[NetBloke]

I seem to always have fish. When I was young we had a tank of goldfish. They all lived to a ripe old age and just basically swam around a medium size tank. Nothing too exciting.

When I started high school my friend and I got into Freshwater Tropical Fish. I had a couple of community tanks in my bedroom, and then got into breeding some cichlids. As i breed a "batch" I would have to find an aquarium that I could offload them on so I had room for more fish.

When I started traveling the world my fish took a back seat and my mother looked after them. Currently I believe my tank in Australia is fairly dead. I don't think mum was doing water changes. She did have my bristle noses breed, but they all died before my last trip home. I was pretty bummed as I had always wanted to breed those.

When we bought our house here in Des Moines Iowa (USA), I was amazed at how big it was, and always thought the big basement had a room perfectly suited to a becoming a fish room. However firstly I wanted a 55 gallon for my entry way as a display tank. The cost of a new setup that I could live with was going to run in excess of $500 so that put a hold on that.

Then I realised I could buy second hand. I ended up getting my display tank, stand, filter AND 4 more tanks of various sizes, and some fish for $400.

So this leaves me with a display tank in my entry way, it houses my 2 pairs of electric blue cichlids which I want to breed ( I know they have in the past) and 2 small pelcos for algae control. Another in my office (if you look at my webcam on my web site you may see it sometimes - it has a big Mexican cichlad in it). I also have started my fish room. So far I have two 10 gallon tanks which I plan on expanding to four or five soon. I also have two 20 or 30 gallon tanks (don't ask me specifics I am Australian and we use the metric system!). They house one huge pelco and at least 60-70 Yellow cichlids.

All of my fish came from the lady who sold me the tanks. In turn they were a legacy from her son.

So far I have upgraded one filter to a Tetratec with internal heater, which is nice but a little too noisy for my office so it went downstairs to the fishroom. It works great though.

I also want to get a canister filter for the 55 Gallon display tank, as then I can hide the piping more. I had Eheim filters back in Australia but they aren't as popular here. Fluval seem the best bang for buck in canisters.

Ultimately I want to have live plants too. I hate the fake ones. Yet currently I haven't found any local stores that have good ones. They all look like crap to me. Once I get a few decent ones I will be able to propagate them myself for all my tanks I hope (if anyone has some spare Java Fern or swords let me know!).

Anyway that is my journey so far. Marine doesn't seem to be my thing yet. It just seems to be more expensive to get into. When I do try my hand at it I imagine I will have a display tank with nice corals and the like. I see the fish in marines as secondary, but that is just my opinion.