I got into the hobby from my other hobby, fishing.
Been fishing my whole life, both My Parents would go pretty much every weekend in the summer, My Grandpa coming along most of the time. Then eventually my parents split, Mom got with a douche bag that didn't care for it and Dad passed away when I was 13. Still continued to do my fishing with My Grandpa though.
Anyways, as a kid spending so much time fishing, I always had a love for nature, chasing after frogs, lizards, snakes, catching fish ect. First I started bringing home baby turtles I'd find in the spring, little frogs and snakes, eventually having a large collection of tanks/terrariums I used for the reptiles.
Then as I got slightly older into my early teens, I sort of lost interest in the whole reptiles thing. Also my fishing started becoming more advanced, started setting up bait tanks to store baitfish ect.
The one thing that really set it off though, was when I was out catching bluegill for catfish bait, when I spotted this large swarm of tiny bullhead catfish around a brush pile right off the bank. I took a cup and scooped up about a dozen of the tiny things, then took them home and put them in a tank. At the time they were the coolest thing ever, sooo much fun watching them gang up and rip apart a nightcrawler.
It was on from there on out, those fish made me take notice of how much fun it was keeping fish. Looking back I feel so bad for those fish, I kept them in a 30 gal tank (stunting their growth, they never got over 4")for a good 5-6 years before eventually adding in a baby flathead catfish that eat the entire stock of the tank overnight...
It took my a while to learn enough about the hobby to do things correctly, but that is where it all started.