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Hello,
I have been a fishaholic for more than three decades. It doesn't matter if it is keeping fish, visiting public aquariums, catching fish (went to Alaska in June catching Halibut up to 130 pounds), cooking fish or eating fish (don't worry - I won't eat your fish).
Starting out with freshwater fish, I took up the task after snorkeling in the Bahamas to start my first saltwater tank. The customs issues were different then. We caught our fair share of damsels, angels, triggers, butterflies, invertebrates and corals back then and brought them home in Styrofoam coolers. We lost very few fish in the short term. I learned very quickly that water quality was very important and was able to learn (firsthand) about marine fish diseases.
Many years later and upgrading up to a 600-gallon reef tank put in my office (and partially built by ADG), I had more than 100 corals and a boatload of interesting fish.
I don't have the luxury or space for such a tank in my home so I decided to downsize and work on the challenge of a planted tank. When I was in grade school, I quickly observed that my plants often slowly wilted away. I combined fluorescent and incandescent bulbs to no avail. I altered the photoperiod up to 24 hours and still had problems with plants like elodia, sword plants and the infamous Madagascar Lace plant.
During college, I started my own import business and bought both fresh and saltwater fish from all over the world. We used to buy algae eaters by the thousands, arrowanas with egg sacks by the hundreds and all kinds of marine fish and invertebrates. Back then, it was legal to buy a blue-ringed octopus or a walking catfish. We found it was far easier to import than to breed fish.
We learned a lot about water chemistry. It was apparent that temperature alone was not the key to acclimating fish after a long haul on an airplane. Some fish, like corydoras cats, were difficult to acclimate and resulted initially in heavy losses. I changed some tactics like reducing the water to four inches deep and matching the pH in the large bags that were heavily medicated with the likes of methylene blue and malachite green. We added peat bags to tanks to acclimate South American tetras and angel fish. Then we would slowly acclimate the fish to the local water supply, in my case, St. Louis water. We even kept some fish in cheap children's swimming pools. One time, we bought a blue pool and a yellow pool. The fish in the blue pool acclimated quickly but the majority of the fish in the yellow pool were jumping out and preferred the grey color of a basement floor over a yellow bottom of a pool. We designed some netting to help but the blue pool was the answer.
Today, I see fish that we did not have any knowledge about our access to buying them. The new species fascinate me...new tetras, rasboras, cats, plecos, Africans and more.
Like an aquarium, I need to be recycled to catch up on the requirements of a planted tank. While the Internet is a very valuable tool (I used to rely on Herbert Axelrod and his books), I look forward to interacting with the aquarists on this web site.
Mike
249 and Louetta area
I have been a fishaholic for more than three decades. It doesn't matter if it is keeping fish, visiting public aquariums, catching fish (went to Alaska in June catching Halibut up to 130 pounds), cooking fish or eating fish (don't worry - I won't eat your fish).
Starting out with freshwater fish, I took up the task after snorkeling in the Bahamas to start my first saltwater tank. The customs issues were different then. We caught our fair share of damsels, angels, triggers, butterflies, invertebrates and corals back then and brought them home in Styrofoam coolers. We lost very few fish in the short term. I learned very quickly that water quality was very important and was able to learn (firsthand) about marine fish diseases.
Many years later and upgrading up to a 600-gallon reef tank put in my office (and partially built by ADG), I had more than 100 corals and a boatload of interesting fish.
I don't have the luxury or space for such a tank in my home so I decided to downsize and work on the challenge of a planted tank. When I was in grade school, I quickly observed that my plants often slowly wilted away. I combined fluorescent and incandescent bulbs to no avail. I altered the photoperiod up to 24 hours and still had problems with plants like elodia, sword plants and the infamous Madagascar Lace plant.
During college, I started my own import business and bought both fresh and saltwater fish from all over the world. We used to buy algae eaters by the thousands, arrowanas with egg sacks by the hundreds and all kinds of marine fish and invertebrates. Back then, it was legal to buy a blue-ringed octopus or a walking catfish. We found it was far easier to import than to breed fish.
We learned a lot about water chemistry. It was apparent that temperature alone was not the key to acclimating fish after a long haul on an airplane. Some fish, like corydoras cats, were difficult to acclimate and resulted initially in heavy losses. I changed some tactics like reducing the water to four inches deep and matching the pH in the large bags that were heavily medicated with the likes of methylene blue and malachite green. We added peat bags to tanks to acclimate South American tetras and angel fish. Then we would slowly acclimate the fish to the local water supply, in my case, St. Louis water. We even kept some fish in cheap children's swimming pools. One time, we bought a blue pool and a yellow pool. The fish in the blue pool acclimated quickly but the majority of the fish in the yellow pool were jumping out and preferred the grey color of a basement floor over a yellow bottom of a pool. We designed some netting to help but the blue pool was the answer.
Today, I see fish that we did not have any knowledge about our access to buying them. The new species fascinate me...new tetras, rasboras, cats, plecos, Africans and more.
Like an aquarium, I need to be recycled to catch up on the requirements of a planted tank. While the Internet is a very valuable tool (I used to rely on Herbert Axelrod and his books), I look forward to interacting with the aquarists on this web site.
Mike
249 and Louetta area
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