|
|
|
Jeremy's Tank |
The Beginning
I had several fish growing up. We used to get some of those gold fish at the fairs, the ones that would be dead in a day or two. When I was about 5, we got a 10 gallon fish tank. Of course, no one knew anything about cycling etc., so, needless to say, we had no success. We would wake up in the morning to find a bunch of fish dead. When we would come home, there would be about 2-3 fish stuck to the filter intake. After a few weeks, that tank went into the attic where even to this day, it hasn't come down. When I was about 13-14, I would always go to my friend's house and we would stare at his 10 gallon tank for hours. It was the coolest thing. I finally convinced my mom into going to the store and getting an eclipse 3 kit. It came with a 3 gallon tank with a hood/light/filter combo. I came home and put it together to realize that there wasn't any gravel. So, the next night, we went back to Petco and got some gravel. A few days later on that Saturday, we went back to Petco and got a few mollies and platties and put them right into the tank. No one mentioned anything about successful fish keeping (cycling, conditioning the water, not to overfeed. I give those mollies and platties credit, they actually stayed alive for about a week before they one by one died. So of course, I got some more until there was about seven in there and I just had to have a bigger tank. I went to Petco about a month later with my aunt and spent $32 on a 10 gallon tank with under gravel filter, heater, net, air pump, and fish food. I set it up right when I got home and then I realized that I needed a hood so that when I got the fish, they wouldn't jump out. Again, back to Petco and $30 later, we had a hood and light. When I set it up, I moved all of the fish from the little tank to the big one. As you can imagine, they all died in about a week too. The water was cloudy for awhile, so as usual, back to Petco (they got some business from us) and the woman said that the under gravel filters aren't really good so I got a penguin Mini. After months and months of fish dying and getting replaced, Some started to stay living until my tank finally cycled. In Oct. '02, I found Aquaria Central where I learned pretty much everything I know about fish keeping I know today. All the talk about fish and getting a bigger tank led to my 72 gallon Christmas present. This tank however, I did everything right and I never really had any problems at all. I am very happy that I stayed with the fish through those hard times instead of giving up like the other 90% of the people that do when they fail at it. If you would like to share your fish story, feel free to e-mail them to me and I will be happy to post them for others to read. NOTE: Since then, that Petco has turned into a complete dump and I refuse to ever go back. It has been about two years since I was at PetDump. In that time, there were several protestors standing on the sidewalk in front of PetDump. I can't tell you how much I wanted to join them, but I just cruised by in my Ferrari...I wish.
|
