Why is MTS a real thing?

[outofwater]

First off, mods, if this is better somewhere else, please move thread accordingly.

So, it is a real question, what drives MTS.

When I first started (last Christmas) I read the acronym, chuckled and went on with my first tank. Two months later I found myself with 3 running tanks on hand, at some point I had 7 (still only 3 running) now I down to two but still have another 2 (temporarily decommissioned, one for sale) and one 55g waiting to replace my 29g as my main tank.

I really want to see people's opinions on why this happens.

I mean, except for cat ladies/wine aunts who collect cats for God knows what reasons, I don't see any other pets being "hoarded" as we do with out fishy friends, or growing and expanding from the "beginner" species to more complex rigs and species.

I personally see it as a manifestation of the natural human trait of going for more once we master something. Surely we can have more dogs or cats or whatever, but fish offer so much variety and their NEEDS require so much variety at so many levels that of course MTS is the only way forward in that path of more and better.

What say you?

 

[connorlindeman]

The reward is too great. We become addicted to seeing the finished product and keeping the fish. Thats my guess anyways. Seeing people on YouTube and here on the forum also drives you to buy more fish/tanks.

 

[Aqua67]

I love to create the underwater world for fish to explore. Caves, tunnels, plant variety, micro critters, etc. A new tank to me is like a blank canvass is to an artist. I admire the tanks that appear to be mini terrestrial landscapes and I love to look at them, but for me it is always the more natural and “wild” look.

(When I first saw MTS I thought “Malaysian Trumpet Snail” - Hahaha)

While I only have 3 tanks at the moment as I can’t think of another place to put one just yet, and just today began talking about a pond all because I traded some duckweed and water fern for some dwarf water lettuce and a water hyacinth plant. Soon I mentioned moving to Florida and buying a fish farm. Hahaha, anyway….I’m also a person down to just 13 parrots now from at one time 24.

 

[sharkweek178]

Maybe because much of the enjoyment is in creating the tank.

 

[outofwater]

When I first saw MTS I thought “Malaysian Trumpet Snail” - Hahaha)

Just had to.

 

[Back in the fold]

It's no different than a golfer having 50 clubs and 6 pairs of golf shoes or a skier having 12 sets of skis. It's a guy thing more than anything else. He who dies with the most toys wins.

 

[sharkweek178]

Just had to.View attachment 165990

Lol! https://www.fishforums.net/threads/hi-newbie-here.483028/#post-4200753

 

[Deleted member 149562]

MTS

The lifelong affliction of fishkeepers that sadly has no cure.

It started with a kiss from one aquarium.....ends up with the fishkeeper living in the shed due to every room in the house suddenly, almost overnight, resembling the aquatic heaven where fish are the priority and you walk around in clothes full of holes, plastic carrier bags as shoes and eating scraps from the freezer that is now full of frozen fish food.

The fish rule your life.....they are your masters and mistresses....those beady eyes giving you death stares when you dare to eat infront of them, the silent giggling from them as they screw up yet another filter, the ungrateful nipps on the arms as you do yet another water change and your back garden, once pristine, looks like a Louisiana swamp on steroids.....your back has gone from all those buckets of water, your bank account is dryer than the Sahara Desert...and still those beady eyes follow your every move...even in your sleep they are watching you

You dream of fish poo....you lie in bed, not thinking about your dearly beloved lying beside you...no...you think only of those fish and that stupid filter hose that needs to be shimmied with the bottle brush without poo flinging all over everywhere again like it did last time....

Yes the nightmare of MTS is real......your life and bank account is no longer yours, the comfy armchair that you used to snuggle into has long since been evicted to your shed and a gleaming glass box is in its place....with those beady eyes watching you.....

You convince yourself that you control the fish, they do not...they DO NOT...control you

Then you wake up and find yet another batch of new arrivals squiggling around the substrate..... <sigh>

You look to the heavens and scream...."Oh sphericals....looks like that attic conversion will be needed after all...but not for me....for those damned fish who reproduce every time I think I have no more space left for yet another aquarium"

Yes...MTS is very real.....and its coming to get you.....soon

 

[itiwhetu]

The main reason is that people who keep fish strive to be good fish keepers and when they achieve that goal, they then have a problem with plants growing and fish breeding and what to do with them. They also then want new challengers in the fish keeping world.

 

[JuiceBox52]

MTS

The lifelong affliction of fishkeepers that sadly has no cure.

It started with a kiss from one aquarium.....ends up with the fishkeeper living in the shed due to every room in the house suddenly, almost overnight, resembling the aquatic heaven where fish are the priority and you walk around in clothes full of holes, plastic carrier bags as shoes and eating scraps from the freezer that is now full of frozen fish food.

The fish rule your life.....they are your masters and mistresses....those beady eyes giving you death stares when you dare to eat infront of them, the silent giggling from them as they screw up yet another filter, the ungrateful nipps on the arms as you do yet another water change and your back garden, once pristine, looks like a Louisiana swamp on steroids.....your back has gone from all those buckets of water, your bank account is dryer than the Sahara Desert...and still those beady eyes follow your every move...even in your sleep they are watching you

You dream of fish poo....you lie in bed, not thinking about your dearly beloved lying beside you...no...you think only of those fish and that stupid filter hose that needs to be shimmied with the bottle brush without poo flinging all over everywhere again like it did last time....

Yes the nightmare of MTS is real......your life and bank account is no longer yours, the comfy armchair that you used to snuggle into has long since been evicted to your shed and a gleaming glass box is in its place....with those beady eyes watching you.....

You convince yourself that you control the fish, they do not...they DO NOT...control you

Then you wake up and find yet another batch of new arrivals squiggling around the substrate..... <sigh>

You look to the heavens and scream...."Oh sphericals....looks like that attic conversion will be needed after all...but not for me....for those damned fish who reproduce every time I think I have no more space left for yet another aquarium"

Yes...MTS is very real.....and its coming to get you.....soon

I love this post lol

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

For me it's a case of aesthetics. I love the sound of the filter humming and the water trickling (hopefully not onto the floor) I love watching the fish in all their elegant glory, gliding through the water effortlessly. And the nature of it, the plants and life within the box. And I want that on every surface of every room trouble is its expensive! And extremely time consuming....not the maintenance but the hours and hours you spend in front of them observing.

I have finally cured MTS though I think...I have a small family and a husband who has an incredibly high pressured job that doesn't allow much time for much else as well as other responsibilities (like many of us have, I'm sure) so I've had to learn to be content with just the one aquarium and it's pretty much running itself now...with the cost of living sky rocketing I may have to consider giving it up too

 

[GaryE]

I've thought about this a lot, as an extreme MTS case who has run 10 to 70 tanks for half my life, and who hasn't been without a tank since I was 8.
I think it's different for different people.
For me, as a kid, I sat down and watched a marbled molly swimming around and started wondering why it was doing what it did. Then my guppies had babies, and I started wondering at their colours (they were wild type with none of that boring all babies look the same linebred stuff). I would go to stores and wonder at what watching that fish or this fish would be like. I started reading about fish.
I had a short phase where I thought I had answers, and then realized I didn't and there was only one way to find out - hands on experience.
Wonder was important. Could I ever have tanks like the books, or now the internet show? Only one way to find out... could I keep that beautiful, difficult fish I had read about? Could I even find it?
I know people who see it all as an engineering project. They build systems and test water, and the fish are secondary. My mind doesn't work that way.
It's a hobby where you start thinking you can control things, and discover you can't. Fish will be fish, water will be water, plants... etc. But if you accept that everything in the hobby is a challenge, or a puzzle to solve, then you start looking for more and more puzzles, and longterm mts ensues. I don't think it's traditional hoarding or collecting, because it's dynamic. I see it as like gardening, except that I can tend my fish gardens all year, even in winter. Do I search for rare species? Yup. They're usually rare for a reason and if I can't solve the puzzles of keeping them, I can sure try. That takes a few tanks...

 

[Naughts]

All of the above. Plus misinformation.
I was told cories could be kept with tiger barbs. The cories dorsal fins started disappearing, hence tank number two.
I read that apistogramma are peaceful community fish. Mine weren't (well the female wasn't), hence tank number three...
I guess some people don't notice the conflicts and, instead of tanks, just keep buying more fish to replace the stressed ones. And misinformation will show the fish were only meant to live a year or two anyway.
But this site fights the good fight against misinformation. We just get to see other peoples fish here and need to try them out for ourselves which usually requires more tanks!

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I think partly it's the wide variety of options making it difficult to have just one tank with a few types of fish in it, and being content with just that. Different fish wanting different water conditions, or not able to live in the same tank means we have to buy another
Those of us who get a bad case of MTS (I had initially only wanted one small tank with some breeding guppies and maaaybe some cherry shrimp - had four tanks within the first year), tend to be the people in the hobby who jump in headfirst and fall in love with it. So we read around a lot, want to learn about all the species, and discover just how many fish are out there that we want to keep! We upgrade our tanks to larger ones, then the decide the previous tank will still be useful as a hospital or nursery tank, or maybe we can use it for *insert project here*. And so it begins. There are plenty of people out there who get a tank for a while, don't fall madly in love with the hobby and dive deeply into it, and just have a basic community tank without much further thought, but they're much less likely to be posting here except in an emergency.

While animal hoarders of other species exist (and I don't class MTS as hoarding, BTW! Not when the tanks are maintained and cared for, anyway) there are more natural constraints on the (slightly more) sane and sensible person when it's a different type of animal. Mammals are demanding and tend to smell in huge numbers, neighbours would soon complain and potentially authorites step in if someone has 10 dogs in a flat, and the noise level alone would put most off. Similar for most other mammals and birds, which can get very loud, although as someone with a parrot, there are a lot of bird nuts that have huge numbers of birds too. Notice that reptile and snake fans often have multiples as well though, the ones that are deep into their hobby certainly.

ETA: Forgot to mention, the time needed for day to day care is also vastly different. Fish really only need a moment of care in a day, to drop in a pinch of food, and even that isn't essential every day. Then maybe an hour or so a week for a WC and tank maintenance. I'm talking minimum care here, I know we usually devote a lot more than that! But every other pet I can think of, certainly all the ones I've had, which is a lot, has required a great deal more time and attention per day than a fish tank, so it's also easier in terms of time to have multiple tanks in comparision.

Fish in glass boxes are somewhat easier to justify having more of than keeping a lot of mammals, to ourselves and others. The fish aren't making noise beyond the filters, or a mess of your place beyond whatever mess we make ourselves while maintaining the tanks. Visitors see the tanks as decorative and beautiful, so it's a "collection" you can show off proudly, no neighbours complaining, and it's easy to find one more spot where you could fit an aquarium! If someone thinks of a tank as a mere decoration, or a pet for the kids, then it's likely to stay the one tank. But it becomes a hobby for most of us here, and hobbies mean always tinkering, always working on something, and often planning another tank set up or how to upgrade/improve the ones we already have leads to us getting "just one more".

 

[Wills]

I had 2-3 tanks about 16-17 years ago but closed them all when I moved. Then managed for 2010 to 2022 with one tank but now I have three...