What fish did you start off in the hobby with?

[mickey]

When i started fish keeping, 7 years ago i was advised to
buy some guppies by a friend of mine, he said they were cheap,
hardy and fun to keep.
This turned out to be true, i had a lot of fun with these fish in
my 30g and i learned the basics from keeping them.
I would be interested to hear what kind of fish you guys started
off with in the hobby and what fish you would advise a novice
to start of with today.
I wouldn't advise someone to start off with guppies today as i
dont think they are as hardy and easy to keep as they were 7 years ago,
Cheers.

[kveeti]

I think zebra danios are a good first fish.

If you think guppies of 7 years ago were hardier, think 35 years ago. My first fish were guppies. They were extras from a girl I went to school with. We spent lunch at that school, so basically they were in a bowl all day at school. I took them home and housed them in a 2 gallon goldfish bowl. It was unheated and unfiltered. Once a week I transferred them to a soup bowl and cleaned their "tank" and gravel with dish soap, rinsed well, put in new water, without dechlorinating it, and put the guppies back in. They lived for quite a while under those horrid conditions and even bred. I used to pull out the fry into another bowl, but they always died. Little wonder.

Then I finally figured out what I should be doing. My first tank with filter and heater was a 5 gallon aluminum framed tank; it is still sitting in my parents' basement. The canopy was aluminum, too. Very, very shiny. I had guppies in that tank, too.

[TKOS]

The first fish that I had all to myself was a betta. He died in 1 day. A few bettas later and I finally now get what is going on in the world of fish and what it takes to make sure they survive.

[yashinfan]

Well, I guess goldfish would have to be my first fish. Although, I was really young and I thought they were really annoying. But this year, when I got back into fishkeeping, I started with zebra danios.

[ccplim]

I started mine with flowerhorn mid last year and now keeping bichirs.

[Dangerdoll]

I guess guppies are or were a common starter fish back in the day. I also had a common pleco. I started with them somewhere's around 20+ years ago, and started with them with not so good habits as well. I had them in a 20 gallon, I had a whisper filter and no heater. I never did water changes. I never offered the pleco anything more than the falling fishfood that I gave the guppies and thought he could survive on just that. It seemed my plecos never made it past being 3 inches or so in them days.... I musta been starving them. 20 years and lots of trial and error, topped with exerience and the advice here, I've got highly successful tank (IMO of course) and I shine when people are in awe when they see it. :D

[joey1]

My first tank was a 20 gal with goldfish.

Joe

[BigFishDude]

a ten gallon with with about 10 goldfish a betta and a pictus cat. Mind you I was about 5 years old. The one fish per gallon rule was quite popular way back when :rolleyes: ;)

[Hebdizzle]

black skirt tetras.

Aaron

[Slappy*McFish]

My 1st fish were Bleeding Heart Tetras, a corydoras, and red velvet swordtails.

[anonapersona]

My first fish were the goldfish and koi I stocked my 300 gallon pond with.

They did great for about 5 years. Then they started dying off. And all the new fish I got died off rapidly, too. I gave up after another 3 or 4 years.

Later, when I decided to redo the pond (or else get rid of it) the first fish also got sick. I FINALLY realized that the 10 pound bag of flake food I was STILL using (now 10 years old) was killing off the fish I dumped that food.

[Clownloach458]

I started of with the typical. 5gallon tank. with livebearers(excelent beginner fish). my friend (swedishfish) got me into the hobby after he had kept a betta for a while and got a 10g tank. a first i thought fish were boring.. now my life revolves around fish. Then i found out about loaches;)

[Stephen]

Guppies... 10 gallon tank which they soon overpopulated.

[Andy16]

2 zebra danios.

[Fishskin]

Male and female guppies in a 5 gallon "marble" Metaframe tank over 50 years ago.

[Glenstorm]

3- 20G Head and Tail light tetras

Which then expanded to 2-pearl gouramis, 1-BGK, 1-Bosemanii rainbow, 1-green cory, and a pair of swordtails.

Now I have a breeding tank FULL of swordtails, and a 75G rift lake setup.

[viboy]

yeah, yeah - roast me

1 10 gallon tank and 1 tiger oscar. I bought the fish and the tank brand new at the store. The owner didn't say a word.

The oscar lived happily on earthworms and sucker roe until he was about 6 inches long then I traded him in. Religiously cleaning the tank seemed to keep him happy.

[ianjoe]

I started out 2 years ago with black fin tetras, panda cories, and a yellow gourmi.

[valerie]

I had goldfish in a 15g since i was little. Then about 6 years ago i thougth about starting the tank up again and bought 3 fantail goldfish. Soon 2 died so i got some zebra danios, because the guy at the petstore said they did fine without heaters. They go sick and soon died so i decided to check on the internet to figure out why they died. Then my obsession began and i started my tank again and proptly began getting bigger and bigger tanks.

:p

[pinballqueen]

My first fish was a county fair goldfish. I was 7 or 8 I think. I won it in that game where you throw the pingpong ball into the betta bowl to win the fish in it, you know?

Well, it was 110 degrees outside, and the fish actually survived and made it home... to my little bitty gumball machine fish tank that I got for my birthday. I think it was a half-gallon, maybe?

Funny thing is, the danged thing lived for nearly 2 years in the thing.. I don't think it had room to turn around :P It finally died when I moved to Tennessee. It got too hot in the bag in the floorboard of my uncle's truck (coming from florida on a 12 hour trip....)

At that point, the bug had already bitten me, and my mom, so we had a 72-gallon custom built and kept tropicals...

Lookin back on it, I feel terrible for the way the poor thing had to live :( But I know better now.

[Skippy]

Years ago.... my roommate got a 35 gallon tank for free from an ex of his.

We figured we'd give it a shot.. that's what got me started.

The first fish we populated it with were a batch of 8 black skirt tetras. They survived more than I care to admit that tank went through. This is about 4 years ago. The last of them died seeming of old age about a month back. They got to be rather large.

[SnakeIce]

my first fish were searpe tetras followed by a week later zebra danio babies(they were about a quarter of an inch and two females made it), the next fish to go into the mix, pristilla tetras, columbian blue tetras, ottos, pygmy cories.

way over stocked the twenty gallon tank but I was religeous about water changes

but that is not the best part while I was in the process of getting the fish into the twenty(didn't know about fishless cycling)

I saw some chocolate gourami's at the lfs.... yes not two months after haveing my first fish I went and got a 5 gal tank put plants in it cycled it with some of my other fish got 4 chocolates and 4 neons/cardinal I was doing fine with them(6 months)until I was stupid and put something that leached copper and other mettals into the water and slowly killed them all

so yeah I leaped off the deep end of fish keeping, but I was doing something right...... I will list the fish I had spawn in my tanks then....... zebra danio raised some, searpe tetra raised some, colombian blue tetras, pristilla tetras, pygmy cory, and neon tetra, the chocolate gourami's paired up but didn;t get further than that

[mickey]

Originally posted by Fishskin
Male and female guppies in a 5 gallon "marble" Metaframe tank over 50 years ago.

Hey Fishskin, have you actually been keeping fish all these years,
if so ,do you still love the hobby as much today, as the day you started.
It's wonderful to see someone in a hobby for so long.
Cheers.

[Nippy]

3 Oscars in a 55 which rapidly turned into 2 Oscars in a 75, 2 in a 55 and a baby Jaguar in a 10. One year after that, I had aquired a total of 13 tanks and 120+ fish.

[SwedishFish]

mine was 10g disaster

i had a black skirt tetra, a pleco, a leopard cory, some tetras and all these fish that were crammed into a little 10g but my very first fish was a betta in a bowl that i thought loved to eat peace plant roots but it turned out it only te them due to being so hungry :(

[Dahlia]

Goldfish get a rough lot in life I think. When I was 6 or 7 I received a 10 gallon tank from my dad (no hood and a cheap hartz filter, the kind with floss and charcoal). He went and picked up 8 feeder goldfish and brough them home. He was of the belief that the older the water is, the healthier the fish will be. We would let water sit for weeks in a bucket before topping off the tank. The only tank maintenance I was taught was to clean the filter and change the floss and charcoal (we did both at the same time, as far as we knew all floss did was trap the gunk). The fish also endured the overzealous feedings of a small kid (they are opening and closing their mouths so they MUST still be hungry!). I am not sure how, but they survived at least 3 years of this poor care. I believe they died shortly after a filter media change once they were larger. I don't remember EVER doing a partial water change... we didn't have a siphon.

Sometime after that I checked out an aquarium book from the library (I still have the same library card I got when I was 6... and for some reason they let me use it), and spent a lot of time feeling guilty about how my fish had died.

Now my dad wants an aquarium, and he asked ME to teach him how to take care of them.

[Iced Galaxy]

um...........my first fish is 2 zebra danio and a plec. living in a 1 g tank:eek: yes.....that's was like 1.5 yrs ago.............but i trade the plec in.......and 1 of the zebra danio is still swimming in the tank

[Dapple2]

My first fish were some platies, swords and mollies given to me by one of my teachers right before summer break. They went into a 10g and promptly had babies a couple weeks later triggering the purchase of my second tank a 20g and :o a 25g about a month or two later and it was all downhill from there....

[MrGoodbytes]

I started off with some goldfish in a bowl but they died and I couldn't figure out why.
Then I went to the library and got some aquarium books. And so I started my learning.
After that it's a little blurry, but I think I got a few cardinals, some platies or guppies, and a cory or two in a 10 gallon my dad gave me. It had all kinds of old school equipment from the 70's but I was happy 'cause I couldn't really afford much at 12.
A month or two later I discovered Aquarium Fish Magazine.

Graeme

[chefkeith]

Back at my old college house we were handed down a 30 g tank, with a 6" Oscar (named Mr. Johnson) and a 5" Jack Dempsy( named Seth). None of us knew anything about fish so we feed them nothing but feeder fish and we changed the water about once every month with untreated tap water. After the water change, the fish would go in a coma for a few hours, which we thought was normal. Ended up trading the fish in for a 3 legged alligator (named Stimpy) and feed him nothing but mice. That was 10 years ago, and I still wonder what happened to my old friends. Wish we had the internet back then.

[dethjam316]

my first fish were a pair of blue gouramis kept in a 20g with a pair of huge african aquatic frogs. the frogs devoured anything in their path smaller than the big gouramis and were really cool pets. i think i was about 10 at the time.

growing up, my father always had a fish tank or two going, mostly with cory cats and zebra danios or a betta. my mother claims that keeping aquariums must be genetic, because when she met my father, he had an apartment FULL of fish tanks and an old hollowed out refrigerator in which he bred various goldfish. hmm.

[GoLdFiSh_GrL]

My first fish was a comet goldfish in a 1gal. tank... looking back at it, I can't believe I had two of them in something that small.... :( they died. Then I got 2 more... here's the timeline. And you ask why my signature is what it is??? :(

1) Goldie
2) Bronzie
3) Tiger
4) Midnyt
5) Treasure
6) ??? (not a 6 yet)

Right now I have a 29gal. which I happily filled with 1 Kissing Gourami and 1 Opaline Gourami. I learned my lesson with goldfish the hard way. :( Well, anyway, I LOVE my new gouramis!!!:D :D

[tricksterpup]

Originally posted by Fishskin
Male and female guppies in a 5 gallon "marble" Metaframe tank over 50 years ago.

Mine was a 10 gallon stainless steel frame tank with a slate bottom. And I also kept Guppies and other livebearers and that was over 30 years ago.. yeesh, **** i am getting older. ;)

And wish I still had those stainless steel tanks. I love their looks now.


jim

[Rometiklan]

Angelfish, Glowlight tetras, Head and Tail-lights, and Neons.

[WolfPup522]

My first experience ever with fish was in highschool. My sister had a 10-gal with lemon tetras, neon tetras, and a betta in one of those "hang on the side, plastic box things" like you see in fish stores (poor guy). My brother and I chose to put hermit crabs in our 10-gal tanks, so I helped my sister with water changes and such.

More recently (early spring of this year, I think), I adopted a 29-gal with 4 Buenos Aires tetras in it. Luckily, I found this website/forum and other websites shortly after I got the tank and nursed the tank back to health properly (3 of the tetras are still there - I lost one recently). The tank is now thriving thanks to alot of internet research and the helpful people here at AC. Thanks everyone!;)

[SimonWoodstock]

The first fish i remember having was a largemouth bass in a 20gal....When i lived in louisiana we had a pond and when my dad stocked it he kept a baby largemouth. This was probably when i was around 5 or 6(15 years ago...give or take). We used to feed it tadpoles, baby crawfish and crickets we would catch. He outgrew the tank and we let him go in the pond. Years after that we tried guppies and zebra danios.

[breaker87]

started with 6 golfish in a 2 ft 8 yrs ago
now have: 1, 6'x2'x'2, 1, 4x2x2 and 6, 30x12x15 with a shyte load of cichlids

[andyman98]

my first fish were 3 auratus and a ugly loach.

[cnote]

lol my first fish were 2 convicts 2 plecos 2 tiger barbs, 2 tinfoil barbs, 2 hifin black tetras 2 blue gouramies 2 eels 2 water frogs and 2 crayfish.............. i forgot a few
all in a 30 gallon XH .....now i know why the guy that was bagging up the fish for me was looking at me funny when i said im nw to this hobby this is my first tank. a year later and about 50 fish burials after the fact i can say i know what im doing.
:rolleyes:

[bostonjon]

30 years ago..ten gallon tank...an oscaR:eek: ....i HAVE LEARNED since then:D

[Hound]

Hmmn, my first fish was a comet goldfish I won at a city fiesta. Yes I'm from a small town. Well, I had the use of my step dad's old 30g tank so I filled that up and found that the old HOB filter it had still worked so in went the fish. Now then I was in central California in a house with a swamp cooler and a wood burning stove that was originally built around 1902. Electrics were horible in the place. Anyway the fish survived for about 7 years like that with minimal water changes and cleaning. Any time I tried adding another goldfish he'd just kill it. About 3 years after he died I had another tank for about 2 years with fantails and 3 peppered corys. Now about 10 years after that I have a 55g and 10g because my 2 year old just loves Nemo and that got me to thinking . . .

[Hans]

when I was 13 i wanted a FW puffer so bad, but the lady at teh store said that if i ever touched it, it would poison me, so i didnt get one, i got some zebra danioes, red eye tetra, black molly, micky mouse platy, pineapple sword tales,

well teh zebra danios were the first to make me mad, they were terrors, so

i scouped them out, put them in the toilet, and urinated on them, i know its mean but i was only 13, and they were beating up my poor mollies! so anyways, all my fish died in the next few years, and i got a crayfish, i had just the cray fish for a longgg time it got gigantic, then it died, and i got some gerbils, then they died and i didnt have anything until this year, im 23, i started out with silver dollars and bala sharks, cool fish

[daveedka]

Started out with a comet I won at the festival. Bought him a 1 gallon bowl with 2 weeks worth of my allowance. when he died, I asked for a 10 g set-up for Christmas and put in neons, guppies, mollies , swordtails, and one cory. only thing that stayed alive consistantly was that one poor little cory. Once I hit high school my brother and I invested in a 20 g and kept every commonly sold fish imaginable. Just kept dreaming of a big tank till one day I bought a 55g at a yard sale, re-sealed it and bought two oscars. Boy did that do wonders for my addiction.

[fishlvr]

My first tank (which was actually supposed to be for the kids, replacing a lost bunny rabbit :() was a 10g with one of those little plastic boxes in the corner with floss and carbon and an air line running through it. Right away we bought some cheap feeder goldfish so that there would atleast be something in the tank. I think there were about 12 of them.

It didn't take long before they started dying off. So I bought an HOB filter and started getting prettier fish.... mollies and guppies :P. Ofcourse it didn't take long and the tank was overrun with babies.

Fast forward a few years, my mom gave me her 20g. I thought it was HUGE! So then I started buying cichlids. I think I bought 2 firemouths and a black convict. One of the firemouths died pretty quickly, followed by the other a few weeks later. However, the convict lived on for many years growing full size, beautiful black stripes (fed him ~30 ghost shrimp once a month for treats), the meanest fish I'd ever seen :P.

Then... I bought my 55g :eek: I was in heaven. I honestly dont remember what I started that tank off with, but I loved the space for all the fish.

I think I'm rambling...so I'll end it here :D

[Aqualung]

My very first fish were some type of goldfish that I kept in a little 2 gallon or so tank. They didn't live very long. After they died I started buying lots of books and doing research. Then I got a 20 gallon tank when I was about 7 or 8.

The first fish that went into it were platies. After that I added neons, cories, otos, and tiger barbs (which I grew to hate). I was quite succesful for a newbie kid, since I did lots of reading about fishkeeping. My platies started breeding, and I would sell them to the pet shop. I remember being so proud that my fish would sell fastest and soon people started asking when they would get more of them in. I think they sold them as "blushing platies", they were very pretty fish.

I had that tank for many years, and during that time I had 3-4 generations of platies, different cories, flounders, paradise fish, tetras, angels, etc. Then I decided I wanted live plants, which I just stuck into the gravel. Most of the plants died quickly, but some lasted a while. Then one day I bought a common pleco, which the person at the store said would stay small. After a year or two, the pleco was the only thing left in the tank and it was HUGE! I gave it away and gave up on fish after that.

Now I've been bitten by the bug again, and currently am doing my first "real" planted tank. It's interesting to see how much the hobby has changed since I was a kid. The internet sure is a wonderful resource!

[yen]

When we were kids, my sister and I would buy those 8 for a dollar little feeder goldfish and put them in a small, maybe 2gal, goldfish bowl. They never lasted longer than a month and we just assumed they were sick when we got them or we didn't clean the bowl enough. :rolleyes:

One time we got a little eel-like fish. I don't know what it was, maybe some kind of loach? Anyway, it lived in that stinky bowl for over a year, even though the fish around it kept dying. It must have had an insanely strong immune system. I wonder what it was, I'd like to get one now that I know what I'm doing and I have a 55gal instead of a bowl!

-jen

[TheSmJ]

I started it for my mom, actually. I brought home common minnows in a large applesauce jar, and fed them goldfish food (which they loved). I remember my mom sitting in my room watching the jar for an hour or so some days.

Next thing I know fish keeping books started to appear around the house, and the overall quality of the applesauce jar's water began to increase as she was taking care of it while I was away at camp (it was a day camp).

Eventually one fish died (prolly from overfeeding) and the other she showed up at camp one day to put him back in the creek where I caught them. Two days later, I come home to find a 5 gal. tank all set up and cycling in the kitchen.

We were going to get some sort of goldfish, but an lfs employee talked my mom out of it, and told us everything we needed to keep tropical fish. We bought a heater to add to the tank, and 2 mickymouse platties, and added mollies about a month later. 6 months after she got the tank, she went out and bought a 29 gal, and ever since then the tanks have been "growing", along with the fish population.

[Alicia]

My first fish was a male Betta in a 2 gallon tank. He died a day or 2 later from Ich (which I found out here :)) Then I got a 10 gallon at a garage sale and put 2 Goldfish in it and they lived for around 2 years. I am suprised that they lived that long cause I took the camping with me too. At that time, I didn't know that fish could go without eating for a couple of days, so I packed them up in the 2 gallon tank and took them with. Eventually I did some more reading and realized that they didn't need to eat everyday, so they stay home now :D That was 5 years ago and I now leave my fish at home.... WHERE THEY BELONG :D

[t_h_e_s_a_c_k]

My first serious fish was my Oscar. It was cool....

[JesseJ]

I started with fish when I was about 18. I KNEW I wanted to keep fish so I went out and bought a 55G tank and all the stuff for it. I started with Neons, 2 Common Plecs, and some livebearers. That was about 3 years ago.

I've now got 3 tanks with a lot of fish. I've still got Neons and I like them.

For starter fish I would go with livebearers. As has been mentioned the guppy strains are heavily inbred and hard to keep alive. Tetras are nice but they usually aren't as hardy.

[Cearbhaill]

The earliest memory of fishkeeping I have concerns my Dad raising Zebra Danios in garbage cans. I'm sure he bred the fish in tanks, mind you- it's just that he had to use garbage cans for grow out tanks. He, like every other novice, had underestimated the space needed to grow out fry.

The reason it sticks in my memory is that he and my Mom were fighting about all the garbage cans full of fish all over the house.

That would have been around 1962.

[TYPO]

i have just started my tank, it is no more than 3 weeks old. i actually started my fish craze with a betta after my boyfriend got one. i had him kept with 3 ghost shrimp, and, all three died for various reasons. (one died just because, and my fish got depressed. one jumped out of the tank while i was out, and forgot to put the lid back on, and the last one died because my sisters betta ate him.) soon afterwards, i got an 18 gallon tank, put in a pair of fancy guppies, 2 leopard danios, 2 adfs, a plecostemus, a black mystery snail, and my betta.

i added 2 female bettas to my collection, though, they are in a seperate tank.

i have since lost both my guppies and my betta was removed because of a bad case of ich; he's fully recovered, but my tank hasnt yet. as soon as it's done cycling, i think i will try adding 2/3 dwarf puffers, and if that doesnt work out, ill put them into a smaller tank i have lying about.

also, i plan on breeding my bettas, i cant wait !! (any suggestions would be apprecaited. Thx!)

~TYPO

[johnnyxxl]

first a gold fish and fish bowl,
then that gotld fish and another feeder gold fish in 2 ten gallon tanks about 10 years ago. I then moved to a 20 with guppies and sword tails
the guppies just kept breeding along with a few batches of swordtails

[afulltank]

When I first started my hobby with fish, I had a fish bowl with guppies and snails. The bowl had no filter or heater. They were always having babies and doing great. I think that guppies are great starter fish but also tetras would be good.

[johnnyxxl]

sounds like most of us were smitten with the same fish lol

[tawnylane]

Well, maybe a little different:)
35 years ago my dad got my brothers and me a 10g steel frame tank: 2 or 3 angelfish, tiger barbs (yea, REAL good choice with those angelfish!), algae eater and I don't remember what else. Since we didn't mess with them too much, some fish lasted awhile... Then of course, I won the obligatory goldfish at the fair! My mom will tell you that goldfish just wouldn't die! Had it at least 3 years (same old 10g), ich, fin rot, hmm - red streaks in the fins? and swim bladder disease. I'd read enough to treat a lot of stuff with salt, much to Mom's suprise. Then teens and 20s, all tetras in a mirror-back 20H (I LOVED that tank!) with a real filter and of course : Oscar in a 10g! Gave him to a friend with a 75 when he reached about 5" - broke my heart.....Just got back in beginning of this year and right now have 4 tanks!
T

[Must4ng s4lly]

My first tank was a 15 gal given to me by a neighbor when I wuz about 10. It had the aluminum seams and the magnet driven charcoal and fiberfill filter hung on the back. Pretty cool for the mid 70's.
I had a comet goldfish won at a school fair with 2 chinese algae eaters a pictus cat and a porthole catfish. I also had two tetras kept in a 2 gal pickle jar..... stupid! anyway there were no such things as conplete aquarium covers back then and my cat with 7 dust all over him would put his paw in the fish tank and chase all of them. They slowly all got poisoned and they all died. My mom gave away my set up when I was in college.

at the age of 34, I got back into aquariums with a 58 gal and was soon totally addicted! I have been addicted ever since & will soon get a 100 Gal set up. Yippee!

[bozco]

The first I ever brought home were trout fry from the river down the hill. I was like 10 and had collected them painstakingly in a coke can. When I got them home I put them in a bowel and they all start looking sick instantly. The water was too warm. I kept dumping icecubes in it and my dad drove me back to the river to put the poor babies back.

5 years later I started a 10 gal tank with two rainbow sharks, who this last Chirstmas, at 4 inches each, jumped out when I moved them to the 33 gal and dried out on the floor. I was crushed.

[~*LuvMyKribs*~]

we had a cabin on the beach.... and when the tide went out (wayyyy out) i would go into the sandy tidal pools and catch fish with a kitchen strainer.

i think they were salmon fry.... or something that came out of a stream and onto the beach. I would put them in a jar and make a little aquascape with some seaweed and shells.

i was young so i didn't really care for the fish and kept them in the jar for a day or two before i would let them go and get new ones. and they would live! when i look back now i am so suprised.

i also caught a baby flounder once, but i think it was because he was sick that i was able to actually catch him. man those things can MOVE.


anyways, that was my first fishkeeping experience. :D