Hi All-
I am an aquarium newbie. Well maybe not completely new. I had an aquarium 20+ years ago for a few years but that was a lifetime ago and I enjoyed it but when we moved to a new house we didn't have room for it while we renovated.
I stumbled back into this. Before Christmas I had googled "presents for old people" looking for a gift for my 80+ year old parents. One of the ideas on the list was this. I thought that was a great idea. My parents are animal lovers, live in a retirement community, lots of time, low maintenance. So I bought one, set it up, let it run for a while, and stocked it. It is still at my house as they have had covid for the last two weeks. I'll be dropping it off at their place next week.
Once I had it setup I remembered how much I loved having fish before and since then have gone a little nuts and have added three more tanks. I started with the Betta tank (Mr. Blue)
Then I made a tank in our family room:
Then I put a tank of pea puffers on my desk where I work all day (my personal favorite):
Last thing I've done so far is buy another 14g cube like above and a 10g quarantine tank.
It's been fun. Really into learning about plants. I never did that before.
Now for the challenges:
Back in the old days I never quarantined anything. I think I was just young, lacking internet, and didn't know better. So I've filled each tank without quarantining and without medicine. I lost 1 fish in the biorb, 7 fish in the family room, and 1 pea puffer. So I'm currently doing the med trio on everything.
I also didn't cycle (again didn't recall that was a thing). So I got things to temp, added de-chlorinator and bio kickstarter.
Learning my lessons.
I'm getting ready to build a 40g breader for 2 pairs of blue rams. Going to do that one right. Build next week, wait a few weeks, quarantine and med the fish, and hopefully have much better success.
The forum has been exceptionally helpful teaching this dog new tricks. Nice to have a community like this. I'm also going for customer of the month with Aquarium COOP I think. I've been placing an order every other day it seems. I don't know what the sticker thing is all about but I've gotten a lot of stickers. Nice job running the business @Cory. I've owned a bunch of different businesses and I am sure this one is challenging and rewarding.
Also have a well stocked local fish shop, House of Tropicals, in Baltimore. Can't speak to how they run things yet, but they have a ton of fish and supplies which is also nice.
Looking forward to meeting people.