What was in your first tank

[Tanked]

On 5/12/2022 at 3:07 AM, Baphijmm said:

We'd kept "carnival goldfish" basically for as long as I can remember; our school district's local carnival would often have that particular game, and so we'd regularly win them as kids. Naturally, they never lasted very long.

My first personal dedicated tank was a 29-gallon "community" tank, in quotes because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I had absolutely no money with which to actually do anything, and so the "community" was extremely stilted. Growing up in Cincinnati in the '90s, we had a local pet store chain called Jack's Aquarium and Pets (I'm not sure if they're still around? Doing a quick Google search, they were apparently acquired by Pet Valu in 2016, so I guess not); they used to have a "Fish of the Month Club", where, if you were a member (which cost money, naturally, but my parents covered it), you'd get your choice of four different fish that were basically, the first one was free (of any one variety, meaning you only got one free fish a month), and any more were deeply discounted. Being of the poor persuasion, I often went just to get one free fish.

The problem with this was, naturally, many of the fish they offered in this way were best off in large groups. I didn't know this, and honestly I'm pretty sure most of the employees didn't know either. So like, this tank had one molly, one swordtail, one Cory, one tiger barb, one clown loach, etc. I did have two gold gouramis, as that was my first variety of fish in that tank and I thought they were so pretty I paid for the second. Not many survived very long; ironically, the longest-living fish in the tank were the gouramis, lasting a couple years.

Looking back on it now, it's quite embarrassing, but you know, you don't grow without making mistakes. I certainly know better now!

I think there are a great many of us that began with one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish in our community tanks.  Before the WWW, good information on proper fish keeping was harder to come by.  Ironically Jack's was one of the best places for good if not totally accurate information.  The one nearest to me would refer me to a competitor when they didn't know the answer to my question.  The chain was ruined when purchased in 2016 by Pet-Valu, who went out of business in 2020

[sairving]

I had a tank as a kid that had some albino cory cats and a black moor named Burt. One day, we came home from somewhere and the only thing left in my tank was Burt. The top that came with was on the floor. We had a 20 pound cat named Fred. The plastic hood was no match for an intelligent, determined cat (he could open doors). My dad made a Plexiglas lid that fit tightly after that. 

My first attempt at fish keeping on my own in high school did not go well. I had a 10 gallon with 2 fancy goldfish. Yeah......

I'm a much better fish keeper now.

 

[gardenman]

My first tank was probably 55-ish years ago. I used to get most of my fish from WT Grants in the Chinese food containers that fish used to be packed in. I remember hatchet fish, angelfish, neons, guppies, mollies, swordtails and the like. Nothing terribly exotic. Neons would often be on sale for $0.10 each or ten for a dollar. I had an uncle who had a tank just packed full of common guppies and we'd come home with a few of them whenever we'd visit. My grandfather kept fish also and he'd drop off some spare fish from time to time.

[Hannah Parker]

I had about 3 bettas in vases at various points of my childhood. Very sad to think about now, but at least I fed them betta pellets instead of them "living off the plant's root nutrients" kind of vases. The last betta I kept in a vase as a teenager was the start of my education about fishkeeping, and this was started when I watched Jenna Marble's "apology" video 

After this I did immense amounts of research and started my first real tank, which was a Topfin 10gal starter kit, with a HOB filter and a heater. I got a red & navy blue male betta, 5 neons and 5 hasbrosus pygmy cories. He killed the neons, but I tried black neons and he was fine with them, and the pgymies of course. That little community tank thrived for quite a bit, and I caught multi-tank-syndrome and had up to 5 tanks at one point lol. 

[Jawjagrrl]

A 55 with a ugf and a marineland bio wheel filter that got a workout taking care of a bunch of rowdy Mbuna. Bred OB zebras for the LFS for some time. Another 55, a 15 hex and a 30 long soon followed until life made the hobby impossible for a number of years.