Anybody else into aquariums?

[Mordechaj]

Plants look artificial to me, but I might be wrong.

 

[i.keenum]

The grass is real but the others are fake.

 

[Boxerbuddy]

I've got a little plastic fish tank with a coy that used to be named Nom Nom. My daughter named him that cause it looks like thats what he's saying all the time. It's not worth taking a pic of because it's really a pathetic little tank...I should get a better on for him, but anyways thats not the point.

We renamed the fish about a week ago...here's the story behind it.
My daughter's mother and I are separated, I get her on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other weekend. So one Tues she looks at the tank and she says "Dad, Nom Nom's tank is a little dirty I think it's time to clean it". I said Ok kiddo I'll clean it tomorrow and when I get you on Thursday the tank will be nice and clean. So on Wed night I grabbed Nom Nom and put him in a large salad bowl full of water, and put the tank and all it's contents in the dishwasher.

I put the cycle on anti-bacterial which takes about 2 hours to complete, grabbed a leftover sub from the fridge and sat down on my lazy boy to eat and watch some TV. When I was done I lit up a bowl of Escudo and watched some more TV.

The dishwasher finally finishes,,but I'm a little lazy so I watch another half hour of TV. I get up to set up the tank...I walk by the huge salad bowl and....NO NOM NOM!!!! My 1st reaction was "the dog!", then I realized that she's encountered mice before and the only reaction she had was to paw at it and whine, so I couldn't imagine her jumping up on the ounter and gulping the fish down...plus the counter was dry. Then it hit me.....he jumped out...shit!

I searched the floor furiously and I finally found him...under the cabinet doors...almost completely dry and covered in dust. I scooped him up like lightning and put him back in the salad bowl in a panic....all the while envisioning my daughter in her 30's saying "remember when you killed my fish dad?"

He was in tough shape...barely moving and kindof bent sideways....I grabbed his fin and moved him gently back and forth to get some water through his gills...he picked up alittle, he started making the nom nom face again. I set up the tank again and put all his stuff in there and put him back in. I continued to manually move him around hoping he would just snap out of it. When I'd stop moving him he'd kindof sink to the bottom and just suck in water...didn't look good. I moved him around for another 15 mins or so but he wasn't getting any better. I decided that there really wasn't anything else I could do for him so I went to bed, fully expecting him to end up in the big fish bowl in the sky.

Next morning I got up ready to flush a fish and surprise!! He was alert and swimming around like nothing happened....amazing!

So when I picked up my daughter the next day I told her the story....she was alittle mad but happy that Nom Nom was still alive. When we got to my house she went over to look at him and said "who was that guy who came back to life". I'm decidedly non religious so I'm not sure where she heard that story....but I said "Lazarus". She says"Yeah, that guy...can we change his name to that?". I said "sure".

So yeah, thats the little story of our fish Lazarus.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

...egads. I'm kind of feeling sorry for Lazarus... :lol: I wonder if he was trying to end it all before fate finally go to him. :lol: Did the pet store give you any literature on fish care or... is this one of those "teaching kids about life/death" rituals that seem to go along with goldfish? Just wondering--not a parent, saw this process repeat itself all the time (I managed a pet store for a short time...):

* buy large bag of goldfish for kids

* buy tank totally wrong for such a "project" (against my suggestions)

* come back a week later with a bag of dead fish, crying child, yelling at me

:lol:

Not saying this is you, but seriously just wondering. Living things mean a lot to me, so that's why I figured I'd work for a pet store. Living things mean a lot to me, so that's why I stopped working at a pet store. At least I don't have to see the bullshit that goes on there. I'd rather people go hunting: at least the dead animals get eaten and had a halfway okay life. :lol:

:lol!:

*sigh* Macabre, but funny.

 

[Martin Romijn]

here are some pics of my aquarium

here's a movie made at the aqua-zoo where I work as a volunteer... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9oOWibHJTg

 

[user 2031]

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[Martin Romijn]

Very pretty stuff, Martin! You guys are really making me want an aquarium again... darn small house!

thanks, and eh...take a small aquarium !! :lol:
Nothing like smoking a pipe and staring into an aquarium.......

 

[user 2031]

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[Mordechaj]

That's really neat setup!

 

[wintermute]

Sorry about resurrecting this one, but maybe you guys can help me.

I've had several very successful aquariums in the past: fancy goldfish; Amazon mid-light planted aquarium; Amazon high-light planted aquarium; Southeast Asian low-light planted aquarium (best one I ever had). I've been through several moves and now finally own a house and really don't have time for too large of an aquarium. I have a 5-gallon tank that I found a while ago staring me in the face. Any ideas what I can do with it? For those with Tanganyika cichlids - can I comfortably handle J. Transciptus or shell dwellers in this (I doubt it)? Thanks.

 

[Rob_In_MO]

For those with Tanganyika cichlids - can I comfortably handle J. Transciptus or shell dwellers in this (I doubt it)? Thanks.

Actually with the Shell Dwellers, you might get away with this. In nature, they defend a very small territory and two pairs can live semi-comfortably in a 10-gallon tank.

Since it's a 5-gallon, water chemistry is going to be a challenge, since very small changes in water quality take place in a hurry. Should work though... Just buy a few of them and when a pair forms, remove the others.

 

[Mordechaj]

I'd rather not push the luck and go with some Gourami. Their labyrinth organ enables them to breathe air and they require the least volume of water that I know of.
5 gal is the perfect set up for one male and 3-4 females, heavily planted to their satisfaction, and they'll reward you with gaudy colours and interesting interaction.

I have a pearl gourami, but they come smaller too, and even the Betta Splendes falls under the category.

 

[Kyle Weiss]

With the unexpected death of my oranda Iichi, I have a 12 gallon which happily houses now three otocinclus catfish and a turquoise plakat dragon scale halfmoon betta. I have never enjoyed nor seen such great personality of a betta, because except when I was younger and had one, I never knew how to care for them properly. With a heater and filtration they are a totally different fish, I have caught myself watching him sneak around, swim and eyeball me for food for hours. Not the sluggish "sits in a small vase" half-dead fish you see everywhere. The big box pet stores sell them for reasonable cash, and they don't have huge water quality requirements. Throw some plants and some mystery snails in there and you have quite the little aqua bio-cube. 8)

 

[alanchrz]

55 gal

 

[wintermute]

Unfortunately, my go-to shop (where I used to go for cool little critters like cherry shrimp and badis badis) shut down, so it definitely does sound like a dwarf gourami or betta is my best bet, unfortunately. Has anyone ordered fish on-line?

 

[Kyle Weiss]

Unfortunately, my go-to shop (where I used to go for cool little critters like cherry shrimp and badis badis) shut down, so it definitely does sound like a dwarf gourami or betta is my best bet, unfortunately. Has anyone ordered fish on-line?

That suck. LFSs have been really hurt badly by the big chains.

Online fish ordering is hit-and-miss, to my knowledge, just find a place close by. Betta do well in transit (tough as nails), gourami are pretty sensitive little creatures (both before and after transit).

 

[i.keenum]

Well my german red peacock cichlids and red zebra cichlids both had fry, so i have 14 of one and 15 of another set up in their own tank. If you were close i'd say come get them. They are about 1 inch but you could only keep one fully grown in a tank that size. If you had really good filtration you could put more fish in. Speaking of has anyone here ever made thier own canister filter ?

 

[Grayhound]

I ran across this thread and even though it"s a little old I thought I'd post some shots of my Saltwater Reef and some of the coral in it. It's a project in work and just as enjoyable as a good pipe;

Had a little algae bloom going as you can see, since cleared up

 

[CygnusXII]

I used to raise Japanese Koi, and other exotic Goldfish. I also had Cichlids for a spell. I had a 100 Gallon and a 55 Gallon. I built my own recirculating canister pumps, back before they became easily bought at pet stores. I had a couple of inline ultraviolet sterilizers and all the power heads and Garden styled pond pumps pushing the water turnover. I used to enjoy it quite a bit. There was a guy in Haltom City Texas, that imported fish from Japan, and had them flown in all the time. I loved going to that place.

Unfortunately my psycho-bitch,girlfriend of the time, pardon the french took the gear in our split up. I came home to an empty apartment, after being gone for a bit, working a job away from the house.

 

[i.keenum]

Got another 55 gallon and now have a mbuna and a peacock cichlid.