How Did You Get Into Your Hobby?

[BethK]

I thought I would start a thread about 'How did you get into your hobby'. Personally, fish are currently my new hobby, So here is my bit;

I used to have a betta a few years back bu unfortunately he died after 2and a half yrs of having him. After that,I did want to start up a slightly bigger set up but I became pregnant, so put a stop to the fishy dream.

Moving back to the UK in 2008, as a single mother, things became challenging and started to weigh me down. I was noticing changes and the lack of them in my son, which lead to his Autism diagnosis in Jan this year. During this time, things became very stressful for me, I had my Psychology exams to sit and I didn't really know how to handle everything. Then a friend asked me to look after her 200ltr aquarium, whilst she went away on business for 3 weeks. She left me simple instructions and away I went.

After a few days, I realized that the aquarium was very relaxing to be around and it was helping to refocus my mind else where. I thought it would be expensive to set up something like that, let alone having the spare time to do it, so I moved that thought to the back of my mind.

Before my 28th birthday, my brother turned up at mine with a fish tank, said it was part of my present but thought I might want to start a cycle (well the LFS version, where they tell you to leave the tank full of water for a week prior to adding fish). He knew I liked Bettas and said he'd picked one out especially for me and that it was on hold, along with a few 'friends' to go with him. So on my 28th bday, my brother took me down to the LFS to pick up my presents. 1 male VT Betta and 5 black tetra.

I will forgive my brother for getting me an 18ltr tank with bright pink gravel

But it sparked my interest up and now I am full steam a head on focusing on my new found hobby! It seems to help me deal with my son situation and is my 'time out'.

 

[nosoup4you]

They say that aquariums are awesome for kids with autism. Have you noticed an interest from your son?

Fishkeeping runs deep in my blood. lol I can't really remember a time in my life where I did not have a tank or two or three. My parents were fishkeepers and I started breeding angels and discus on my own at about 13.

 

[BethK]

yeah, he loves it (when he's not trying to pull it down!). He is 2 and a half, doesn't talk and is around 18 months behind on communication. But he does know there are 7 fish in there. He touches the glass 7 times, stops and looks at you, then touches it another 7 times. He repeats that alot.

He also likes watching my male betta, giggles a lot at him x

 

[razer121]

Triops.L is what caused me to get into it....then it was a betta as a first real fish i looked after and now i have 6 tanks...

 

[Night61]

my dog had passes away the day i returned to college for my final semester. when i returned to my dorm room i found my room mate was gone and no one was going to replace her. i had my dorm room to myself, which at first was really cool, then it got really lonely. so after much debate i finally decided to get a fish, a betta to be exacte. i was your typical noob too, new nothing about the thing except he made me happy. i named him livingston after jon luc picards fish on the next generation, the quickly hit the internet. it wasn't to long after that livingston started to live like a king with a 5 gallon tank and a heater. i think about a month in i joined the fish forums. he was a good fish greeted me every day when i came home from class, and because of him i got to know my neighbors across the hall who would fish sit for me when i would go home. my RA even made him a little door tag.

i had him until the end of my semester, he died the week before i graduated of dropsy. the only time i really sobbed over the death of a fish was for him.
i have lost others, and have had other bettas, and other fish. but having him during my final semester brought me more joy, laughter and sorrow then any other fish i had ever owned.

 

[GAB99]

well, i love animals and i especially love fish, i got my mind set about getting some after i caught a 50 pound tarpon (i was 10) and numerous baracuda on a fishing trip. unfortunatley at the time we had 3 dogs, a parrot, a nake and a gecko,so i had to cut a deal with my mom to get my 1st 100% all mine fish tank, which i hate to say was 1 gallon with 3 comet goldfish and 2 balloon mollies (eek). as you might have guessed the fish died and my deal ended (though it shouldnt have had). later i make yet another deal this time for a 20 gallon which eventually led me here and then after that this christmas was granted my 55 gallon, the 20 got converted to salt and now after i move to georgia im getting a 200 gallon salt tank, and maybe a larger freshwater one. over all, with the help of this forum i have only lost a total of 3 fish (that were not my fault) since joining and not following chain petstore code.


another one of my hobbies is video games which i used to do as a little kid cuz i had no friends and the constant moving was stressful and i couldnt keep friendships lasting that long (pre-facebook, now i have some friends), i remember beating an 18yr old guy on super mario bros for the DS when i was 11, and love stratrgy games now




lat one promise. and im thnk im also getting hooked into electronics and modeling, im building both a drone similar to the kind found in bioshock and im taking my semester-long timeline project and turning it into a 12ft "celebrate summer" missile

 

[Night61]

another one of my hobbies is video games which i used to do as a little kid cuz i had no friends and the constant moving was stressful and i couldnt keep friendships lasting that long (pre-facebook, now i have some friends), i remember beating an 18yr old guy on super mario bros for the DS when i was 11, and love stratrgy games now

have you played advanced wars?

 

[GAB99]

another one of my hobbies is video games which i used to do as a little kid cuz i had no friends and the constant moving was stressful and i couldnt keep friendships lasting that long (pre-facebook, now i have some friends), i remember beating an 18yr old guy on super mario bros for the DS when i was 11, and love stratrgy games now

have you played advanced wars?

no, i havent, my mistake i should have put that my favorite types of games are RTS ones lol im mostly an xbox man who denies the existence of MW2, ill play anything but MW2 or any of its relatives. i also play eve online alittle and SW:EAW.


o and i also forgot i like to do a little bit of gardening, embarressing i know.

 

[Night61]

[/quote]
o and i also forgot i like to do a little bit of gardening, embarressing i know.
[/quote]

thats not emberassing me at all.
what do you grow?

 

[GAB99]

o and i also forgot i like to do a little bit of gardening, embarressing i know.
[/quote]

thats not emberassing me at all.
what do you grow?
[/quote]


it is to me im a guy lol. and right now i have strawberries and oranges growing and i have started bell peppers,sunflowers, some wierd tree my mom wants, mangos,kiwis,advocados,and tomatoes as well as an experimental tangelo i got from my snack

and i forgot another hobby which is tennis

 

[Night61]

well i am a girl, and i play video games, particularly pokemon. i am 27 trust me liking pokemon at 27 is much more embarassing then gardening. besides my fathers and his brothers all garden.

i would like to some sort of herb plants that will grow all year round

 

[GAB99]

well if you actually moved to southern CA youd be fine playing pokemon, evryone does it here from highschool+ (im 15) lol

i have tried basil but i keep forgetting to cover it and it dies, im trying now to sprout regular peppers and almonds and im tending to some rosmary but thats easy(all the stuff i am growing i have just started from seed from food from the super market lol)

do you play anything other than pokemon?

 

[Night61]

i am a handheld girl actually if you look in the gaming section of the forums you will see several posts i have made there.

i like rpgs and puzzles with a sprinkle of stratagy. although my guilty pleasure game is twisted metal

 

[GAB99]

cool, im the console junkie, i love rpgs, rts and the occasional fps like bioshock, supcom, and mass effect, especially the sci-fi stuff lol, i have to get off soon its pretty late here

 

[OldMan47]

I started my fish keeping rather innocently some time ago. At around 10 years old I started to take an interest in our fish wall. We had a large room that my dad had used fish tanks to divide into two rooms. One side we used as the main family gathering place and the other was a dining room. The fish tanks were lined up as a room divider down the middle of the room, stacked one over the other to be a twinned stack along the space. We had mostly livebearers but also had some small egg layers making up the contents of about 10 tanks down that wall. The rest of the tanks in the house, yes there were more, were scattered about as single tanks. There was the big one on the landing at the top of the stairs and the one in my parents bedroom where my dad was breeding kribs. I eventually took over a 10 gallon tank for some molly fry that I got dirt cheap at a LFS. They kept a tank with all of the fry they found in the shop and sold the fry on the basis of whatever you pick out is yours for almost nothing. I don't recall the exact price they had on the tank but it was a case of fishing out your own choices for yourself and they would bag and sell them to you. I know the total came to less than a dollar because I never had more than that in my pockets at the time. My molly fry became the first fish that I ever bred and I have been hooked on livebearers ever since. These days I no longer focus as much on the easy livebearers like mollies, but I still have some. I now run more to things like goodeids, which I find fairly easy but not as easy as mollies. My present focus is on species maintenance which does not mean hard to keep fish but instead means fish that need help for them to survive as a species. To that end, I am off to my ALA convention to pick up some A. towerii. They are almost unheard of in the hobby and are nearly extinct outside the hobby but I expect them to be a boon to my breeding experiences. It appears that they have about the same breeding needs as those mollies from 50 or more years ago. The difference is that they are not in every fish keeper's home. Instead, they are a bit hard to find at all. This year they are the focus of the ALA species maintenance program, and I am game to try them given the success that I have had with other species of livebearers.