Evolving Hobby

**genes** · 10th Feb 2007, 21:01

Hi All

Have you ever wonder how this fishy hobby have been evolving for yourself?

For me, it all started from plastic tank to house the "longkang" fish during my younger days to glass tank with fake plants and ornamental stuffs. And i remembered the fishes never lasted long. They keep dying and i kept buying. Didn't know anything about beneficial bacteria. Removing every fish and washing the tank, filter and gravel more then once everyweek.

Then, there was a period of time where i stopped keeping fishes. Can't recall how many years it have been. And i thought i had kicked the hobby.

2 years ago, came across NA and saw the planted tanks. Got inspired and went into planted tanks. Finally now, to breeding of Apistogrammas. I wonder whats next...

**uorme99** · 10th Feb 2007, 22:21

Yeap! How true it is. it happen to me too. my first fish - goldfishes was bought by my father [upon my request - of course

] then they died and i went to malaysia when in sec 1 and bought the ikan betok (climbing perch) - not fancy looking but i like his attitude and the closeness feeling is there. He lived for 3years. after tat i went into guppies...but dint last long (too impatient to get them to grow).. then the luohan craze after luohan died and no longer popular i went into sajicas as i believed they are the originals of luohan (where luohan is a hybrid species). got bored with only 1 fish since luohans.. read about micky mouse platies and was hook so bought a batch from Rainbow. start breeding them, really happy. this lasted for 2 years!! but soon things started to detioriate. they died 1 by 1 and the new generations which was left behind seems to be in not a good condition. they totally wipe out. sadded i tried hardy fish - parrot fishes but got bored. changed to neons then buy their enermy (angel fishes)

because i never read up on it. neons died and angels sold back to lfs in exchange for fish stuff. then read up more on planted tanks and started one 2ft tank for my orange flash caca apistos but then after few breeds just sian because they often hide and decide to sell them off...then start another and another.now having 3 haha.so i have 2 two feets and 1 one feets. one keeping tetra species (but just yesterday 15 of my cardinals move on due to ich). another 2 ft for CRS - i guess got attacted when i saw a tank full of those red white shrimps on green scape. and another 1ft tank in living room with 3 reddish platy and dw with fissidens - to relax when i'm using pc. so this is my currently situation. such evolvement rite?

sorry for the long grand-dad story. just cant resist when i read the thread so would like to share my story. Good day all!

**|squee|** · 10th Feb 2007, 23:31

Well for it all started when I received one of those common LFS bettas from my uncle. Needless to say it died, but I was still interested and got myself a pair of long finned ones from a shop downstairs.

They lasted for quite a while because I actually read up something about keeping fish.

After that I chanced upon a fish shop (Echo Streams) at Bishan when I was playing cards, and I was amazed by the planted tank they had.

So here I am now.

What lies ahead of me is probably getting deeper into "naturalism", like having no plant scapes (Amazon), and keeping wild fish for their beauty like paros, or perhaps bettas.

It should evolve further and quicker for me once I get into my late 20s and have a full-time job.

**yaya** · 10th Feb 2007, 23:34

How i came across this hobby is quite sudden. Before i get into this hobby, i really didn't have much interest about keeping fish at all because i thought keeping fish is not only wasting money and is also wasting time to maintain tank, feed the fish etc.

So how did the hobby come about to my thinking that keeping fish is fun and it is worth spending every single cent i put in? The story begins like this....

The date is 1st Jan 2006, time is around 12am plus, i was with friends outside, deciding whether to go one of the friends' house to stay overnight. And so we decided.

Before reaching this friend's house, i went to another friend's house for a reason(forgotten). As i stepped into the house, friend told me that he had just set-up a 4 ft planted tank in his room, as i was abit curious so i went into his room to see it, that was when my interest in keeping fish started to evolve.

The greenery of the scape and the school of cardinals captured my attention completely. I was quite amazed. Naturally, i asked him many questions about fish as i thought i might want to make a tank like what he did. This idea is quite sudden though. Therefore, he introduced me arofanatic and aquaticquotient.

So as time goes by, i read many threads about plants and fishes. My 1st setup was in feb 06, 2nd rescape was in may 06, 3rd huge rescape was in july as i decided to change the substrate. 4th rescape was in october. 5th rescape was in nov 06, and the 6th rescape again in jan 07 for cny. As you can see i was into some kind of dutch scaping, changing scape whenever i feel that i can beautify the tank better.

Eventually, i feel that this hobby is good to be cultivated. Why? Because it helps to gain more knowledge and enables one to get more lively at home, if not, i wouldn't be able to know there is such a cute fish like Apistogramma !

**Sunfire** · 11th Feb 2007, 00:00

I started out when I was ten years old...that time I bought a small plastic tank and 10 neon tetras... The tank was cheesy looking, I liked to buy those ornaments and put them into the tank, I had this little signboard that said 'no fishing' and a clay skull, and later a little shinto like japanese shrine thing in there. Eventually the neons died of neon disease and I replaced them with this yellow cichlids that are still unknown to me today.

I picked up hobby again last year when a friend showed me the nano tank he bought from Sam Yick for about 100 dollars. It was amazing, so I decided to start my own tank. But I didn't buy the tank immediately, so I bought a triops kit instead to keep myself occupied.

Later on, I chanced upon a closing down sale at a fish shop, bought a nano tank set for a real bargain, and started with cambombas and DIY co2.

**XnSdVd** · 11th Feb 2007, 11:56

Ahh... how i miss the days where plastic pirates and their bubbling plastic treasure chests were the norm for fishtanks

Ok.. no. Thank god those days are past. I like the nostalgia but i'll always kick myself for the stupid things i did and all the fish i killed. I started with one of those big urns where people used to store rice. A small bag of swordtails and some hydrilla. Now i've got a 6ft semi-native biotope, almost all my fish are native. Evolving for me would probably involve getting a completely native tank where the ecosystem is self-sustained and have enough frequent breeding that i can release the fry back into the rivers i got their parents from.

**Justikanz** · 12th Feb 2007, 14:05

When I was very very young, my father started keeping fish in the kitchen... I was amazed at the angel fish and the way they swim... especially when the water level was VERY low during water changes...

Then an uncle passed me some BIG goldfish which died soon after (

, much to the anger of his sister, who were the rightful owners of the fish) and I never dealt with fish again for many years...

Then about 14 years ago, I passed by a market stall selling ornamental fish and I was mesmerized by the guppies there. I bought back home a plastic tank and some guppies and things just go crazy after that!

**taygu** · 13th Feb 2007, 17:07

My mum used to have 4 fish tank. In those days, the fish tank were made of cement except the front which is of course glass. It was damp heavy. The fishes are goldfish, sword tail and black molly. The guppies are actually lokang fishes that I caught and at time, you can catch gourami where we called it differentlly which I cannot remember.

Until now, I still miss those time catching lokang fishes from the lokang.

**bryan** · 14th Feb 2007, 11:43

Originally Posted by taygu

My mum used to have 4 fish tank. In those days, the fish tank were made of cement except the front which is of course glass. It was damp heavy. The fishes are goldfish, sword tail and black molly. The guppies are actually lokang fishes that I caught and at time, you can catch gourami where we called it differentlly which I cannot remember.

Until now, I still miss those time catching lokang fishes from the lokang.

Man! Those cement tanks were awesome. They'd look great in gardens though. I suppose you'd catch 3 spot or snakeskin gourami. We'd call them 'SanPanKwa'(In Hokkien). I miss those days too.

**taygu** · 14th Feb 2007, 16:31

Originally Posted by bryan

We'd call them 'SanPanKwa'(In Hokkien). I miss those days too.

Oh thanks for the help on the name, we mentioned it quite often but just cannot recall it when I was typing the post.

True enough, it is located in house backyard where the plants were. In those day, no need to top up water as mother nature always help when it rain and chanping of water was a monthly affair. Best of all, the water is used to water the plants.

Maybe we should start another thread on where is our kampong during our childhood days?

**bryan** · 15th Feb 2007, 14:21

Originally Posted by taygu

Maybe we should start another thread on where is our kampong during our childhood days?

Yeah Joe! Please do.

I suppose I have the same kampung back ground. I had one of those cement tanks as a small fry too. It was red as I remember, and I kept all kinds of longkang fish in there. The last occupant was a red ear slider (Not counting the baby python which was missing after half a day when I went to school). Fast Forward 30 years and now messing around with water plants too.