What was you highest achievement in the hobby?

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I turned my hobby into a job as an aquatic technician for a local museum and then later was asked by Steinharts veteran aquarist to apply there as I got to know them since my job was running the twin 50,000 gallon ponds at the museum and display tanks like whirligig beetles.
Later I went on to other things in horticulture for a University.
I didn't follow up on Steinhart since the commute was..more than I could take. No direct way other than by car and an extra 3 hours a day of driving!
Now I'm older and rent property out. Get by.
 
Mine probably keeping a school of cardinal tetra alive and healthy for 7 months and still going. I know its not much, but considering how hard it is for me to keep my fish alive when i first started i think this is my proudest achievement, lol.
Btw I started this hobby in early 2019
 
Happy day,

As a kid I used to be an assistant manager of an LFS with four locations. This meant I could keep the oddballs that no one ordered but arrived in the boxes, anyway. And so it came to be that I acquired a pair of belonesox belizanus, a livebearer type of pike from central America. While I had access to the internet, the world wide web did not yet exist, and so information on how to breed them was not as accessible as it is today. I'm going to let that sink in a moment...yes, the internet existed for almost 25 years before the web. Ok millennials, take a deep breath. Unfurrow your brows and wipe that puzzled look of your face or it will stay that way, just like your mother always told you when you'd make a funny face. I mean it.

Now, where was I. Oh yes, so I put the pair into a 20g long and enjoyed feeding them deformed guppies, tetras and barbs that we couldn't sell. What did I tell you about making funny faces? There wasn't anything malicious about this act, I was just Mother Nature's handmaiden and served the B's the food they required. Anyway, the general manager had this idea that if I raised the temperature to the mid-80s and let the water get all acidic and nasty and low in the tank, that it would be like a hot, dry summer. And then...I needed to make a rainy season. So here is what I did.

I waited until night and the lights were out. I held a pair of those semi-rigid aluminum foil roasting pans that you can buy for a couple of bucks at the grocery store and, by twisting my wrists at various speeds, made a warbling sound with them, like thunder. A roommate flipped the lights in the room on and off, like lightning. And then another roommate used a flower pitcher with all the little holes in the spout and put in cooler tap water. And we made it rain. We did this for a week. I confess that we adopted the Grateful Dead song, Looks Like Rain, as our theme song for this effort. There might have been the burning of incense. I think it was incense. Because everyone knows that lightning strikes in forests cause fires and things get smoky, in a way and after a fashion. And so with a series of aggressive water changes and warbling of pans and enough flashing of lights to cause the epileptic across the street to seize up (ok, that's not true, but it might have been if there was one outside walking a cat or something), the fish got frisky and a month or so later, a few young were born.

Years later I came to learn that none of this was necessary, and that if I just dumped some salt in the tank it would have all worked out fine. I've learned a little bit more about breeding since then, most notably that I also didn't need to do any of that with my wife. But I'm sure it helped.
 
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Mine was breeding Silver dollars Firstly. But the other thing I'm pretty proud of was winning the Furnished Aquarium category at the National fish show when I was 18 years old.
 

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Happy day,

As a kid I used to be an assistant manager of an LFS with four locations. This meant I could keep the oddballs that no one ordered but arrived in the boxes, anyway. And so it came to be that I acquired a pair of belonesox belizanus, a livebearer type of pike from central America. While I had access to the internet, the world wide web did not yet exist, and so information on how to breed them was not as accessible as it is today. I'm going to let that sink in a moment...yes, the internet existed for almost 25 years before the web. Ok millennials, take a deep breath. Unfurrow your brows and wipe that puzzled look of your face or it will stay that way, just like your mother always told you when you'd make a funny face. I mean it.

Now, where was I. Oh yes, so I put the pair into a 20g long and enjoyed feeding them deformed guppies, tetras and barbs that we couldn't sell. What did I tell you about making funny faces? There wasn't anything malicious about this act, I was just Mother Nature's handmaiden and served the B's the food they required. Anyway, the general manager had this idea that if I raised the temperature to the mid-80s and let the water get all acidic and nasty and low in the tank, that it would be like a hot, dry summer. And then...I needed to make a rainy season. So here is what I did.

I waited until night and the lights were out. I held a pair of those semi-rigid aluminum foil roasting pans that you can buy for a couple of bucks at the grocery store and, by twisting my wrists at various speeds, made a warbling sound with them, like thunder. A roommate flipped the lights in the room on and off, like lightning. And then another roommate used a flower pitcher with all the little holes in the spout and put in cooler tap water. And we made it rain. We did this for a week. I confess that we adopted the Grateful Dead song, Looks Like Rain, as our theme song for this effort. There might have been the burning of incense. I think it was incense. Because everyone knows that lightning strikes in forests cause fires and things get smoky, in a way and after a fashion. And so with a series of aggressive water changes and warbling of pans and enough flashing of lights to cause the epileptic across the street to seize up (ok, that's not true, but it might have been if there was one outside walking a cat or something), the fish got frisky and a month or so later, a few young were born.

Years later I came to learn that none of this was necessary, and that if I just dumped some salt in the tank it would have all worked out fine. I've learned a little bit more about breeding since then, most notably that I also didn't need to do any of that with my wife. But I'm sure it helped.

I've never laughed so hard in all my life :lol: :lol: :lol:
 
My biggest achievement was winning Tank of the month for January 2019 with my 35 gallon tall hex tank. .
Another achievement was running the contests to a new voting record as we reached 189 votes cast in our last contest.

My TOTM Winning entry
 
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My highest achievement would be a tossup- either my having kept a few simple species of plants alive, or having bred a couple species of fish.
Although the second one was really unintentional, and should probably be disqualified.
Nah, that totally counts. If they're breeding, it's because you gave them the right conditions, so it's still on you.
 

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