Aquarium keepers of NS.

tronned

tronned

Active member
What do you guys keep? I have retired my tanks for the time being but I have kept a bunch of different tanks/fish.

I had a freshwater stingray tank for about 2 years with leopoldi stingray and various plants planted in teracota pots so she couldnt dig the pants up and eat the roots. Totally awesome fish to keep but so much work and for a regular pet store customer at the time i purchased it, was about 600-700 dollar price tag for one.

Potamotrygon%20motoro.jpg


i kept a small saltwater tank called a nanoreef. Was pretty awesome, but roughly 400-500 bucks to set up a 10 gallon tank all said and done.

fts_10-1-08.jpg


I had a small school of piranha for a time aswell, hardy fuckers... impossible to kill. The only way they were dying was they would eat each other over time.

image002.jpg


I had a 10 gallon freshwater tank that was planted heavy. It was co2 injected and had a soil substrate. It was so planted that the entire bottom of the tank was covered in a lawn of aquatic grass.

43605219-M.jpg


I used to work in a high end fish shop, so i got killer deals on most my gear/fish. If anyone has any questions in regards to fish tanks I would be happy to help you out.
 
haha oh wow. thats quite the fish tank setup i guess.

those glass coffee tables that are also fish tanks are cool. a kid on my floor has fish. i'm dissecting a squid soon. i wish i could have piranha's.
 
I have a 50 gallon reef thats seen better days... I honestly don't have enough time or money for the upkeep and it pisses me off because I love the thing to death. I used to keep freshwater and that got pretty boring, but my friend just gave me a 20 gallon hex tank so I'll probably try to get that set up with some celestial danio's and some nice plants.
5174038639_3375e72323.jpg

5171499090_8e024b6172.jpg
 
Yeah, i know what you mean with the cost and time. I used to be contracted out duece bigalow style to go clean saltwater fish tanks at most local business and rich people's houses and reef tanks are hard work. Some of the tanks that i serviced were in the area of 80k-100k setups. The fellow who owns West Edmonton Mall has a custom made tank from my old work that was i believe a 700 gallon bowfront tank with a 150ish gallon sump tank, and an unlimited livestock budget for fish. We used to service this tank 2 times a week and deliver livestock to the tank at that time. It was an insane tank, and it needed 2 chiller systems hooked up to it to deal with the amount of heat from the lighting. I have seen some pretty crazy stuff in regards to saltwater fish tanks. Maybe you should retire the saltwater tank and go freshwater planted discus tank?
 
the stingray was the most badass pet i have ever had. She was so friendly that you could lift her out of the water with your bare hands, hand fed fish to her, if you put you hand in the water pressed against the glass she would hover over your hand and just turn into a suction cup over you hand. She knew when you entered the room and would come and say hello. I have never another pet with that much intelligence, she was almost as clever as my dog.

Only downside to keep a stingray is the cost, and upkeep. It was weekly waterchanges in the tank. Premium food from the seafood shop was a staple food so you could not cheap out there either. And another factor in keeping one is risk of getting stung I supposed. I ended up selling her to a breeder.
 
they are cannibal by nature, its just a matter of time till one piranha remains. I had mine up to about 8inches in size before I got rid of the last one. Piranha are impossible to kill, in the wild they literally live in mud puddles for the dry season.
 
yeah I considered discus for a while but I'm not really into them. I really like small fish like neon tetras. I had this grand scheme that I was going to get a billion different little gobies for my SW tank, but that never happened. Right now I just have a clownfish in there, I think I've had her for four years now. I really just need to commit some money to it and get into a maintenance routine.
heres some zoanthids I had. (taken maybe 6 months ago) Unfortunately, these colonies look pretty shitty as of now...
DSCN9072-1.jpg

DSCN9031-1.jpg

and my clown. Shes chill.
DSC_0028-2.jpg
 
we used to have a 250 gallon saltwater setup with all your basics...loinfish, puffers, some big show angels, maroon clowns (theyre one of my favorites, dont know why), parrotfish, eels, what else? i dunno, this was quite a few years back. now its moved to a 325 gallon reef setup in my dads office, I think its less exciting (more plants, etc less fish) but whatever.
 
for a while i kept a 55 gallon planted discus tank. Discus are some freshwater fish that are far more colorful than most saltwater fish but require slightly less upkeep to keep alive. They are costly to buy though, range in price from 40 bucks - 500 bucks a pop. This is just a stock photo of random discus variants

discus-fish2.jpg


Some freshwater plecos are pretty badass too, but again some of the rare plecos are 400ish bucks. Some semi fancy plecos can be had for about 30 bucks though.

6.jpg


royal-pleco2.jpg


1354536133-0.jpg
 
i wish i had the time to mantain one like that, my family did when i was younger but eventually grew out of it
 
word,one of those fuckers got Steve Irwin .If it was your pet it would likely get to know you because they are rather clever as stated above.
 
2 of my friends had reef tanks back in the day. I helped a bunch in maintenance and whatnot. they are very expensive and time consuming but are honestly the most awesome things ever.
Don't remember the exact size but I'd guess 100 gallons or so. Tons of different soft corals, mushrooms, polyps. I would just sit for hours and watch the weird random creatures that come out of the live rock. Wish I had pics but some highlights
Had a mated clownfish pair that chilled in one of of the corals similar to this/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
The coolest corals were pulsing xenia. Mesmorizing to watch./static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
Mandarin Goby/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
And muthafuckin cleaner shrimp!/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png

 
the start up investment of a saltwater tank is normal 3-4 times larger than a fresh water tank because there are quite a few more aspect to keeping a saltwater tank. Typically for every gallon of water you need a pound of live rock which is typically 6-10 dollars a pound. You need roughly 3-5 watts of light per gallon of water aswell to keep a vivid coral reef. Then you add in the live sand which is a bit more expensive than standard freshwater rock bed. A saltwater fish tank also needs a protein skimmer to skim scum/oil off the surface of water which is typically 300ish bucks aswell. Most reef tanks its ideal to run a sump tank aswell, which is basically a 2nd aquarium under the main tank which airates the water and can provide additional filtration in the form of additional liverock and algae that acts as a filter aswell. Its a massive investment but can pay off greatly if you dedicate time and effort into it.

I found in the prime of my fish tanking career i could maintain a typical 100 gallon reef tank in 1- 1.5 hours a week. When you first start up you can expect mixing salt and cleaning to take you roughly 3 hours a week on a moderate size tank. You must add freshwater into a saltwater tank everyday/ 2 days to combat change in salinity of the water due to evaporation. Salt is not really cheap by any standard but when bought in 50 gallon buckets, its not too bad. I cant remember exact costs of salt and chemicals for treatment but i would figure total cost per month to keep a tank rolling is 50-100 bucks a month. To stock a tank you will look to spend atleast 50 bucks a fish average since most saltwater fish are not captive bred, most are wildcaught. The power bill for you house will go up when you own a saltwater tank aswell, and if you live in a warm climate you need to hook an inline chiller into the water aswell to chill the water from the heat that is generated from the metal halide lighting coral needs.
 
what the fuck happened to the embeds god dammit/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
/static/images/flash_video_placeholder.png
 
pulsing xenia is a nice looking coral and dirt cheap and reproduces like crazy and needs virtually no light to grow but it can destroy the other coral in the tank because its so aggressive. It produces chemicals that kill nearby corals so it can expand and stings the shit out of corals it touches.

Corals are pretty mean to each other as a whole, surprisingly. SPS coral can take a real shit kicking when its around soft coral.
 
reef tank is probably a 20-30$ a gallon investment up front with averaged sized setup. I spent $1500-2000 on my 50 gallon, and then monthly its probably 30-40 bucks, plus electrical. What gets you is the fish and corals. you start getting the- "Oh that polyps only 80 bucks" mentality, and soon enough you're walking out of the fish store with $400 of coral and an empty wallet. If you want to have an epic tank you need to have bank hahaha.
 
reef tank is probably a 20-30$ a gallon investment up front with averaged sized setup. I spent $1500-2000 on my 50 gallon, and then monthly its probably 30-40 bucks, plus electrical. What gets you is the fish and corals. you start getting the- "Oh that polyps only 80 bucks" mentality, and soon enough you're walking out of the fish store with $400 of coral and an empty wallet. If you want to have an epic tank you need to have bank hahaha.
 
werd, a frag of certain hardcoral can be 100-200 bucks a frag. Frags are a cut section off an established coral colony that will eventually grow into a new colony. Some softy frags are like 10 bucks a pop tho, zoo's are are awesome starter corals that can be as low as 10 bucks a frag and grow like weeds.
 
this thread is rad. I used to have a standard 10 gallon nanoreef in highschool. I was into reptiles more that fish so I had over 20 different reptiles and amphibians in my room and one salt water tank as well as a couple small under 1 gallon planted fresh water tanks. I definitely miss it now. but living on my own is pretty pricey, though I want to set up a freshwater planted tank in the near future. I also plan on building a living wall in my houses living room.
 
yea it did get a little out of hand, but that was towards the end when we disassembled the tank anyway. we all went off to college and actually left the tank with my friends mom to take care of for a while. by that point it was almost self sufficient, but she just couldn't do it herself forever. was pretty awesome though.
 
automatic feeders are horrible. Most fish can survive a good period of time without food. A saltwater fish eats mostly naturally occuring organisms that grow in the live rock of the tank. You can go for 3-4 days without feeding fish with no problem.
 
I had an electric blue crayfish for a few years, but gave him away because he was fucking chopping off all the roots of my plants in the tank.

attachment.php


Also had some vampire shrimp for a time which were pretty cool little buggers too, they were filter feeders so they didnt really fuck with plants.

1.jpg
 
Are there any really dope fish that are hard to kill that live in freshwater? (idealy not breaking the bank)
 
found some video of a young fresh water ray chasing some small ghost shrimp. Pretty awesome. I remember putting 50 shrimp in the tank at once for mine, and they would be gone by the morning and the stingray would have a visible pot belly.

 
we had a custom made globe style jellyfish tank at work and they somehow always found a way to find a "corner" and stop swimming and die. They are so damn hard to keep alive.
 
tetras man. You could get a nice little ten gallon setup with a little shoal of them for ~40 or 50 bucks probably. Just do some research before you buy anything and you'll be set.
 
I have 3 saltwater tanks running now, they're definitely really sick. Frankly I don't do any maintenance aside from topping off evaporated water every now and then. My corals grow slow, but they still have good color. I don't have many fish though, buying a few in the next couple weeks. ^ If you got any questions, let me know
 
well it's been quite some time, but i also cut up a dogfish. fish is a lot easier to cut through than mammals are.

someone ut their go pro in the fish tank and make a fish tank edit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top