Member Spotlight on Andy65

Hi everybody! I'm Andrew aka Andy65 on the boards. I'm 19 years old and live in Northern Indiana. I still live at home with my parents and two younger brothers. I'll be starting college in August '08 and plan on getting my degree in Culinary Arts and then maybe HVAC (Heating and Air Conditioning Service). We have two dogs and two cats in addition to the 7 tanks of fish that we keep. Some of my hobbies consist of; reading - mostly sci-fi, playing my violin, swimming in our pool (I'm also responsible for all of the maintenance and upkeep of it during swim season), playing video games (especially RPG's), and tricking out my new (to me at least) car!

10 Gallon Tank
This is the tank that started it all! It was originally stocked with Platies and my Honey Gourami, Rupert, but then I decided I wanted a German Blue Ram. Rupert and his platie friend (Big Mama) went into my mom's tank and I got Gorden RAMsey. He was lost in a tragic filter accident and is now resting in peace under our apple tree. Now this tank is home to my Betta (Patton) and 3 Shwartz Cories and waaaay too many plants. For aquarium lighting, I run about 1.5 watts per gallon using one 5500K florescent light. Filtration is an Aqua-Clear 20 and an air stone for O2.

6 Gallon Eclipse Aquarium
I got this tank for a steal at our local fish club's annual aquarium/fish auction. It's home to my pretty little Betta-girl, Mrs. Lovettes, a snail and one fat Otto as well as too many plants!

40 Gallon Aquarium
Technically this is my moms tank but since I help out alot with taking care of it and alot of my fish have been re-homed into it. It's stocked with Long-Finned Zebra Danios, Peppered and Skunk Cories, two Platies (Big Mama and her lone surviving offspring, "Baby"), Rupert, the grumpy Honey Gourami, and KeyKey, the most adorable Keyhole Cichlid EVER and (of course), way too many plants! Filters on this tank are 2 Aqua-clear 50s. Heater is a Vis-therm 100 watt.

90 Gallon Saltwater Aquarium
This was given to us by one of my father's friends. It's a 90 gallon salt-water, semi-reef tank. This one is probably my favorite tank. I do most of the care and maintenance on this tank too. It's stocked with a pair of Cleaner Shrimp, one Blood Red Shrimp, one Bristletooth Tomini Tang, a One Spot FoxFace, one Lyre Tail Anthia, one blue-green Chromis, Lenny the Lawnmower Blenny and one Percula Clownfish who is "hosting" our BIG toadstool coral, plus random Hermit Crabs and one black Sea Cucumber. I LOVE the cleaner shrimp in this tank. They like cleaning my hand, maybe that is because I give them some flake food after they are done doing their job. We run a sump and about 90 to 100 Lbs of live rock for all our filtering. The sump contains a Euro-Reef In-sump protein skimmer, the return pump, and a Refugium with live rock rubble and algae for nitrate control. Lighting is three 36", 96 Watt Power compact florescent lights. Heater is a Vistherm 200 watt.

To get my favorite saltwater fish, a Firefish. I'm thinking about setting up another Betta tank. I saw some nice looking Half-moon Bettas at Petco. I'm also thinking of doing a 20 Gallon Long stocked with some sort of Dwarf Cichlids and some sort of Tetra. Finally, I'm thinking about maybe getting a Bearded Dragon sometime down the road IF I can talk my parents into it, LOL!

I would like to thank my wonderful, loving parents for allowing all of the fish tanks that are set up in various corners of the house and for funding all of the runs (emergency and otherwise) to the pet store/LFS as well as all of the water and electricity it takes to keep all of our tanks going. Also all of the lovely people on Fishlore for all of their wonderful and helpful advice given to me when I was first setting up my tanks and was a total noob without any clue about fishkeeping or MTS!

List of Fish Lore Member Spotlights