Bryan
Fish Crazy
I was reading the topic "Does any body still have their first fish?, I do!!!" and it reminded me of my first oscars.
when I was in high school I bought a couple of oscars, had them in a 15 gallon tank. You can bet it wasn't long till I had to move them, went to a 20. About the time I need to get a bigger tank I was moving out an didn't want them so I gave to to someone I worked with.
Things happened, timed went on. A few years later, I think 5 (it was like 20 years ago), I get a call from this person. He found out I owned a pet shop so he wondered if I would like them back. I said "sure" thought it would make a nice display and I had tons of feeder goldfish, I had a 300 gallon tub in the basement full of feeders.
He show up and he's got these 2 Oscars that are over 16" long, I didn't measure them but they couldn't hardly turn around in the 55 gallon tank I had set up for them. These thing were huge, and beautiful, he took good care of them.
Over a week they ate tons. I had to do something, I didn't have a big enough tank nor enough food.
I was lucky though, across the street was a zoo (John Ball Park Zoo in Grand Rapids Michigan). I told them where I was and my problem. They said they never take fish from people but because this was a pet store they would consider it.
2 days later they called me and said they had a tank ready
. I brought them up to the aquarium there and they had a very large tank all set up with gravel bottom, a large pile of rocks in the middle against the back wall with a cave like hole going in the middle and out the left side. the tank was a glass front and plywood sides and back that were treated and painted black. The thing had to be 600 gallons, maybe a little more.
What lucky fish
, all the food they could eat and plenty of room.
Like I said this was all about 20 years ago, and I'm living in Hawaii now, but I'm wondering if they are still there. I'm going to spend christmas with my parents back there. I'll have to see if the zoo is open and if they're there.
One more interesting part, they built a whole new aquarium about 9 years ago. Huge, with a wave tank that has a kelp forest, a large pengiun display, a man made river for trout, the river was outside i'm guesing it was big, I never got to see it finished. The interesting part of that was, I was the electrician (worked for Toering Electric at that time) on that job. I wired all the pumps for the tanks, the huge pumps for the river, all the lighting, was there for almost a year. Oddly enough, I never thought of my oscars, but that didn't matter, all the fish were moved to a holding place during the construction and we weren't allowed to see them anyway, i think it was not even on the zoo grounds.
when I was in high school I bought a couple of oscars, had them in a 15 gallon tank. You can bet it wasn't long till I had to move them, went to a 20. About the time I need to get a bigger tank I was moving out an didn't want them so I gave to to someone I worked with.
Things happened, timed went on. A few years later, I think 5 (it was like 20 years ago), I get a call from this person. He found out I owned a pet shop so he wondered if I would like them back. I said "sure" thought it would make a nice display and I had tons of feeder goldfish, I had a 300 gallon tub in the basement full of feeders.
He show up and he's got these 2 Oscars that are over 16" long, I didn't measure them but they couldn't hardly turn around in the 55 gallon tank I had set up for them. These thing were huge, and beautiful, he took good care of them.
Over a week they ate tons. I had to do something, I didn't have a big enough tank nor enough food.
I was lucky though, across the street was a zoo (John Ball Park Zoo in Grand Rapids Michigan). I told them where I was and my problem. They said they never take fish from people but because this was a pet store they would consider it.
2 days later they called me and said they had a tank ready
. I brought them up to the aquarium there and they had a very large tank all set up with gravel bottom, a large pile of rocks in the middle against the back wall with a cave like hole going in the middle and out the left side. the tank was a glass front and plywood sides and back that were treated and painted black. The thing had to be 600 gallons, maybe a little more.What lucky fish
, all the food they could eat and plenty of room.Like I said this was all about 20 years ago, and I'm living in Hawaii now, but I'm wondering if they are still there. I'm going to spend christmas with my parents back there. I'll have to see if the zoo is open and if they're there.
One more interesting part, they built a whole new aquarium about 9 years ago. Huge, with a wave tank that has a kelp forest, a large pengiun display, a man made river for trout, the river was outside i'm guesing it was big, I never got to see it finished. The interesting part of that was, I was the electrician (worked for Toering Electric at that time) on that job. I wired all the pumps for the tanks, the huge pumps for the river, all the lighting, was there for almost a year. Oddly enough, I never thought of my oscars, but that didn't matter, all the fish were moved to a holding place during the construction and we weren't allowed to see them anyway, i think it was not even on the zoo grounds.
