Welcome to my nightmare.
Thanks Steve, that phrase keeps echoing through my mind.
Between that and Wit's signature I think I'm being brain washed.
Be sure to set the washer to "delicates".
Is this thing on?
What could I say that would be worth people taking time out of their busy lives to read? HA!
Nothing.
But for posterity? hmmm.
Well for one, I didn't mean to start a blog.
I like the interaction of a regular thread.
Well, lets get started.
I started with freshwater, love the water. Thank you to my brother Anthony for getting my "parents" a fish tank. That started it all.
Rainbow trout are colorful and all, but tropical, man that was where it was at. Angel fish, neon tetras, tiger barbs and catfish. Loved that 30g tank.
When I moved out to go to college I bought a tank. A couple guys in my dorm also bought tanks. Those were the days.
Talk about humidity in a dorm room. lol
We looked at Saltwater alot. Finally Junior year we started dabbling.
I bought a 30g with probably flourescent lights and yes
undergravel filter. Which I hear still has a use to this day even with saltwater. I need to research that chemistry aspect more. I was a broke college student and we drooled over coral beauties back then. $50 for ONE FISH! Hell no! Thats like alot of beer!
I bought a seafan skeleton for the back of the tank, some damsels cause they were cheap cheap and did I say cheap? Then a
flame scallop. That was a cool animal. Like a living muppet. Scooting along the tank bottom.
Orange frills waving in the current. And some type of anemone. Probably a condylactis, but I have no idea. Can't remember if they even told me. Just had to have it. I know now looking back that it was bleached out and I did not even have remotely enough light for it. It just looked cool. I was a dumb college student. I admit it.
At the time I thought my anemone popped on the seafan skeleton and died. Now I'm not so sure. It could just have expired.
Anyways, the tank crashed. Overnight the appocalypse hit.
Then the smell hit.
Then the water hit the drain and
the sand hit the garbage. I was crushed and even broker. Yeah that is a word. I'm sure it is. I'm college edumacated!
Moth balled that tank for a couple years.
It came back as a FW tank that did average to good for many years.
Angels, tetras, swordtails, etc. The usual generic fish store fish.
Had piranhas too. Even received a notice from Washington Fish & Game about detrimental fish and wildlife. Never did figure out how they knew where I lived.
I was stuck with my red piranha. Couldn't sell it, couldn't dump it in a lake, couldn't give it away. Very interesting fish though. He stayed with me until the move to California. I knew they were illegal, but so was every alternative except eating it. So I figured if he lived through the move in a 5g bucket he deserved to live.
Well he didn't make it. Seattle killed him.
Set up FW again in California. Started with the usual, then moved on to Discus. Love the colors of those. Did ok with them. Even though I didn't really understand the unique needs of those fish. I accidentally stumbled across a perfect habitat for them in my FW tank with live plants and few water changes and decaying plant matter that produced by accident/neglect the perfect PH for them. Then one weekend I got really energetic and cleaned the tank, siphoned the gravel, scraped the glass, cleaned the filter media and removed a bunch of algae.
The apocolypse returned again. I hate the guy.
Got knocked down, but not out. Just kind of maintained at that point.
Got some angel fish again. Always love having live plants.
Battled some FW hair algae that makes marine HA look like an under achiever. I was scraping aquarium decorations with kitchen pads and barely getting any to come off.
Then a friend asked me one day if I would be interested in buying his 30g saltwater fish tank. I don't know, I've moved once a year for 5 consecutive years. Does this apocalypse guy have my address?
I did buy it, but I did read his books and bought some of my own before I took ownership. Learned alot.
Next Chapter - Saltwater and what not to do. An ongoing study of too much money and not enough sense.
Do I have to pay for this as therapy?
