I only know of one better way to relieve stress and that is to empty a Beta-c mag as fast as you can. Have you ever tried keeping tropical fish, very relaxing.[:D]

Um, yes we do keep fish.

My wife's ex did.

Damn!  I was thinking about posting this same topic.  Among my many expensive and time consuming hobbies, my aquarium has got to be one of the worst.  Not nearly as bad as my hotrods but still a money pit.  I've only got a 60gal reef setup right now and plan to get a 180gal soon and eventually a 300gal.  The part that eats up money is my electric bill!  Try running pumps, lights, fans, chillers, etc.  It's a good think I live in an area not affected by all the rolling blackouts or I would have been screwed.  But once you get everything up and running properly, the tank almost takes care of itself.  It's amazing what creatures you don't realize you have at first, and when you turn the lights out and use a red flashlight at night...Whoa, where did that come from and what the hell is it?![shock]

I only do fresh water now, but I'm researching a salty tank in the near future.[:D]

Arlady has a 30 gallon setup.

I had a 50 gallon setup in my old house, but it will be empty till I can find a house here in the valley of the sun.


Then we will prolly turn the 30 to 1 or 2 fish salt setup.

Not sure on the current inventory,

but it is 1 large pleco
one small pleco
one very large red-tailed shark
one red gaurami that thinks he is a tiger barb, and 4-8 tiger barbs.  4 were mine and I forgot how many she added.  Not sure what else is in there.

Oh molly, our salt n pepper molly if she is still with us.  Hmmmmm, I'll have check with lady on that.

I just keep goldfishes.

I just setup a 55 gal. and I'm sitting here making a list of what fish to stock it with, definitely want many Neon Tetras, have Elephant nose fish already they are very cool. Also found some upside down catfish they are also very neat, then the rest will be standards probably, unless I can find something else unusual. Almost forgot my favorite, Clown Loaches are the best.[:D]

I have a 200 gallon in storage, I have been buying equipment for the last 2 years and almost ready to get it setup in my office at work.

Confederate,


We found out the hard way(by the completely missing fishies at a rate of 1 per day) that ANY fish larger than the tetras, will eat the tetras.  You have been warned.  

I highly reccommend Tiger Barbs, just make sure you get at least 4.   They are fun to watch, and get into these twirling duels as they establish their heiarchy in the shool.

also like the red tail sharks.

Plecos are nice for brown algea, nothing eats green algea, but they are VERY DIRTY when they get big.

Cloan loaches are cool too and are "at bat" for our tank.

If it is a new tank, I would highly reccommend just to get 2 cheap goldfish at first.


about 90% of the time, as the bacteria in a new tank gets setup, the fish will all die.  Believe me, we know.  Do as you will, but add the fish slowly, that way you won't kill a tank of expensive fish.

Generally after the first set of fish die, the bacteria stabilizes and is good pretty much forever as long as there are fish in there.  Also do frequent water changes.  Once every two weeks about and you should do well.

Thanks for the heads up on the Neons, I have heard that Tiger Barbs are fin nippers, is this true?? I may put the Neons in my Guppie tank.

I've only found that to be true if you don't have enough of them.   Mostly they keep it to themselves.  They have to have a school of at least 4.

My Redtail shark does "own" a section of the tank that only the plecos are allowed to violate.?

How big is your redtail, I have read they can get quite large, but I have only been able to get them about 3 or 4 inches long.

when I left him with ARlady, I think he was about 4 to 5" long which is supposed to be about as big as they get.  ARlady could tell you better how much bigger he is now.

I got a 60 gallon filled with clown loaches and a few red tails, rainbow, and one albino shark.  The red tails are about 4inches.  The albino is about 7 inches long.  Used to like birds more. Had 2 African grays, brownhead, meyer, and senegal.  All african birds.  Had to get rid of them when the baby started crawling.  Birds were just too messy.

I used to work at an aquarium shop while in high school, kept all the freshwater and saltwater tanks in order.  My pride and joy was a 500 gallon reef setup on the Dutch Aquatic System, my favorite part of the day was feeding the anemonies life brine shrimps.

Get a redtail catfish.

They can grow upwards of about four feet.

Salt is the only way to go, but be very careful of the species you blend together...

I had a puffer toxify the entire tank once, and a it resulted in the loss of several hundred dollars in fish and live rock!

Our next tank will be a minimum of 125 gallons, and again be a wide array of "creepy crawlies" and schooling reef fish.

If you go with salt, beware that a healthy hand caught fish can easily cost between $25 and as much as $200 or more ([i]I've actually seen them approaching $1000[/i])...  Therefore, quarantine tanks are a must!

As mentioned in a previous post; the day lights, night lights, chillers, heaters, power filters, trickle filters, power heads & protien skimmers get rather costly to run...  but also DO NOT forget to put all of this on a very powerful battery backup system, since a temperature change of +/- 2-3 degrees can throw everything off balance!

After years of trial and error, we finally had a stable aquarium that ONLY needed water to be added as it evaporated.  I would do a water change no more often than 6-8 months, and generally just did them on an annual basis.

We also had a few fish that actually like to be petted and hand fed!  [:)]