AquaBlog #0 - Hello aquarists of SpaceHey! This is how i became a fishkeeper.

 Hi! This is my story in short about how i became an aquarist (and got Multiple Tank Syndrome lol).

It all started at my grandparents, they had an aquarium with mixed fancy guppies (snakeskin, tuxedo, mosaic and all those well known classics varieties), lyretail swordtails, bristlenoses, cories (paleatus and aeneus) that aquarium was estabilished in the 90's and existed until like 2008 or 2009. 

When i was born at the boundary between the 90's and the 00's we visited my grandparents a lot, and i loved watching the colorful fishes swimming around in the tank, after i became a bit older (2-3 years old) i helped my grandmother feed the fishes, clean the tank, catch the pregnant guppies and the fry to raise them separately from the main aquarium, so my parents saw that im really into that stuff and nature and bought a small fish tank, which was around 30 liters (7 gallons) and a bigger one around 50 liters (13 gallons), i doesn't exactly remember which came first, because i was still very-very young, something like 3 years old at max? (it was around 2003) 

So i had my first own aquariums, but as i was still too young, i was unable to properly maintain them by myself (you know, glass can easily break, and water buckets are heavy for a child) for that reason my parents helped me with it. My first aquariums had fine sand in them, sponge filters, seashells and a few glass decorations (a green sea star and some circular shaped beads, some marbles), also some cool stones that i found, at a later date some kind of rock formation was added to the aquarium too. The fishes were mainly guppies we got from my grandparents guppy colony and cherry barbs, and the flora was made up by Elodea and Hygrophila corymbosa which grew out of the tank sometimes and produced cool mangrove-like roots that i really liked, sometime later i had a Cryptocoryne aponogetifolia in it too that i planted in a seashell.

Later milestones:

In 2006 i asked for third aquarium with a curved front glass, it was around 80 liters (21 gallons).

In the christmas of 2007 i have gotten an even bigger fourth aquarium which was 112 liters (29 gallons). 

Somewhere between 2006-2008 the 80 liters aquarium was turned into a saltwater tank with cold water species, mostly invertebrates.

Finally the tipping point was the time when i was around 9 and started to buy stuff by myself, you can imagine i spent all my money on aquariums and fishes haha, soon i had like 10 aquariums. Sadly in 2009 some kind of disease was introduced into the already existing aquariums and the guppy populations collapsed, leaving me without livebearers for years, as most pet shops sell imported ones that are hard to keep alive, i struggled with them but my knowelge was still not enough to know what was wrong with these imported livebearers, for this reason i decided to mostly go for small cichlids like kribensis and cockatoo cichlids and ignore livebearers.

In 2011 i have gotten another saltwater aquarium which was around 100 liters (26 gallons). 

In the spring 2013 i re-discovered a hot spring with cool iridescent wild type feral guppies that i first tought were endlers, as they were really cool looking i caught some for myself and this got me back to livebearers, from this point i became more and more seriously interested in the hobby than ever. The same year i got an 500 liters aquarium (132 gallons) for my birthday that i filled with cichlids, mostly Astatotilapia aeneocolor as i was amazed by them, the male i got was very cool green with a red back and black marks. 

In 2014 a golden mutation of the common brown colored bladder snail /Physa acuta/ snail appeared at me, using my relatively little knowelge about genetics that i had i decided to fix the trait in a strain. It turned out to be recessive and this variety still exist at me up to this day.

In 2015 my father gave me a rack with two 250 liters (66 gallons) aquariums and two empty shelves, i made a plan to fill it with my favorite fish: Poecilia velifera/latipinna or at least with their large finned commercial hybrids, the reason i went for cichlids was the same which got me out of livebearers years ago. One became a lake malawi biotope-style tank and one a central american biotope-styled tank, none were actual biotopes but their look, and the inhabitants all corresponded to these specific areas so it was kind of a biotope even if not strict.

In 2017 or 18 i have got yet another rack with many medium sized aquariums, as i knew many breeders i was finally able to get healthy fancy guppies again. The same year i decided to redesign my saltwater aquarium into a freshwater one, i stilll really like the saltwater part of the hobby and i will return one day, but i needed space for my freshwater projects.

In 2019 one of my dreams came true, after years of unsuccesfull searching, i finally found a person who had pure wild caught Poecilia veliferas from Cenote Azul, of course i bought some! 

Today: At the moment im keeping pure wild livebearers like my sailfin mollies, liberty mollies, wild guppies, wild endlers etc. and fancy Xiphophorus species, fancy mollies, fancy guppies but almost strictly old strains which i find more interesting, im also doing planned crosses and experiments with them in hope of developing new interesting varieties. However, i did not turned away from cichlids and other species at all, i still keep some of them.

The future: Who knows whats going to happen, but im not planning to drastically change my interests for a while, neither i plan to leave the hobby ever.

So that is the story in short about how i became an aquarist. In my later blog posts you will most likely see other fishkeeping related entries.

If you are one of us too or you plan to have an aquarium, join our group and share your story at the "How i became an aquarist" section! 

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*side note: im also a terrarist but that is a bit different story and it is somewhat of a secondary hobby