What Was Your GATEWAY Fish?
- Thread starter Jill-O
- Start date
Wife: "look hon, what my brother won me at the fair"!!!!!
Me: FFFFUUUUUUUUUUU....... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! there's 5 of them in a 1 gallon... uh, what is that?!?!? is that a whole gallon? ........
Me: FFFFUUUUUUUUUUU....... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! there's 5 of them in a 1 gallon... uh, what is that?!?!? is that a whole gallon? ........
dates are correct ^_^ she grew so fast and is even larger than the average fresh water prickly sculpin in my area in the wild!.
My parents brought home a really amazing speciment in 1963 too.
My gateway fish were Columbian Sharks. Three that I bought for a 10 gallon. They turned out to be a learning experince and an addiction.
One day in the summer of 2005, I came home to the sound of running water---in the living room. This is what I found-- a 55 gallon tank chock full with eight very large fish:
My husband came across this marvelous find at a moving away yard sale for $85. The people told him the fish were oscars and pacu. He got our biggest pots and went back to pick up his purchase, putting each fish in a big pot for transport home. One pacu jumped out of his pot which was sitting on the tailgate of my husband's truck. After groveling awhile in gravel, he was picked up, dusted off and placed back in his pot. Once home, the filthy tank, gravel and filters were scoured "clean" in hot water. The tank was filled with chlorinated water, and the eight fish were placed back in their now clean tank.
After hearing the story of my husband's yard sale adventure, I had to go online to figure out which fish were the oscars and which were the pacu. All I knew about fishkeeping was that the water needed to be dechlorinated. I joined five fish forums to learn more about keeping fish. Since the pacu were 15" and had difficulty turning around in that 12" wide tank, besides the fact that we had wall-to-wall fish, we figured out quickly that we needed a new tank. We went to WalMart and bought a second 55 gallon tank. An LFS guy said the tank had to be cycled, so I got two HOB filters for the new tank, plugged them in and "cycled" the water through the filters. We moved the two pacu into their new home. The water quickly got very cloudy, and the pacu would not eat. We came home to a terrible smell throughout the whole house as a huge bacterial bloom took over the tank. It was obvious the pacu were going to die in their new tank, so we moved them back to their old tank with the other six fish.
No one on fish forums could help me with my filtration questions for our 300 gallon tank except to say "you will need a lot of filtration." By the time we set up our 300 gallon tank, I had learned about the Nitrogen Cycle, and fishless cycled the 300 before moving the fish in.
Because of the horrendous conditions our fish lived in most of their lives, all the fish have died except for the pacu. We are now beginning year three of our tank upgrade for the pacu. The 300 gallon tank is too small for them. The mother of all yard sale finds has turned out to be a very costly one.
A pacu tank 15' x 4' x 4' with a 405 gallon sump. This will be their final home.
Wow that's amazing! Was it a custom job, or do they actually sell them that large? Can't wait to see how it turns out!!!
My parents had and house full of fishtanks when I was little kid, so I was practically born into this. My very first fish was a betta, though. I named him Mr. Limpet. lol.
This was back when Bettas weren't very well known and we still called them Siamese fighting fish.
This was back when Bettas weren't very well known and we still called them Siamese fighting fish.
