Just wanted to see if there is anyone here who has an aquarium. We picked this 55 gallon one up off of CL for like $100 about 8 years ago. I sanded it all down, refinished and redid the hardware on the cabinet. It's been a great tank. Had to switch gears with it about a year ago from schooling fish, and I decided to go with cichlids. Thought about going saltwater, but maybe in the future. If you have a tank, what do you have going on, and what types of fish?

you NEED some background paper for that thing man, like yesterday
it'll make a huge difference in looks. and it makes the fish feel a little safer

cichlids are a hoot, especially when they start breeding, uprooting yer shit and killing rivals

parents keeping the fry in their mouth is the cutest and weirdest thing at the same time



I just have a 45gal tank with a couple of angels and a couple of tetras i got for free on Nextdoor from an Army dude who was moving and couldn't take them on the road trip
not much to show, but apparently these angels are a breeding pair, they laid eggs 2 weeks after i got them (eggs died, it's common), so i'll just keep an eye on them for now we'll see if they'll breed again

I used to have a 55 Gallon tank with Oscars. They are great Fish and they have a personality to them. I would hand Feed them Goldfish, ornery buggers would take them from above the Water level.

The only Fish i kept with them were Peacock Plecostomas, they were pretty armored. My two Oscar's got to be about 8 inches long in a 55 with great Color.

Cichlids are Cool fish too, i had one of them half the Size of the Oscar's (Don't remember what species) and he was a mean little Bastard! I had to get rid of him, he kept fucking with my Oscar's.

Pickup a Pleco or two to help clean the Tank, they are nice looking and can take care of themselves with the Cichlids too.

We had some backing but my son kept peeling the tape off. He would sit there, watch the fish and pick at the tape. Have any loose strings or snags around the house, don't worry my son will find them and pull them. He's a real busy boy and gets hyper focused on one thing while doing another, like pulling strings and removing tape. One day he took it off and was using it in his room as a backdrop for his legos. Wasn't worth the battle. Thought about painting the back black too, but just left it.

I'm not a big fan of plecos. We have a number of snails that do a solid job, and a raphael catfish that does a great job with extra food. There are also two clams in the sand that do work filtering. It's funny to watch them move around a bit. Surprising enough there are 15 fish in that tank, but they are all hiding. After 6 months of having the cichlids they've left the plants alone. We'll see if that changes once they are a lot bigger. Most of these have started out at about an inch or so in size.

We have another smaller 10 gallon planted tank that my wife wanted to manage. It has endlers (guppies) and blue shrimp. We started with a mated pair, and now have 30+. My son and I scoop up a few and send them as tribute to the larger tank. They don't last long. Fun to watch though.

I used to do salt water tanks. Fish tanks and reef tanks.

Reef tanks are the most fascinating. So many critters and moving things. I used to have a 100 gallon reef tank with over 200 living things in it and at the same time I had another 45tall tank with a large snowflake eel, a big porcupine puffer, a trigger, lionfish and a huge horseshoe crab.

For the reef tank filter I built a refugium stye filter in a tank underneath and had a HUGE hermit crab that lived in there. He was very cool to watch and mess with. Kinda like a racoon of the sea.

I learned ALOT about water during that phase in my hobbies!

We had a freshwater crab in our tank.
He used to climb up the hose and get out of the tank, climbed down the electrical cord to the kitchen floor.
I could always tell when he was out of the tank because he used to float for awhile.
Think one of the cats finally got him.

I had 3 arowanas over about a 10 year period. Two managed to jump out of the tank even with a 2.5 lb weight on the lid. The last one I had was a black arowana in a 55 gallon tank and grew to about 18" long so I gave him to a friend who had a 200 gallon tank with friendly fish.

Arowanas eat live gold fish. I'd just put about 10 in the tank each week and they'd eat at their own leisure.
It was sorta neat, you could dangle a gold fish over the tank and they'd come right out of the water to eat them.



Before that, I had every type of fresh water fish you can imagine. Pirahna are the worst, very fidgety and frighten easily.

When I was a kid we had 4 tanks. 100 gallon freshwater tank in the living room. A 200 gallon freshwater tank that separated the living and dining room(my mom converted it to salt water not long before I moved out). Then I had a 50 gallon freshwater tank in my room and there was a 50 gallon freshwater tank in my sisters room( became a turtle tank not long before I moved out). Not sure if she still has them or not.

I’ve pondered the idea a couple times. Probably won’t happen.

I have a heavily planted 40 breeder with cherry shrimp and a few algae eaters

Not fish but snakes and mice. Going to start to build an aquaponics system come spring using a 4ft deep by probably 18 ft pool as the main water source. Using the rest of the winter to flesh out the details.