What in your opinion is the biggest obstacle you face when keeping fish?

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Fabian113

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
May 13, 2023
Messages
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Hello everyone
I'm fairly new to this and was wondering, what is the biggest obstacle you face, when keeping your fish?
 
for me personally; Patience.. xD Starting up a new tank, without old sponges/filter media eetc, will take ages to get your tank cycled enough to introduce stock. xD Sooo.. as impatient as I am, I went all around the area to various public ponds and gathered small samples (simple 250-300ml jam jars) with substrate and or water and or leaf litter from those ponds and put all of those in with my fresh tapwater to get a semblance of a tank that's got a headstart at being established.

Still after 1 week i introduced a daphnia culture and 3 nerite snails, then a week later (probably safe as my nh2/3 and no3/4 readings were fine) I've introduced my first group of fish (5 male endlers) and next week I'll possibly add an otocinclus or 2 the week after that some cherry shrimp and perhaps also some female endlers.
But man the waiting every time is so hard xD hahaha
So in the meantime I keep messing around with live plants. introducing new ones, moving old ones around etc...
 
My biggest obstacle in keeping fish is a real estate agent and landlord that won't let me have pets.

But for most people, I think the biggest obstacles they have to face include the following:
Finding good information from a pet shop.

Learning about the filter cycle.

Getting disease free fish.
 
For me, to keep marine fish, I have no local stores that offer them for sale. I'm of a mind and era where I want to see the fish I am paying for BEFORE I buy them. That means having local stores that keep them. So I no longer have marine tanks when I used to have many.

For freshwater, the overall lack of the "Mom & Pop" shops in my area as well as around the country where I have traveled has led to a lot of misinformation being part of today's hobby. The fact of the matter is that the internet is not the best source for information on the fish we have offered for sale BECAUSE the internet information applies to wild caught fish and the largest portion of fish available now are farm raised and acclimated to different water conditions. The best information now imo, comes from the place you purchase your fish from. The first question should always be " Is this a wild caught fish I am buying? " with the follow up being " what water parameters are YOU keeping the fish at?". The hobbyist would them be advised to match those parameters or look into fish that match their water's parameters. (y)
 
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