When I was young we always had a tank with guppies and goldfish, and a few angel fish.
When I was living in Florida, we had carp and bass, sunfish and colorful koi.
We often feed them by hand. My husband trained a big bass to eat frogs and lizards out of his hand. It would leap out of the water to grab what-ever he had in his hand.
He had to watch his fingers because this bass was big and he often nipped his fingers when grabbing the frogs and lizards.
What types of fish do you have or had in the past?
My fish experiences are quite limited, at the moment I have a tank in my kitchen with a Lionhead, a Pearl Scale goldfish and some snails.
The pond in my garden houses 4 yellow Comets.
When I was younger I had some Black Moors, Fantails and even a pair of Convicts.
I am a bit scared of getting tropical fish, though I really want to. I am just not sure if I will be able to keep them alive and happy.
My motto regarding pets is, if you do not know how to care for them let them be, or learn from a pro. You have to have the money to care for them properly. Some pets are really expensive and difficult to care for. i tend to avoid those, as it breaks my heart if they die or are unhappy.
03-04-2013, 10:19 PM, (This post was last modified: 03-04-2013, 10:21 PM by Ram.)
I had goldfish when I was a kid. They did not end up well because I was clueless on fish care.
My serious fish keeping record started after I graduated from the college. I spent over two months doing research online on the subject of how to get started as well as various other subjects on beginner fish keeping.
The extensive research did pay off. I successfully started my tropical planted aquarium as you can see in my sig. Right now I keep only tropical fish. Dwarf Gourami, German Blue Ram, Cardinal Tetra, Black Phantom Tetra, Rasboras, corydoras, Neon Rainbow fish, etc.
Topical fish are in fact easier to keep than goldfish because they require smaller tank due to lower bio-load. Goldfish are messy and they produce a lot of ammonia. You need extra large fish tank and heavy duty filtration for goldfish. For the same tank, you can have a lot of tropical fish but only a few goldfish. I obviously love to have more fish to look at.
Yes, you need an aquarium heater for the tropical fish but it's cheap to get one and there is really nothing complex about it aside you must be more careful on the temperature of the new water each time you do partial water change. Tropical fish are more vulnerable to temperature shock.
Aside the tropical fish, I have zebra nerite snails, assassin snails, as well as yellow shrimps and red cherry shrimps in my fish tanks.
I've had fresh water fish tanks of varying sizes for the past 30 years now, so have had numerous types of fish at various times.
One of the most beautiful and gentle faced fish I've had only a few of, over the years, is the Blue Faced Discus. Sort of has a human quality to the look in its eyes and the lighting in the fish tank reflects beautifully on their body. The down side was that they never seemed to live real long for me. They need to be in a tank that is kept a bit warmer than the normal range and you can not have any other fish that are even slightly aggressive.
One year I got a Siamese Fighting Fish for a gift that was in a bowl of his own (where they do best) and on the top part of it was a live plant. I had this for three years and both the fish and the plant thrived. I called the fish "Crimmy" and would move my finger various ways to get him to respond to me and interact. It was very cool.
I used to keep an arowana. It was when I lived in the tropics where the weather was suitable for this kind of fish without a heated tank. It was very aggressive and was also an incredibly voracious feeder. It ate geckos (they were everywhere and we caught them to feed him), cockroaches, baby frogs (yes, you could buy them from pet shops), fresh water shrimps and their favorite, a type big centipede that you could buy frozen. It died mysteriously one day and we suspect that our cousin might have accidentally fed it with cockroaches that had been killed with insecticides.
When I was a young girl we had goldfish that we kept in a tub outside. They were beautiful goldfish. Just out of town, there was an area that ad two ponds, and in the ponds were goldfish. I have no idea who had started them there, but pretty much they were the only fish in the ponds. We would go out and fish, and when we caught a really pretty fish, we brought it home. The fish were about 6-7" long, so they were a nice size, and I loved watching them, and feeding them.
Later, my other had fish tanks inside, and she raised guppies, and had a variety of tropical fish in the tanks. I don't remember all of them, but my favorites were the angel fish, the gourami, and the koli loach, who was like a cross between a catfish and an eel, and would hide under the greenery in the bottom of the tank, and then come rushing out
We always enjoyed watching the fish, and the aquarium was so beautiful.
Over the years I have kept most types of tropical, marine and coldwater fish. I opened my own fish hobbyist shop back in 1983 and although leased it out in 1993 due to the recession only sold it in 2001 when we sold everything up and relocated to Tenerife.
Although as with everything technology moves on and improves the basics of good fishkeeping be it tropical, coldwater or marine remains the same. The biggest advances probably having been made in marine fishkeeping. Something that was very much in it's infancy in the days when I started.
My very first fish, brought home by my mother was a gold fish, which to this day I don't really care for. As for the fish that I have picked out, there have been many. I have had a couple betta's, several African cichlids, a red devil and a tiger shark.
I had also came across an actual Piranha in this little aquatic pet store I used to frequent, however I was never actually able to afford him.
08-12-2013, 02:22 AM, (This post was last modified: 08-12-2013, 02:23 AM by Ram.)
(08-12-2013, 01:46 AM)april222 Wrote: My very first fish, brought home by my mother was a gold fish, which to this day I don't really care for. As for the fish that I have picked out, there have been many. I have had a couple betta's, several African cichlids, a red devil and a tiger shark.
I had also came across an actual Piranha in this little aquatic pet store I used to frequent, however I was never actually able to afford him.
We favor Oscar fish. We currently have two and a giant sucker fish in a large tank. When my husband first brought them home I thought they were super creepy looking. They were also extremely little. Within a few months they grew into very large fish. I was surprised how tough they were. I coukd hear them crunching and grinding up their food between their teeth. We had one jump out of the tank and land hard on our tile floor. I was sure he was a goner, but nope! He lived another year and we gave him away when we had to switch duty stations and drain our tank.
Previously I had only had goldfish or betas and honestly had rotten luck with them living long.
We had guppies that I had won at a festival. Initially there were only four, but they quickly multiplied into a ton of them - so much so we had to expand to a larger bowl. Things started to get a bit crazy though, I'm guessing due to all the inbreeding, but there were a lot of deformed fish being born as well. Eventually we tried to put them in an aquarium. However we didn't know what we were doing when we set it up, and it turned out the water filter was way too strong and it sucked most of the fish into it and killed them.
![[Image: 220px-Tiger_shark%2C_Hawaii_Aii.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Tiger_shark%2C_Hawaii_Aii.jpg/220px-Tiger_shark%2C_Hawaii_Aii.jpg)
