UnarmedCrayon
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Greetings all. Been lurking here for a while. Finally signed up for forum a lil bit ago, felt like I should probably say something. A bit about me, I'm a 28 year old man with a young family ( lovely wife and two small kids, 3 and 1 ) in N.VA.
I grew up in a house with sw tanks. My parents raised several lion fish, nurse sharks, and puffers along with others in their tanks. Usually a 120 gal that was their last and favorite tank. ( took it down and sold it a few years back after a power surge took out the filter pump and the sump siphon drained the tank into the family room. ) Take heart that only a few fish died in that disaster most of their larger fish mentioned were re-homed to the Baltimore aquarium. ( not all at once, fish were raised over many years, in different tanks)
Any who, about a year back I was able to take my young son through a public aquarium and he was spellbound. This reminded me how much I liked my parents tanks, so I brought it up to them. They replied with, " Oh cool, ya know we still have a few old tanks in the basement." Down there I found a 45 long on a wooden stand that I did not remember ever seeing. Apparently this tank was put out of use when they got the big tank when I was a toddler. Took it home, refinished and re enforced the stand, and started a fish keeping journey of my own.
The 45 long now resides in our dining room, it is the family tank and my wife is actually enthusiastic about our fish. She wanted plants in the tank, so we went with freshwater. The tank has been going for about 5 months now, it currently has 7 serpae tetra, 4 cories ( they were labeled by scientific name and I cannot remember it), 5 amino shrimp, two nerite snails, and very recently an electric blue ram. My wife came home with the Ram. We both had been researching new fish, and she took off to our non-chain LFS to ask about cockatoo cichilds, and came home with this lil guy. She claimed the store was expecting 6 rams and only received one and it was in a tank of much larger cichilds, and the only ram. She "bonded" with him.... his name is now Skeeter and she is on the hunt for a girlfriend for him.
Mix this with her getting me a 10 gal for my office for fathers day ( which I have 2 dwarf puffers in), and I think I'm pretty lucky with how well my family has taken to fish. Of course both my kids love them and every morning when they get up they watch us feed the fish. It has been a fun ride thus far with only minor set backs. ( one instance of buying sick fish that didn't make it, but rest of tank stayed healthy)
I am the kind of guy who over researches everything, and dives head first into the information of any hobby I get into. ( which has been far too many) But I am slow to move forward unless very confident I'm doing it right. So I am a lil obsessed with fish tanks, but I think that will be ok on this site. Any suggestions for my tanks or advise will be very welcome.
Also I feel I should explain the novel I just wrote you all. I've been reading on this site from my computer, my phone, and the tablet rather often..... I've taken so much good info from you fine folks, I almost felt it only fair I shared a bit about myself. I am generally not this long winded. I promise.
I grew up in a house with sw tanks. My parents raised several lion fish, nurse sharks, and puffers along with others in their tanks. Usually a 120 gal that was their last and favorite tank. ( took it down and sold it a few years back after a power surge took out the filter pump and the sump siphon drained the tank into the family room. ) Take heart that only a few fish died in that disaster most of their larger fish mentioned were re-homed to the Baltimore aquarium. ( not all at once, fish were raised over many years, in different tanks)
Any who, about a year back I was able to take my young son through a public aquarium and he was spellbound. This reminded me how much I liked my parents tanks, so I brought it up to them. They replied with, " Oh cool, ya know we still have a few old tanks in the basement." Down there I found a 45 long on a wooden stand that I did not remember ever seeing. Apparently this tank was put out of use when they got the big tank when I was a toddler. Took it home, refinished and re enforced the stand, and started a fish keeping journey of my own.
The 45 long now resides in our dining room, it is the family tank and my wife is actually enthusiastic about our fish. She wanted plants in the tank, so we went with freshwater. The tank has been going for about 5 months now, it currently has 7 serpae tetra, 4 cories ( they were labeled by scientific name and I cannot remember it), 5 amino shrimp, two nerite snails, and very recently an electric blue ram. My wife came home with the Ram. We both had been researching new fish, and she took off to our non-chain LFS to ask about cockatoo cichilds, and came home with this lil guy. She claimed the store was expecting 6 rams and only received one and it was in a tank of much larger cichilds, and the only ram. She "bonded" with him.... his name is now Skeeter and she is on the hunt for a girlfriend for him.
Mix this with her getting me a 10 gal for my office for fathers day ( which I have 2 dwarf puffers in), and I think I'm pretty lucky with how well my family has taken to fish. Of course both my kids love them and every morning when they get up they watch us feed the fish. It has been a fun ride thus far with only minor set backs. ( one instance of buying sick fish that didn't make it, but rest of tank stayed healthy) I am the kind of guy who over researches everything, and dives head first into the information of any hobby I get into. ( which has been far too many) But I am slow to move forward unless very confident I'm doing it right. So I am a lil obsessed with fish tanks, but I think that will be ok on this site.
Any suggestions for my tanks or advise will be very welcome.Also I feel I should explain the novel I just wrote you all. I've been reading on this site from my computer, my phone, and the tablet rather often..... I've taken so much good info from you fine folks, I almost felt it only fair I shared a bit about myself. I am generally not this long winded. I promise.
