Oh gosh... my first tank. It came from my grandfather's basement - can't for the life of me tell you if it was a 10 gallon or a 20 tall. Probably 10, but I remember it bigger because I was so small. My Dad was big on fish. He had a gorgeous 150-200 gallon reef in the living room that we loved.
He set up this tank for me in my bedroom. It was on a painted off white cast iron stand (off white, or white and stained from Papa Tony's cigarettes? I don't know). Had a lid and flourescent light, black plastic, with old
fish flakes crusted into the corners. Hang on back filter.
Heater, but I don't remember what it was.
Neon gravel. The mixed bag. Pink, blue, yellow, and green. You know the one. If I remember at all, there was a
cave made of rocks for - you guessed it - a common pleco. Some
fake plants.
I can't remember the stocking exactly, but the highlights were - a bubble eye
goldfish, the pleco, and a small school of
zebra danios.
Guppies on and off. And a terrible, awful, hungry
SAE. I woke one night to see it hanging off my goldfish, feeding on its slimecoat. And then some. Scarring, for a nine year old. One of the danios lost an eye - not our fault, but the LFS employee who nailed it in the face netting it. I named it
Cyclops. It lived for years. There was what felt like a tri-annual
ich outbreak. I went into fishkeeping as an adult assuming ich was going to happen to me bi-monthly, and that my only recourse would be to stain the water blue and watch half my fish die anyway. We did regular
water changes and siphoned the gravel well.
The pleco died young. The goldfish suffered a burst ...eye? It all went poorly. But I didn't know any better and I loved it. Retrospectively, I just don't understand exactly what my dad was up to. His reef was a great success, and when he tore it down to make space (and time) for his growing kids, he set up an
oscar and a common pleco in the same tank, in the basement. He ran two
canister filters on that tank,
bare bottom with beautiful big
driftwood. He raised the oscar and the pleco from little 2" fish into full grown monsters. They both lived long, healthy lives.
When I got to college, I put a
betta in an empty jack daniels bottle. It didn't last long. When I actually got into keeping fish, I was mortified. I think I came a pretty long way. And yeah, I still trust my dad to look after my fish.
