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Hi! I am Sam Smith, a beginner. My family has a 10-gallon tank that is older than me! We had lots of different fish, and at some point we also had aquatic frogs. Now the tank has 4 goldfish. I actually don't take care of it too much; they just seem to stay healthy with just food given to them every night and a filter running. I used to feed them every other night, but they were eating each other's fins! Now they stopped, and they look very nice! It has a piece of driftwood in it that I got from a friend when he was redecorating his 75-gallon. I also have a lot of creeping jenny that I picked from my garden in there. They grow roots within about 1 week. I took some land moss that did not have roots, and it is still alive in there for a few months already! I don't have gravel, but there are seashells I collected from the beach covering most of the bottom. Here is something interesting about goldfish: you can train them! I always feed them in the same corner, at the same time. Now every night at that time they are in that corner! I also have a 5-gallon tank with Ghost shrimp and snails. I just got it this week! The snails are also from a friend. They look like trumpet snails. They already started breeding! (Click here to see it.) I don't mind if they overpopulate; I think it looks cool! I plan on putting some in the goldfish tank when I have a lot of them. The goldfish will control the population. I also want to make a separate small breeding container. I don't have a filter yet, but I ordered one and it will hopefully come on Monday. I am also planning on getting more shrimp on Friday. I plan on eventually getting small fish. Maby neon tetras, guppies, or another small fish? Let me know what you this is good. If I get guppies and they overpopulate, I will probably give my friend the males and keep the females, or vice-versa. Oh, and the tank itself has gravel and 2 pieces of driftwood with some aquatic plants, creeping jenny, and moss. Here is my idea for everyone. You can make a semi-water semi-land aquarium and put in amphibians like frogs and salamanders! Thank you for reading through this. Sam Smith

Hello! My name is Brian. I've been looking for more places to share my experiences and learn more about this awesome hobby. Right now I have 4 tanks. I only have pictures of 2 too share right now though. I have a 55 gallon tank with a 3 spot gourami, about 17 black ruby barbs and 3 pictus catfish that are going into a 40 breeder in a few months to make room for yo yo loaches. The 125 has black skirt tetra, blue king tetra, Columbian tetra, bleeding heart tetra, sword tails, m/f pearl gourami, 3 bristlenose plecos all male, one albino, one regular, and one green dragon, a male apistograma hongsloi and a male black marble anglefish. Going to be rescaping this tank this Friday as the jungle look is getting to be a bit much for me lol. Probably going to make 2 separate islands with smaller rocks and wood in between. Plants everywhere of course. Anyway, this was a long winded intro lol😅. I look forward to being apart of this awesome community!

Hey! My name's Emily, and I'm a beginner aquarist who began keeping fish in February 2020! Even though it's been about 2 years, my knowledge in this hobby is still very little because I have had no access to experience- which means I haven't been able to get my hands on many plants, animals, or aqua scaping tools besides the very basic necessities (as you can see in the thumbnail, my 10 gallon tank is bare of plants except for a dwarf hairgrass and crypt bought from this website. I didn't even have enough sand to cover the top layer of my substrate! Luckily, that dilemma is solved now). The thumbnail picture is old, I replaced that barely-functioning filter I used to keep in a 2.5 gallon with an Aquarium Co-op filter and I removed that horrible dragon decoration. I've been able to get by for getting fertilizer, medicine, water testing kits, a gravel vacuum, a filter, and all those other tools by begging my parents to allow me to use my allowance to buy these supplies off Amazon or Aquarium Co-op, haha. While I do have an LFS, it's a really crappy one where the animals there are neglected, there's a really limited selection for the aquarium supplies, and everything is overpriced. I try my best to give my male betta, Ciel, the best life I can; considering that his diet consists of only hard pellets and bloodworms (also flakes he refuses to eat) and that his tank is located in the kitchen (not a good choice because of the fumes from the sink chemicals or the smoke from cooking), I feel like I haven't been able to live up to that. I still have a lot to learn, and after 2 years I am still stuck with knowing only the basics. Ciel is my first fish, and he hasn't gotten sick yet in these past two years I've owned him- but I have no experience with treating sick animals (every other day I get paranoid that Ciel might be sick and I am unable to recognize the signs) or with taking care of plants (my dwarf hairgrass and crypt have nearly died off on several occasions). I want to have more experience by getting some tankmates for Ciel, like cherry shrimp or tetras, but first I need to fill up all that empty space with plants, maybe even driftwood or aquascaping rocks if I can somehow get my hands on them. I already learned the hard way when I got myself a mystery snail before conducting proper research, and he died a premature death from an irritated foot and malnutrition. You can see him in the attached image. Anyway, sorry for literally writing an essay, haha, but that summarizes the experience I've had so far into this hobby. It's tough, but Aquarium Co-op's blogs/youtube videos and being able to order supplies like plants and filters from them really helps me out to enjoy this hobby. Aquarium co-op team, if you're reading this, thanks a whole lot! You guys are awesome!

I started fish keeping with my girlfriend a few months ago by getting a 5 gallon for her bedroom. We were hooked into enjoying this hobby right away. I came across co-op while researching different facets of aquarium keeping and am drawn to Cory and the community’s positive energy, combined experience, and passion for the hobby. I enjoy learning about and experimenting with fish keeping, plant care, and aquascaping. I like the idea of using these disciplines synergistically to create an experience. Recently I set up a 37 gallon for my room. I can lie to myself and say I’m not getting MTS because technically this is the first tank that’s owned by me and not my girlfriend. I look forward to spending hundreds of hours dreaming up ways to tweak things.

Hi there, community! I'm a newbie in aquarium keeping. Did quite a bit of research before starting, and can say Cory had a big impact on my decision in finally taking part in this hobby. I love nature and specially water nature. I'm from Lithuania so we don't have that many different fish and they are not as flashy - since we have all 4 seasons of the year and our winters tend to be quite chilly. Me and my wife found a second hand aquarium of 240 liters, with some plants and few left over fishes, since the original owners knew they are going to sell the aquarium so they stopped caring for it as much. Aquarium had everything it needs to be in operation. The trip and setting up was and interesting jurney that took almost all of my satuday, but was very worth it! Sadly one of the tetras (there were 3 originally) did not survive, but 4 plecos, 2 tetras, 2 siamise algea eaters and 2 amano shrimps had survived this jurney and a overnight wait in a heated bucket with plants and aeration. I've planted the aquarium, got a few more plants, few more driftwoods and this is how it looks a month in, with addition of 20 danios, 20 green neon tetras, 20 panda corries, 5 kuhlies, 3 more amano shrimps and recently got 2 puffers. So far had few interesting almost mishaps, but nothing that good searching could not solve. It seems my danios are getting plump and readying themselves for breeding, so I'm on a fence what should I do. Don't have that much space, but would love to try to breed them if the universe is giving me this new challenge. I would love to start growing brine shrimp hatchlings to feed my fish, since I wish them the best. But I'm located in EU and can't get any products from aquarium co-op. So maybe some of europeans could lend me any tips on shrimp eggs that worked for you, maybe you have some hatchery recommendations too? This hobby needs a huge warning sign, getting really addicted to fishies! Best wishes, Vilius.

Hey there! I'm excited to join this forum and get some new fish info, since all the club meetings have been canceled recently. 😞 I like freshwater, livebearers in particular. Oh, and did I mention that I love snails? I love snails! 🐌 I currently have a 10gal tank of magenta mystery snails that have been breeding like crazy (they need an upgrade but I'm space limited,) and a 60gal with "Ginga Rubra" guppies (I don't have much info on them, but they are happy,) Beckford's pencilfish (under-advertised!), gold cloud minnows, bamboo shrimp, cherry shrimp, assassin snails. I love 'em all, although I could do with fewer of the assassins. 🙂 Sorry for the long intro, just really excited to be here!