How Was Your Start To The Hobby?

[Mikaila31]

Bought a 55gal. Put one fish in and let it sit for two weeks. Then I put like 20 fish in all at once! Needless to say I don't have any of those fish anymore.........


I wonder why?


Buy the time I found this place I had somehow managed to get through the cycle.....

 

[Amunet]

Husband got a tank for Xmas. So I did some research.
Read about cycling, but didn't know about fishless cycling so got some fish pretty quickly.
I did as much as I possibly could to keep those fish alive but they didn't make it unfortunatly. I did water changes every single day for months, but it just wasn't enough.
Finally though, after taking out the fish that were left (who eventually died probably due to being in an uncycled tank), and finally figuring out why our water stats weren't doing anything (our waters pH crashes for some reason so have to bump it up w/ baking soda)... things finally got on track and we got that tank cycled.

 

[BobbyBray]

I found a 120gal with EVERYTHING even fish for $175 that's a steal but I am having a hard time talking him into it.

Holy smokes, you can't even fine a 55 gallon for that much up here in Alaska! In fact I've probably spent that much money buying my brand new 29 gallon and adding all the accessories to go inside....

I had both good and bad luck with the LFS advice. I got my GF a 10 gallon tank for xmas, set it all up for a week letting it run as the LFS peeps said before stocking it. So far we haven't had one problem with that tank! Not a single fish has died, and for the longest time I didn't check the water stats, didn't cycle the tank, and didn't do weekly water exchanges. Though we did have to bring back a chinese algae eater, and will probably do the same with some serpae tetras this weekend that don't like to play nicely.

So seeing how fun and 'easy' it was to set up a fish tank, I decided to get one of my own. Doing the same thing I did with hers, I had nothing but trouble since I first got it! I think 6 of the first 8 fish I introduced over the course of a month died before finding this website and learning about cycling tanks. Her 10 gallon someone managed to cycle itself with fish in it while we didn't even check the toxin levels, so I threw my last fish in her tank, and began fishless cycling mine. Hopefully from here on out, it'll be smooth sailing.... haha

But we both love love fish now, and I hope we can get a 55+ gallon at one point

 

[Fisses]

TBH my main problem was from the instructions Elite gave with my Elite 60l kit.

the kit explains about the cycle and how it will go cloudy and so on and so on and even showed a picture of the cycle and even a picture of a filter, however in the picture it showed a fluval(biological filter) when in the kit it provided a stingray 15(chemical filter) so the instructions was basically useless!!!

this caused a problem as according to the instructions it was a case of leave the filter and the bacteria will develop in the filter, if the flow rate drops then a quick clean in aquarium water. In my case the zeolite was absorbing the ammonia stopping the tank from cycling so when the zeolite saturated and stopped working, the tank started to cycle and so i lsot fish

im still tempted to contact Hagen who make the tanks as this is very misleading

 

[WillyRBeek]

I'd had fish as a little kid, and all of a sudden one day I suddenly had the urge to get back into keeping fish(I really didn't do much the 1st time around, aside from feeding them. My father did most of the work...And I know know he didn't do it very well). Anyway with my next paycheck I went into the LFS and looked around for a tank that was in my price range. I settled on a 25 gallon tank. I asked the salesman if it was ok to buy fish that day for the tank and he told me no, and that I should go home and fill up the tank and let it sit for a few days. So I filled up the tank, and added all the chemicals I had been told to buy to cycle the tank(I had no idea what "Cycling the tank" meant, so I just listened to the guy. Turns out the "Cycle" stuff is useless). Anyway I came back about 5 days later and purchased 3 angelfish, 3 redeye tetras and 1 other fish which I have no idea what it was. Needless to say, a few days later 1 of my angelfish kicked the bucket. The LFS I shop at has a 1 week guarentee on all their fish, so I took the dead angel back and got another one. The next day the new angel, and one of the other angels were dead. So I took them both back(At this point it had been over a week since i'd bought the original batch,, so I couldn't get 1 of them replaced for free). I was told to buy a pH testing kit to test my pH, and was given another free angelfish. I got home and tested my pH and it was very high. I called in and told them this and they told me they sell a pH reducer, so I drove in and bought some. After a few days later the pH hadn't dropped at all. I called in again to ask if they had anything stronger for lowering the pH and they said they didn't(During the time the new angel fish had also died, along with the unidentified fish). Anyway I did an online search for other ways to lower your pH and I stumbled across a fish keeping forum(Not this one though). I registered on there and posted my story and asked them what I could do about it, and they informed me of the horrible advice I had been getting from my LFS, and that the deaths were due to the fact that my tank was in the process of cycling, and not because of the pH. I was told to buy Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate testing kits to check the status of my water, which I did. I quickly discovered that the ammonia levels were extremely high. I ended up doing water changes virtually every 2nd day for about 2 weeks to get the ammonia down to nothing, and even then I still needed to do 20% water changes every 4 or 5 days for a couple of weeks to make sure it stayed that way.

Needless to say, whenever I have a question nowadays, I come here and ask(I no longer post on the other forum I mentioned. The folks there were great and very informative, but the posting community was much, much smaller and it was sometimes be days before i'd get an answer to my questions.), I don't bother with the LFS employees anymore.

 

[natalie265]

I inherited my first fish from a friend of a friend who was moving--two full grown silver dollars and two weather loaches (I think!) that arrived in a little two gallon hex aquarium! I don't know how long they'd been in such a small space--it was more fish than actual water! I immediately purchased a ten gallon aquarium (still grossly inadequate, i know) and nearly lost them by dumping them all in a brand new, uncycled tank! Miraculously they survived and i soon upgraded to a 30 gal. Poor things. I didn't really start doing any research until they died about 5 years later and i started looking into a planted, community tank and the more i learn about fish keeping the more i realize how inadequately i cared for those first four fish. It's definitely not a hobby to go into blindly!! (Although i think i did rescue them from an even worse situation!)