fishrule101

When you were just starting in the hobby, did you already know about keeping fish??How did you start?

When I started I had just won a goldfish from the county fair. I knew I needed a tank so took my guiena pig hrbee about of his ten gallon and cleaned it. I let it dry over night letting the fish stay in his little carry tank. I got up and went to walmart to buy a filiter. Then filled the tank with water and then added Aquasafe. I went to walmart again and bought two mollies, a tiger barb, some platies , and tetras. the goldfish died about a day later. As for the rest of the group they all lived expect the tetras. After I got a computer I started doing research and leraned that I needed a heater, was overstocked, and that some fish don't get along with others. So thats my first tank and how I learned to care for fish.

purple_phoenix

My fish keeping started off with a fair goldfish too
I ended up buying a 25 litre tank for 3 goldfish, and once they'd grown out of it, started looking for a bigger one. And the bigger one I found was around 120l tropical setup with fish, so I stuck the goldfish in my uncle's pond
And now I have lots of tanks!
The fish at the fair are kept in about 2l of water per 20-30 fish though... they can hardly move, poor things It's hardly giving a good message out to the people who win them.

mathas

When I was maybe 8-10 years old, my dad started a 55 gallon angelfish tank, which is where I learned the absolute basics (and fell in love with angels).

Around 12 or so, when I started to have my own money from cutting neighbor's yards, I bought a 10g tank that immediately housed 3 red-bellied piranhas. After two "mysteriously" died (I wonder why ), I upgraded to a 30g tank for the survivor, which ended up living for several years.

The 10g turned into a betta tank, where I somehow managed to successfully breed a pair of bettas on my first try.

My dad later upgraded his 55 gallon to a 125, and I took the 55g and bought an oscar which lived for 4-5 years.

In retrospect, between the way he overstocked his tanks and I bought fish too large for mine, I'm not sure how either of us managed to not give up on the hobby, but we persisted until I went off to college. It's really amazing how little we knew, way back before the internet was in widespread use.

I finally got back into the hobby about a month ago, and here I am!

Dojella

I had a betta for a few years and he was awesome in his little 1 gallon. Then a friend said he was depressed and some live plants would cheer him up. So I got one at a LFS chain and a few days later, "Big Red" was covered in goo and floating. I wanted another fish, but more this time, given male betta reputations (at the time I thought males couldn't be kept with any other fish period). So I got a 10 gallon kit and stocked it with mickey mouse and sunburst platies, a siamese algae eating shark, a couple of mystery snails, and 'jumbo' african dwarf frogs. Of the originals, I still have one male sunburst (Lil' Sunny) and one male mickey mouse (Bryce), the siamese algae eating shark (Sharky) and the frogs (Wentworth and Sally). Lots of casualties in the beginning, but everything is under control now.

NeonTetra

When I was about 6 or 7 I got my first fish. He was a betta whom i named Mr. Limpet. One day when I came home from school, I noticed that Mr. Limpet changed colors. I told my mom and she said bettas do that sometimes. A few years later my mom told me that Mr. Limpet had died while I was at school . My parents didn't want me to be sad so my dad went to every fish store near us looking for a fish that looked like Mr. Limpet but couldn't find one that looked exactly like him. You can say I was shocked and felt stupid that I believed Mr. Limpet changed colors, but I was young and gullible. Anyway, ten years after Mr. Limpet died I went into Petsmart to get dog food. I was about to check out when I saw a betta that reminded me of Mr. Limpet. Needless to say I bought him and named him Neptune. I bought him a 5g tank, got MTS a few weeks later and bought a 20g. And thats the long story of how I got interested in fish keeping.