When I was a kid, my uncle had a "big" tank (20g?) full of guppies & nothing else, colorful but kind of boring. Our dentist also had a tank in the waiting room. It had plants & different fish to find. Then in HS a friend got a used 55g!!! It came with a RT shark, tiger loach & blue gourami. She had had a tank when younger & knew what other fish & plants might work...not the pretty neons! I was always attracted to spotted pim cats but I have never yet kept them.
We got a 10g as apt. allowed pets & it had a corner box filter. I got to have neons, platys & corys! We also killed lots of fish, clown loaches several times (sniff). Within a year we had several more tanks (cichlids!) & used to make the rounds of lfs regularly, cheap entertainment. Then our CA cichlids bred (often) & lfs would trade for store credit! Whoo hoo! Strange children would come over to see our "zoo" of fish & lovebirds (neither was really allowed in campus housing). We graduated to a big Dynaflow that came with a used 55g & invested in a Vortex Diatom filter. Restarting them became my husband's job. My thumbs were too small for the Dynaflow & my patience too short for the diatom. My husband still thinks those are the bomb, lol.
Since we we poor during husband's college years we always felt lfs were just trying to sell us more & expensive things like filters, test kits etc. 1 had a gazillion tanks, carpet & a room of just African cichlids. The best was when 1 suggested dwarf chain loaches instead of clowns. She only had 2 left, I think they were right before sids were red listed & no longer able to be imported. We loved them! But gave them away along with "almost" all of our fish when my husband got a real professional job. We did try to move our favorite cichlids, blue acaras & firemouths, a pair of each...not a good idea...We did finally keep clown loaches successfully for many years. UGF were our usual but with Aqua Clear & Whisper HOBs too, so cool to be able to spend $$. We were among the obsessive, changing 10% or more water every month or even more. We often had 10+ gallons of water aging in milk jugs. Not need to use dechlor, the chlorine would offgas.
When we moved to the east coast we asked about sids at our new lfs. No, they're endangered...we thought that was just BS, but it was more than 10 years until we saw them again. We joined a fish club, that was fun! When we moved again, we checked out new lfs. I literally ran across a shop, it's sids!!! But no, they were similar nigrolineata...but they did sometimes get sids! By then I was a true loach convert & kept setting up more tanks so I could have more & more!! & a foray into discus raising...no, I didn't work then...& we finally took the canister filter plunge. Wow!
Then we moved to CA almost 10 years ago. A new start with new fish options. I finally tried hillstream loaches, joined a plant club, but I miss my botia type loaches. If only I could shop & get my act together to maintain them, I have 4 biggish tanks (2x 55g, 75g & 120g long) but only 2 have fish in them...all have plants...& have hand me down fish for the most part. I need new more exciting fish soon...Just weeding, feeding & water changing is getting old (sniffle).