My name is Mark, and I am an aquaholic. I learned my addiction by watching my dad. He has a fish-only 20 gallon saltwater tank from the mid-70s into the early 80s (I'm 30, so I just barely remember it). When I was in preschool or so, my older brother and roommate (3 years older) got a 5 gallon tank, with the usual starter community fish and plastic shipwreck in the bottom. When I was in 4th grade, I really wanted a pet mouse, my mom bought me my own 10 gallon to try to dissuade me. I got a gerbil in 5th grade, and my mom thought it only fair that I trade aquariums with my older brother (by this time we had moved and had separate rooms), so I got the 5. By the end of 6th grade she got me another 10, which after a while I set up as my first brackish, with a figure 8 puffer, bumblebee gobies, a scat, and maybe at various other times monos and a bullrout. In the meantime, my brother had gotten the first African cichlids I had ever seen- a socolofi and an m. auratus. Then my brother got a 29 gallon and I was envious. When I was a sophomore in high school, I got a 20 gallon hi, made it my first reef tank. In college, I had 10s sophomore and junior year, until I got an apartment, then brought the 20 up, this time as a brackish or african cichlid tank junior and senior years. Switched back and forth from african cichlids to brackish every time I switched apartments through my first few years out of college, until I got a townhouse with friendsin 2003, and then bought a 55, set it up as a reef tank. I found it frustrating, so when I moved in with my fiance a year later, set it up as an African cichlid tank, and that's how its going to stay. This summer I became a homeowner, so I finally got to have the pond I've always wanted - south american cichlids and buenos aires tetras.
Man, I wrote all that and all I talked about was the history of my fish keeping. Here's a short writeup of the rest of my life. Got a BS in Biology from SMU in 1998 (how many biology majors do we have here? a lot I'll wager). Got an MS in Environmental Engineering and Environmental Science from SMU in 2000. Used to be an environmental consultant, now I work for a Japanese chemical company. I'm married, 1 8yo stepson, live on the west side of Houston. My parents have had a house on Galveston Island, on a canal on the bayside next to a huge saltmarsh, and I used to spend my whole summers down there as a kid, catching fish and putting them in a little aquarium in the house, and I still get down there as much as I can, so I can go kayaking and fishing, both bay and offshore. I also love to go scuba diving, love international travel (favorite places I have been: Tanzania, Zanzibar, Barcelona, Istanbul, and of course I could go to italy every year for the rest of my life). Love to cook, read, jog, paint (watercolors).