Yay New Fish!

[TiffanyJayne]

After reading the 'how much' thread i started adding together how much this hobby has cost me when i got pass £300 i gave up and unlike most women that go out with the girls or shoe shopping i went fish shopping to make me feel better and got me 5 bronze corys, 3 tiny goldfish, a brine shrimp brewing kit =D, 6 longfin danios, food, food and more food and eaky tubifex ergh!!! some fancy new carbon food stuff for my plants, new potted plants, and then to really treat myself i picked up an 18 inch giraffe catfish (big huge massive smiley face) He's querky and cute and the only fish i've seen stick up for himself after my barb tried to nip him.
My paradise female died this morning, she hadn't been looking well for a few days and as mean as it sounds i really did not like her (she came with a tank) so im not too sad and glad shes not in pain/sad anymore but i don't like it when an unexplained death comes about i've had 2 in the last 4 months one rummy nose and now her (2 different tanks) obviously theres no telling how old she was or if she had it before i got the tank so i also got myself a microscope to check for things it's all fancy and shiny i just hope i don't need to use it too often, needless to say my £300+ has now atleast double but i'm sure i'll be back next week for more or i may even take shares out on the shop.

 

[Wills]

Wow thats quite a few fish! What tank has the Giraffe Catfish gone in? If a barb (guessing tiger barb) is in with him I would suspect they wont be there for much longer.

 

[TiffanyJayne]

Yes it's a tiger barb an overly large and nasty barb who has picked it's own corner, as he's also in with a pagasius and a moustache i don't think theres too much worry, the giraffe has just come out of a tank with 2 arrowana's and some other smaller fish, none seem to have bothered each other and he did give the barb a quick tail flick when it tried to nip him but the barb didn't seem fased in the slightest.

 

[OldMan47]

It never pays to add up the costs of the fish keeping hobby TiffanyJayne. I hate to even think about what it has cost me to buy all the equipment for the 25 tanks I have up and running. Then add in the cost of the rare and hard to find fish that I have housed in my tanks and it comes to a considerable sum. That ignores completely the cost of having about 5 more tanks ready to go at the drop of a hat if I am successful at buying fish on line or in an auction. My staple fish food budget, not even counting treats like frozen foods, is over $10 per quarter buying it on line at wholesale type prices. Power to run heaters, lights and filters also comes to a tidy sum.
If you are not willing to spend the cash on your hobby, you are not. I recover a small part of my expenses by selling some results of breeding some of my hard to find fish at club auctions, but it only really covers the cost of fish food and not much more.

 

[Wills]

Power to run heaters

Thats the worst expense in the hobby for me - the heat just escapes I wish there was some way to have a more energy efficiant heating system in a tank Can sympathise whole heartedly with you there Oldman, I gave up trying to breed my cichlids in the end because it just got too limiting with what I could keep with them so

Wills

 

[TiffanyJayne]

I'd love to breed fishes, don't get me wrong i can afford what i'm doing...electric is the worse money eater here.
Out of the 14 tanks i have only 2 things seem to be having babies like it's going out of fashion. apple/ramshorn snails and platties both of which the outcome will be given away, so im trying my hand at long fin danios once i return from my holiday and then if i can get really lucky i may have some baby shimp and corys when i get back.
It's so exciting not knowing when or if you'll see young ones and what they may even turn out like. I just have no experience and info pages tell alot but don't explain in much detail, i buy fish because i love there company, there look and all out personalities.

 

[OldMan47]

If you want to save money on heating tanks, don't look for more efficiency in the heaters themselves, they are very efficient. The problem is that we want to watch our fish so we leave the whole tank surface open. That means heat is escaping from all 6 surfaces. If you want to cut your heating bills, tape some styrofoam to the back and ends of the tank. It should cut your heating costs almost in half but it will not look as pretty. In an extreme case, you can set up a fish room, it sounds like a luxury but really isn't, and heat or cool the room close to the tank temperatures you are holding with individual heaters. It sounds expensive but did you ever notice how warm a fish shop is in the middle of winter? They are using the building heater to keep all of those tanks at about the right temperature and pay nothing extra to heat individual tanks. I will soon have a new home built and intend to include a well insulated fish room with its own heating system. That room should cut my heating costs to almost nothing because the room insulation will make heating the room cheap and the warm room will mean no individual heaters for my tanks. I just need to justify the original expense of the room and its insulation.