What fish did you start off in the hobby with?

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 . . .
 
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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!
 
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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