfish have an undeserved reputation for being tough to breed successfully (they lay eggs fine, but the eggs fungus easily without the right handling).
Well all that time focusing on one hum-drum species sort of killed the hobby for me. I moved back to Raleigh a few years ago and didn't break out a tank from storage until this year. The 55 gallon sat next to my desk with nothing but a daphnia culture in it for months. Today I took my kids to the LFS, led them to the cichlid section, and their favorite fish (without any prompting from me) was the much maligned Oscar. I got two of those, plus a Polypterus senegalis that the kids found (good eye!) They wanted more but I explained that these three fish would grow big enough over the next year or two to demand something bigger than the 55 gallon tank so it should be an interesting test of their patience to watch this nearly empty tank fill up with only three fish.
When the kids are grown and I get their play room (biggest room in the house, in the basement right on the slab) that's when I get to build my dream tank. That's a number of years away. For now I'll be content with lowly pet shop sourced tanks and species that can be contained in something "only" 200 gallons or so. I'll live vicariously through some of the other maniacs here until then.
