New 2 Fishforums & Returnin To Fish After 30 Years!

[noledoc]

Hello New Friends,
I've been out of the fish hobby for almost 30 years and I feel both very excited about rejoining this wonderful community of people and scared as well. I'm new to this forum and almost don't know enough to ask questions. My email is: kelleyp@etsu.edu and I'll gladly swap psychiatric counsel for fish know how, (up to a point).
I live in NE Tennessee in an area not exactly full of great fish stores. I'm looking forward to picking some great brains and contributing what I can to this community. I'd be honored to meet you.
Paul

 

[Westwood]

Hello, and welcome to the forum, what sort of stocking do you want?

 

[Skins]

Hello & welcome to TFF,
You don't need to feel scared there are many experienced members on the forum to give you guidence when you require it.

Skins.

 

[waterdrop]

Welcome to TFF Paul! Well, you're just over the hill from good old Appalachian Ski Mountain, from which I've come out alive for several winters, lol.

There are any number of us who did tanks 30 years ago and are now having fun learning all sorts of new stuff because its so easy to share all the experience and know-how from each other - it makes it like a thousand times easier! I thought is was so bizarre that the scientists had cooked up this chemistry-sounding thing called fishless cycling that I just had to learn about it and try it out for myself. Its for real and its just amazingly better than what I used to do years ago.

I find that re-learning the core skills of
1) The Nitrogen Cycle and the various tank prep methods that use knowledge of that cycle
2) The substrate-clean-water-change maintenance
3) The details of good filter maintenance

are among the biggest game-changers for people coming back in to the hobby - sometimes they remember aspects of them but usually it's really good to hear all these things again with the fresh information thrown in.

Also, depending on your situation and patience, you have the option of taking it even more slowly and spending time working on hardware and purchasing issues before even getting to the tank startup topics.

We have a great set of beginners and experienced people here and I hope you'll enjoy the time.

~~waterdrop~~