so how did you get into the aquarium hobby?

[lee_in_corpus]

so how did everyone here get sucked into this evil hellish moneypit of a hobby?  :p

way back in the day....1997-ish, a friend of mine told me she had a friend who had a 55 gallon tank, with filter, hood, light, gravel, stand, all that good stuff, for sale for cheap.  my sister had set up a 10 gallon tank in her room, so i figured what the heck.

i think i got everything for $200, maybe it was $100......i remember it had dark blue gravel, which i absolutely loved. 

and the obsession began.  2 angelfish, rasboras, bala sharks, irridadescent cats (i think thats what they were).  a few years later, i upgraded to a 150 gallon tank...petsmart had a tank/stand set on clearance...it didnt have the hardware for the stand....knobs and shelf brackets and such.  but the manager there still managed to somehow get a new set of hardware from the manufacturer for me.  i also had a 29 gallon in my collection at some point.

when all was said, we ended up with several breeding pairs of angelfish, and actually successfully got a batch of baby angels once.

we ended up having to move....and (don't ask) a few months later actually had to move back to the same house....at that point it was just too much of a pain....and i expected us to be moving again soon after that......so i sold the tanks, fish and all.....part of me really regretted doing that, but with me being in the middle of college, i just didnt have the time, money, or patience to continue on with the hobby.

so then a few months ago, my friend had a job offer out of town, and wanted his tank to have a good home.  so for pennies on the dollar, i got his whole satlwater setup.  and thanks to the good folks on this site, ive managed to only kill 2 of his fish!  :p

[Bergy]

great topic...

From the titel of my forum, i have tried to regain my life/experience in hawaii...

I lived there for more then a decade, and then moved to so cal... i lived here for another decade before i figured i better get a little bit of teh ocean back into my life...

I stopped off at petco and a local fish store and ended up ordering a tank whgich was going to take a few weeks...

I couldnt wait and bought a petco version too.. so i pretty much had two tanks starting up at the same time... within weeks of each other... both were innadequate and not reef ready tanks...

withinn a year, i sold both tanks for about $50 total, and bought a 180 gallon tank... that lasted four years...

Last year, my toilet supply line broke and flooded my condo and i had to remodel repair the floors and had to move the 180 gallon tank, and figured i would be moving within a year so i downgraded to the 60 gallon tank i have now...


It is my little ocean

[Just_Greg]

53 years ago, my dad was one of the "early aquarists", and had several FW DT's around the house, as well as others on racks in a dedicated fish room, so my 'roots' in the hobby go back to small kid time.  most of the fish back then didn't even have common names, so i pretty much was speaking in binomials as some of my first words.  one of my fascinations, even back then was "oddball" fish (catfish, plecos, piranhas).  besides his day gig, my dad also had a maintenance biz, and i used to go on his service calls to help him scrub filters, vacuum tanx, the whole deal.

i had always wanted to get into SW, which i did 20 years ago (55 gal FO setup), did some softy/LPS reefing, and now am (as all of my friends know too well) somewhat of a scorpionfish nut with 14 tanx in my house.  fortunately, Renee shares the passion (in fact, we met thru the hobby).

[OCtrackiepacsg1]

I wanted a dog....

[Hajra]

agreed with the dog. but also wanted a small piece of the ocean to watch and admire and have had fresh water tanks. so when my partner and i moved to a new place we decided to get a lil piece of ocean in the kitchen. now i still want a bigger one but can barely afford the one we have. lol. both tanks here have been to gether about a year or so. but i love our lil ocean( so to say) it has become one of my favorite things.

[KYLE.801]

When I was about 10 or 11 my sunday school teachers had a 55 gal FW that I thought was the coolest thing.  By the time I was 15ish years old I probably had about five 10 gals and then when I was 16 or 17 I bought a 55 gal and had that for a few years.  When I moved out of my moms house I took the tank down and didnt have any tanks for a while.  Then last August my father in law was moving and so he gave me his 29 gal SW that was very neglected.  After a few months I switched everything from the 29 to a 40 gal breeder.  I'm sure I'd have more tanks but my wife keeps me in check(thankfully)