# Your first tank?



## TTTT (Dec 13, 2008)

what was your first tank? Mine was so overstocked and overfed I'm surprised all the fish lived for 4 years. No bashing, flaming, etc because many people were inexperienced and misinformed when the started fish-keeping.

Ok... here goes

10 gallon bowfront: two angel fish, ten neon tetras, 1 zebra dainos, 2 common pleco, 1 clown loach, 3 cory cats, and a comet goldfish. Never did water changes, and all the fish except the comet and one of the pleco. All lived for like 3 years then a super amonia spike and they ALL DIED

I was 6 years old.


----------



## smark (Dec 2, 2008)

My first tanks were two Ten Gallons with two gold fish. One for each of the girls. They went back to the fish store after awhile. Then the Neighbor gave me a used 20 Gallon with a hole in it and all the equipment to go with it. So I went out and bought a 20 Gallon Tank. Still have that and more. I killed allot of fish for the longest time because everyone kept telling me to do changes, Over cleaning and water checks. The day I gave up on it is when it all started to work its self out. If I don’t touch it to much it all works well. Except for frequent water changes.


----------



## Obsidian (May 20, 2007)

hmmm. Technically my first tank was one of those fish bowls with the rim on top. No idea how big it actually was. Maybe a gallon. I got the fish at a typical fair event and it actually lived more than 3 days. My cat used to drink water from the bowl. I have no memory of how long the fish lived. My guess is less than a year but more than 6 months. The fish got decent sized for the bowl it was in. Mom had 2 tanks. I believe one 10 gallon and one 20 gallon. She had 2 clown loaches an angel or two and a silvery white thing that might have been a gouramie. I am sure there were other fish in that tank, I just don't remember. That was the 20 gallon. The 10 gallon was a guppy mill. She loved to breed them. Managed to get some males that were quite impressive to a 10 year old. I loved to watch their tails. 

In college I had 2 goldfish in a bubblegum machine 1 gallon thing. Talk about twisted. I loved the dang thing hahah. I like twisted things like that. The remaining fish was a nice deep gold with gold fins until right to the end where they turned white. I named it Goldie Hawn. 

With that fish I had a Betta in the worlds smallest bowl, only a hair bigger than the cups they come in. I named him VHS. Told ya. Twisted. I will not tell you how this fish met it's end, only that it is almost impossible to be as dense as I was, and my neighbors hated me. 

That's it until now. Thankfully now I have a small clue about what I am doing. I would love to figure out how to get a channel cat into a bubblegum tank. I am convinced it can be done.


----------



## Knight~Ryder (Dec 2, 2007)

smark said:


> I killed allot of fish for the longest time because everyone kept telling me to do changes, Over cleaning and water checks. The day I gave up on it is when it all started to work its self out. If I don’t touch it to much it all works well. Except for frequent water changes.


I'm not sure I understand this statement....I find if I leave everything too long in my tank it's gets so bad to the point of the fish not behaving normal. If I do weekly water changes, and clean my filter and unit, plus the plants the fish are a lot happier. I actually just did a massive cleaning, and all the fish are still okay. I now know I can do a massive cleaning but in steps.

I never had a first tank exactly. I came home one day and my wife had set up a 10g tank with 3 black skirt tetras and a few other ones. When I saw that, I began to research what the fish were and I learned quite a bit.

I said if we are going to have fish let's do this right. I went out and got a 38 gallon. I didn't know I was supossed to do a cycle. I went ahead and put the fish in and the black skirts are still alive today! (the hardiest fish I have ever come across) At first I didn't grasp the whole "community fish" thing but as time went on I understood it. 

Now I have a tank full of wonderful happy fish thriving in 8.2ph water!!!


----------



## justintrask (Jun 29, 2008)

hah.

my dad had 2 75G, one malaysian and one amazon river basin, right next to each other when I was growing up. He also had a 55G in our kitchen with some angelfish among others. My first fish i guess was when we went to an auction at the worcester aquarium society when i was 3 and I cried until he bought the upside-down catfish. then i fell asleep on his shoulder.

My dad owned a company called Natural Aquarium Systems. He set up tanks and ponds for people. He also bred pearl gouramis and white clouds on a VERY large scale. We had 2500G ponds in our basement, and he bred them in those. There were THOUSANDS.

When we moved, he gave up on the hobby. My brother set up a 20G, and being the competitive brother, I set up a 29G tank with bigger, more aggressive fish.

My first tank was a 29G with a silver arowana, orante polypterus, 20 neon tetras, 6 HUGE albino corys (biggest ive seen), 2 common plecos, 1m/2f swordtails, 2 dwarf gouramis, and a bunch of plants.

Now I'm up to 8 tanks, and have gotten my dad back into the hobby.


----------



## smark (Dec 2, 2008)

Knight~Ryder said:


> I'm not sure I understand this statement....I find if I leave everything too long in my tank it's gets so bad to the point of the fish not behaving normal. If I do weekly water changes, and clean my filter and unit, plus the plants the fish are a lot happier. I actually just did a massive cleaning, and all the fish are still okay. I now know I can do a massive cleaning but in steps.


I fussed with it to much. 
I guess I over did it.


----------



## Obsidian (May 20, 2007)

smark said:


> I killed allot of fish for the longest time because everyone kept telling me to do changes, Over cleaning and water checks. The day I gave up on it is when it all started to work its self out. If I don’t touch it to much it all works well. Except for frequent water changes.


This is an example of overdoing it and having things go wrong. I gravel vaced my tank weekly, did 20% water changes, kept the filter clean monthly. I ended up with a minicycle that lasted forever because I didn't know what it was. I tested weekly and the numbers came out fine (0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10 nitrate) so there was no reason to suspect minicycle. The water was slightly cloudy, just enough to be annoying when looking at it from the side, clear from the front. When I let the tanks just go for a month everything cleared up. Now I do cleanings every 2-3 weeks and clean the filter about every other month. That is what works for my tanks with my water. Something else might work for others tanks with their water. 

People can cycle with fish and all their fish will live for years, some the fish live for about a year, some about a few months, some never make it. Some people do fishless cycle and still loose fish. Sometimes fish that look healthy and happy are not. They can't speak, so we don't know.


----------



## shev (Jan 18, 2005)

I think it was a Sherman.


Maybe a panzaar?


----------



## COM (Mar 15, 2008)

Rats. Shev beat me to the joke.

My first tank was a 4 gallon acrylic setup from Costco. I got it for my birthday in fifth grade. I don't remember exactly what the first fish were, but I seem to think neons.


----------



## darkstar (Nov 25, 2008)

3 koi in a 10gal tank...2 were dead the next day, the third was dead on the second day.


----------



## ragnahr (Sep 25, 2008)

my first tnk was a 15litre with 2 goldfish. moved them into my current tank when i first baught it. and only recently got rid of them. They went into a friends pond


----------



## Sea-Agg2009 (Aug 2, 2008)

My parents had an 8 gallon octagon since I was 4 or so (long time ago). Not sure what was in there other than a kuhli loach. They moved up to a 40 gallon when I was in 5th grade of so. We thought all the fish were dead, but the loach was accidentally transfered in the gravel, still alive of course. Now that same loach is in a 12 gallon up in my room at my parents place...that makes 17 years and counting.


----------



## Knight~Ryder (Dec 2, 2007)

My first tank was a one liter bottle of coke (washed out of course) with 7 full grown black skirt tetras. They lived 13 years. :lol:


----------



## maykaym4 (Dec 2, 2008)

This is a fun topic!

My first real tank was about 9 years ago. I was randomly in a pet store, saw a tiger barb I liked, and decided to take him home. So, I ran around the store, picked out a 55 gallon, 5 more tiger barbs, 2 tinfoil barbs, a pleco, and 2 long skinny black and yellow striped fish (I still don't know what they are). I knew nothing about fish compatibility, cycling, or, well... anything. The tiger barbs got eaten in the first few months (now I wonder if they had died due to the tank spikes and stuff...then just got eaten after they died), but everyone else is still alive--and HUGE! I gave them to my mom and she's still got them!


----------



## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Hmmm... 
It was 1972. Things were very different then, in many ways.

My parents had a lot of tanks for years, but I never took much interest in them. One day I went to the fish store with my dad, mostly because my favorite hobby shop was in the same stripmall, and I gave the tanks a quick look while I was in the place. I saw my first fish in a tank all by himself, and I just had to have him.

You don't see fish like those anymore. Pretty much the closest you'll likely come today is a picture in an old book. 

This was a Molly. He was a male Sailfin of truly immense size. He was velvety black and perfect, but unusual in that the top edge of his dorsal fin was bright scarlet red, and his tail had a big bright orange cresent mark in it. This was obviously a Sailfin/Liberty cross, which is something I haven't seen in many, many years.

Yes, he looked very much like something from the old pictures in the very old books, back when the fish in the hobby still largely came from people who cared about quality.

He went into my first tank, a Metaframe steel-framed 5 gallon with a slate bottom. My dad gave me a hang-on box filter from one of his tanks for an instant cycle, and his tank mates were 2 female mollies and 3 redlined rasboras ( which is something else you hardly ever see anymore. )

Oh, yes, the tank was quite overstocked, but my dad finally had a chance to teach me some stuff about his hobby, and I finally started to learn it, and those fish did remarkably well for several months. Not bad for a first attempt.


----------



## trashion (Aug 24, 2007)

10 gallon, 5 different tetras (I think I had a serpae, a black skirt, an albino black skirt, a bleeding heart, and a red-eye)

Never did a W/C until the algae was unbearable to loook at, then I took everyone out and did a full change, rinsed gravel, etc. Needless to say, I often lost fish when doing this.

I think I went through a pair of cories and 2 ADFs as well. Oops 

My albino/white skirt tetra, Gregory, lived for 5 years (He was stunted) and it did kinda hurt to give him up when I started to get fish better suited to the tank size.


----------



## Plecostomus (Jul 31, 2006)

My first was a 10 gallon tank. I started with 3 danios, 3 tiger barbs, a plecostomus, 2 Chineses algea eaters, and 1 kuhli loach. Everything went fine until one tiger barb decided to be the boss, killed off the two slower danios and the other barbs. The Chinese alegea eaters were actually cool to watch, because when I put in a shrimp pellet for the bottom feeders, the tiger barb would swim over and take it, then the CAE would get angry and chase the tiger barb all over the tank, while the plecostomus ate the pellet that the barb dropped. But they all eventually died except for the kuhli loach, which I moved to my other tank when I got my red crab. The funny thing is, the loach that was in the 10g is the only one that is strong enough to burrow in the gravel I have. I guess since it was afraid of the other fish it had to burrow a lot.


----------



## TTTT (Dec 13, 2008)

Knight~Ryder said:


> My first tank was a one liter bottle of coke (washed out of course) with 7 full grown black skirt tetras. They lived 13 years. :lol:


My little brother kept an adf in a mountain dew bottle


----------



## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

my first tank was a 10 gallon.a month later i got a 29 gallon.tetras,angels and a few others.then i got a couple more tanks and fish.within a year or so,i had over 100 tanks.raised,bred and sold fish for several years.got divorced and everything went..a few years later got more tanks and fish.got sick and moved and everything went again.and again....started back up some years ago and now have a few tanks set up.
and it is true...the more you mess with a tank;the more problems you have with it.
kind of like mary's lamb.."leave it alone and it will come home;wagging it's tail behind it."


----------



## SHizzle (Dec 18, 2008)

My first was a good old gold fish fish bowl when I was like 5 or 6, however it was from wal-mart they inevitable died the next day rrrrr.... wal-mart but I moved on and when I was older got better things


----------



## Knight~Ryder (Dec 2, 2007)

KR - My first tank was a one liter bottle of coke (washed out of course) with 7 full grown black skirt tetras. They lived 13 years.



TTTT said:


> My little brother kept an adf in a mountain dew bottle


I was kidding myself. I don't think that can be done, nor would I want to try.
What's an ADF?


----------



## TTTT (Dec 13, 2008)

ADF= African Dwarf Frog
My brother bought it, put it in a 2 liter mountain dew bottle, and then we went to Church and a party afterwards and when we came home and it was dead.

The next day he got a 5 gallon tank with a Betta.


----------



## fish_doc (Jan 31, 2005)

My parents had tanks when I was in grade school. So I wont count those.

My first tank was a 10gal with black gravel and neon colored glass rock. It had a bubble wall across the entire back and stocked with neon tetras, headlight tetras, and one chinese algae eater. It had a 10gal whisper filter, proper flourcent hood, and a heater.

My only problem was I overfed them all the time.


----------



## InuGirlTeen (Oct 26, 2008)

My first tank was a small, 1.5 gallon hexagonal tank harboring a lone, veiltail male betta. That sucker lived for five years!


----------



## StripesAndFins (Dec 31, 2008)

my first tank was a 5 gallon tank that kept a red tailed shark. I now know that it is not even close to the size that they should be kept in.


----------



## elvis332 (Dec 29, 2007)

i was 7 when i had my first fish tank

it was a 5 gallon bowfront with 6 common gold fish did complete water changes every week them all died together in the second month


----------

