My girlfriend was giving a 10 gal SW with a 2year old tomato clown and she didnt know how to care for it and I had never had a tank so I started to read how to care for her (the clown) now she lives in a reef and she is 7 yrs old.
I had Beta's as a kid - always loved fish. Flash forward several years, my fiance woke up one Saturday morning and said "let's go get a fish tank". Several hours and hundreds of dollars later, we came home with a 75 gallon tank... its been downhill ever since
when i was little one of my older brothers always had fish, reptiles, etc., so i got my interest from him. he came home one day with a big fish that no one around here had ever heard of, an oscar. kinda wierd how the rare can become so common.
I always enjoyed going to the lfs, but I didn't have any money to buy tanks and stuff so id go there and just watch the fish. I guess its because it was something I couldn't have so I ended up wanting more.