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My Truly Bizarre Introduction Into The Aquarium World And Hello Everyone!

SennaTea

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SennaTea Apprentice

SennaTea

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💗Hello everyone!💗
My name is Senna, I am a transgender (She/Her) 21 year old novice aquarist who grew up in Hawaii and has some truly bizarre aquarium experience. I like breeding Bettas. Yeah.

The bizarre tale of how I ended up in the aquarium hobby:

Back in high school I suffered from intense anger issues and was put into an anger management "home economics" class in the hopes that it will help me deal with it. The funny thing is that this home economics class was just a front for a senior teacher's dream: To own an army of Tilapia. This man, was obsessed with them, had several ponds built into the campus along with giant hydroponic setups with massive vats full of the fish. I am talking hundreds, and all of them were pets. I wasn't allowed to do anything with the fish really, just watch and do manual labor (like feeding or pumping gallons of waste into the runoff vat through PVC pipes) whatever he said went and I spent the better part of two years living in the shadow of the most irritable and stubborn guidance councilor / fish master you could ever imagine. I was truly the Morty to his Rick Sanchez.

The living conditions for the fish were perfect! Pristine even (He was a perfectionist), the water was crystal clear with massive custom built filters that this man welded together in each one. He owned 9 of them, all in the back of a public school with a graduation rate of 73%. This man built an ecosystem under the school's very nose until my sophomore year where he did the grand reveal!

(Of course the school was thrilled to find out where the school funding was going, turns out, it was all being turned into fish products but I digress.)


It took years, my entire high school education actually but once it was finished, the day of reckoning was upon us, and it was time.

The epic conclusion:

For you see, this man had a dream, a dream so stupid, so bold, and so impractical that it would make any school supervisor shiver in their boots! 

To put a 55 gallon tank with a single live Tilapia in every classroom on campus without permission. And me being a dubious sniveling teenager with an impulsive disorder OF COURSE I AGREED THAT THIS IS THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION.

Over a period of six months (including two in summer) we filled up the entire school agricultural warehouse with dozens of tanks, most of which he cut and made out of resin and glass himself. (45 in total.) and once the coast was clear, we were on the move! For you see, I had gotten my friend group of scrawny awkward misfits to agree in helping me move the tanks. We would duck into classes mid session and deliverer each one along with the inline filtration system that he had custom fitted to screw into the classroom faucets. And you know what? With the combination of a single old golf cart and sheer mortal will the eight of us got it done in only a week. And what is even crazier then all of this, is the fact that everyone everywhere on campus just went about their day, we had done it so smoothly, so perfectly, that the teachers all just thought it was approved, like a bunch of school board members just came together and was like "Ah yes, this school need more fish!"
 

It was only two weeks before I graduated that I found out that the madman that had done all this was retiring only a month after, I was all according to plan, and it was executed perfectly, and it was his magnum opus. I never knew what happened to the fishery, the tanks, or the man since then... but a little part of me hopes its all still there, waiting for the next grouchy old man to rule the tilapia army.

Back to me:

Fast forward 4 years and here I am, the same old me, the same old problems, living in a motel with my girlfriend in (generic US location here) nowhere with crippling debt. I suddenly said, HEY! You know what we should do! Get a 5 gallon tank! And you know what, I did, and that is how I got here.

 

 

Edited by SennaTea
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SennaTea Apprentice

SennaTea

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On 12/11/2022 at 7:03 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Welcome to the forum! Interesting story…it’s great to see that LGBTQ+ people are joining the forum! 
Im surprised that your teacher chose Tilapia, of all things 😂. Did he breed them himself?

@TheSwissAquarist Yes, he did, he had the fry set up in those blue above ground plastic ponds, he would grow these huge purple and white flowered lilies that were all like two feet across. He had a whole station for making brine shrimp in one of those office building type water dispensers and would just dispense the shrimp right into a measuring cup to feed them.

He spent the better part of those three years trying to figure out how to breed Wild Tilapia (The more skidish and aggressive sliver colored variant) and Domestic Tilapia (The orange slower kind you would find at a the supermarket.)

Interestingly enough this would sometimes create offspring, but they would usually die before reaching 3 months old or so. They also looked quite... Not right. He eventually stopped doing that because I convinced him it was cruel.

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JJenna Proficient

JJenna

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Welcome to the forums! It's good to know that my son was not the only one who had a dream as your teacher did. As I was reading it I began to wonder...could that be my son? But it isn't....he teaches middle school kiddos with learning disabilities. When he was hired for the position he saw that the school's greenhouse was not being used...he developed lesson plans for the entire school, which is self-sustaining to this day, an Aquaponics program. My son co-opted the greenhouse and turned it into a farm. They raise tilapia, tomatoes, herbs, and lettuces and sell them to local restaurants. Kiddos at every level of the school are involved. 

Looking forward to reading your journal!

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Schuyler Veteran

Schuyler

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Why tilapia? Did he ever explain?

That's funny because I was in an Asian market yesterday and saw their live tilapia in the tank and my first thought was "wow, that aquarium is way overstocked!"

How much did your tilapia experience was applicable to what you do in the hobby now? Do you have a 55 somewhere with a tilapia? Such a weird and random fish to choose...

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SennaTea Apprentice

SennaTea

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@Schuyler Not really no he didn't. Although I do know he wanted an actual army of the fish and in the wild Tilapia make massive shoals and can live in actual muddy swamp water, they are considered invasive because they are really really hard to kill. So them beeing in these massive tanks in a whole school didn't bother them or make them sick. They all just swam in circles and hovered about. They are kind of devoid of any personality honestly they just kind of swim with that dead eyed look. They are very instinctual and primal fish.

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The endler guy Mentor

The endler guy

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On 12/11/2022 at 6:46 AM, SennaTea said:

💗Hello everyone!💗
My name is Senna, I am a transgender (She/Her) 21 year old novice aquarist who grew up in Hawaii and has some truly bizarre aquarium experience. I like breeding Bettas. Yeah.

The bizarre tale of how I ended up in the aquarium hobby:

Back in high school I suffered from intense anger issues and was put into an anger management "home economics" class in the hopes that it will help me deal with it. The funny thing is that this home economics class was just a front for a senior teacher's dream: To own an army of Tilapia. This man, was obsessed with them, had several ponds built into the campus along with giant hydroponic setups with massive vats full of the fish. I am talking hundreds, and all of them were pets. I wasn't allowed to do anything with the fish really, just watch and do manual labor (like feeding or pumping gallons of waste into the runoff vat through PVC pipes) whatever he said went and I spent the better part of two years living in the shadow of the most irritable and stubborn guidance councilor / fish master you could ever imagine. I was truly the Morty to his Rick Sanchez.

The living conditions for the fish were perfect! Pristine even (He was a perfectionist), the water was crystal clear with massive custom built filters that this man welded together in each one. He owned 9 of them, all in the back of a public school with a graduation rate of 73%. This man built an ecosystem under the school's very nose until my sophomore year where he did the grand reveal!

(Of course the school was thrilled to find out where the school funding was going, turns out, it was all being turned into fish products but I digress.)


It took years, my entire high school education actually but once it was finished, the day of reckoning was upon us, and it was time.

The epic conclusion:

For you see, this man had a dream, a dream so stupid, so bold, and so impractical that it would make any school supervisor shiver in their boots! 

To put a 55 gallon tank with a single live Tilapia in every classroom on campus without permission. And me being a dubious sniveling teenager with an impulsive disorder OF COURSE I AGREED THAT THIS IS THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION.

Over a period of six months (including two in summer) we filled up the entire school agricultural warehouse with dozens of tanks, most of which he cut and made out of resin and glass himself. (45 in total.) and once the coast was clear, we were on the move! For you see, I had gotten my friend group of scrawny awkward misfits to agree in helping me move the tanks. We would duck into classes mid session and deliverer each one along with the inline filtration system that he had custom fitted to screw into the classroom faucets. And you know what? With the combination of a single old golf cart and sheer mortal will the eight of us got it done in only a week. And what is even crazier then all of this, is the fact that everyone everywhere on campus just went about their day, we had done it so smoothly, so perfectly, that the teachers all just thought it was approved, like a bunch of school board members just came together and was like "Ah yes, this school need more fish!"
 

It was only two weeks before I graduated that I found out that the madman that had done all this was retiring only a month after, I was all according to plan, and it was executed perfectly, and it was his magnum opus. I never knew what happened to the fishery, the tanks, or the man since then... but a little part of me hopes its all still there, waiting for the next grouchy old man to rule the tilapia army.

Back to me:

Fast forward 4 years and here I am, the same old me, the same old problems, living in a motel with my girlfriend in (generic US location here) nowhere with crippling debt. I suddenly said, HEY! You know what we should do! Get a 5 gallon tank! And you know what, I did, and that is how I got here.

 

 

I have so many questions 

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