For me it started with my grandparents. I don't have a healthy relationship with my grandmother, she always believed I could not do things as good as her. While I was growing up she kept a 45g tank with fake plants and it was well overstocked with some catfish, 2 plecos, 2 kissing gourami, blue gourami, jack dempsy, 5 skirt tetras and some other fish. We even had baby peacock bass in there (from my lake).
I became 18 and decided it was time to prove myself. Started with a 1/2 gallon betta bowl. I decided this was not enough and changed to a 1g tank. Both these tanks had no heaters and I would do full water changes every month. My grandmother did full water changes and a scrub down of the tank every 4 months on her tank. At the time I didn't really feel I needed to do research so I kept doing things my way. My first betta died of age at 6 years old. That betta was a valentine gift from my ex girlfriend.
After the fish died I decided to buy some other types of fish. Ended up stocking it with a Leaf Fish (carnivorous kind from S. America) and a yoyo loach. Yeah those two in a 1 gallon /facepalm. At the time I didn't know about cycling and the fish quickly died from ammonia spikes. After I decided to keep two red tail black sharks in the 1g. They also died from the ammonia spike, at the time I thought it was the ph. These four fish I had returned to the store and they only checked ph so they exchanged it for me. Ended up getting another betta with extra gravel. The betta being an anabantoid wasn't hurt by the ammonia spikes so it lived. Thinking I was getting good I decided to buy a second tank; 1.5 gallons.
I kept 2 yoyo's in there with decorations as caves. I was starting to do research but believed the whole minimum tank size thing was a business move to get people to buy big tanks. They died of suicide (jumped out of the tank due to ammonia). I was getting tired of my colossal failures and was about to give up on the hobby. The second betta I bought was moved to the 1.5 gallon and the original 1 gallon tank was put away.
Some weeks passed and I was left unsatisfied that I couldn't do better. I did heavy research, learned about cycling and minimum tank sizes. I also read about planted aquariums. I decided the easiest method for cycling was to use a product to cycle. I secretly bought a topfin 10 gallon starter kit with gravel and nutrafin cycle. My grandmother was pissed since I was killing everything but I set it up. I fed the tank fish food and added nutrafin cycle. Followed the instructions and added plants. After a week I added glofish and a black mystery snail. This tank was my first successful tank and was well stocked with plants. But this wasn't enough.
I had proven that I could keep a tank and it was time to go big or go home. I saved for months and bought a 55 gallon topfin starter kit with two AC70's and an odyssea 48" T5HO fixture. I had read and understood about lighting and its relation with plants. After some time I ended up having my current tank, a 55 gallon planted community tank with around 50 fish. I had finally beaten my grandmother, doing weekly water changes and maintenance. I had kept a tank bigger than hers with minimal effort.
My 55 gallon tank has been established for 6 months now

everything is going perfect and I finally have a strong expertise in fish keeping. I decided for my own satisfaction and obsession with fish keeping to set up my 10g tank again. I am in the process of having a 10g sorority planted tank ^.^ Throughout all of this I got my best friend interested and he now keeps a 10g nano reef tank with two clowns and he just recently set up a 2.5 micro planted tank with 2 guppies.
That is my long wall of text of my fishy story
