How is the hobby for you?

[Dork Fish]

@Lennie Looks really cool 🙂

[Hobbit]

This seems like a good thread to add to after a long time away from the forum. 🙂 

For me, the hobby’s effectively been on pause for several months. Some of you know I was chronically ill for six years. During that time, I could do very little, and fish were a bit of an escape for me.

Then about a year ago we discovered that mold was the main culprit in making me sick. We started a huge remediation project and fish took a backseat.

Feeling better did two things. It gave me the energy to pick up a second job, as well as the energy to re-evaluate a lot of things in my life. I found I had new dreams and ended up leaving my online job to pursue… something new. Still figuring that out. 😄 Now I have no jobs and lots of introspection time. And I’m just now getting back to thinking about fish.

Water changes have been severely lacking; thankfully all the tanks either have pothos or floating plants (or both) to help keep the nitrates down. It’s likely we’ll be moving in the next year, so I’m trying to downsize. The fish seem happy, though I’m sure they’d be less bored if I was more involved with them. My two largest tanks also have huge algae problems. Oh well.

The two highlights for me recently were:

1. I gave my therapists’ office eight male platys that I bred myself, and they’ve been a huge hit! They’re the perfect dither fish. Their male opaline gourami has come out of hiding and the white skirt tetras now swim around at the front of the tank. 

2. I made the loaches new caves out of oyster shells. Loachy the one-eyed loach loves this one where he thinks he’s totally hidden. 😂

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

57 minutes ago, Hobbit said:

This seems like a good thread to add to after a long time away from the forum. 🙂 

For me, the hobby’s effectively been on pause for several months. Some of you know I was chronically ill for six years. During that time, I could do very little, and fish were a bit of an escape for me.

Then about a year ago we discovered that mold was the main culprit in making me sick. We started a huge remediation project and fish took a backseat.

Feeling better did two things. It gave me the energy to pick up a second job, as well as the energy to re-evaluate a lot of things in my life. I found I had new dreams and ended up leaving my online job to pursue… something new. Still figuring that out. 😄 Now I have no jobs and lots of introspection time. And I’m just now getting back to thinking about fish.

Water changes have been severely lacking; thankfully all the tanks either have pothos or floating plants (or both) to help keep the nitrates down. It’s likely we’ll be moving in the next year, so I’m trying to downsize. The fish seem happy, though I’m sure they’d be less bored if I was more involved with them. My two largest tanks also have huge algae problems. Oh well.

The two highlights for me recently were:

1. I gave my therapists’ office eight male platys that I bred myself, and they’ve been a huge hit! They’re the perfect dither fish. Their male opaline gourami has come out of hiding and the white skirt tetras now swim around at the front of the tank. 

2. I made the loaches new caves out of oyster shells. Loachy the one-eyed loach loves this one where he thinks he’s totally hidden. 😂

 

So glad you’re starting to feel better @Hobbit. A few years ago I saw one of those mysterious diagnosis shows on TV. A woman’s sister’s house caught fire and together they went to the site and were picking through rubble trying to salvage sentimental items. No masks or anything. She became sick and had chronic cough and was so weak she just lay on a couch, day after day. She had kids and a husband but couldn’t care for them. Years passed. Her sister was just fine. Why? They both went to that fire site together. She went to doctors. Nothing improved, no medicines worked, they didn’t know why, and she kept getting worse. At the end of it all- there was MOLD in the wall behind the couch! And she had laid there all that time, continually exposed to it!  Thankfully, they moved into a trailer while the house was remediated, and she regained her health. It was such a crazy story; it really stuck with me.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Hobbit]

On 6/24/2023 at 9:55 AM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

At the end of it all- there was MOLD in the wall behind the couch! And she had laid there all that time, continually exposed to it!  Thankfully, they moved into a trailer while the house was remediated, and she regained her health. It was such a crazy story; it really stuck with me.

There was a similar element for me, too. I was so tired and took lots of naps… turns out there was mold growing on my mattress. You couldn’t see it until you got all the way under the fabric slipcovers, but it was there, and finding it was one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever had. That combined with mold throughout our ductwork and HVAC, it was a terrible environment.

I’m glad I’m feeling better, too! I’ve missed you all. 😊

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 6/24/2023 at 3:25 PM, Hobbit said:

There was a similar element for me, too. I was so tired and took lots of naps… turns out there was mold growing on my mattress. You couldn’t see it until you got all the way under the fabric slipcovers, but it was there, and finding it was one of the most horrifying experiences I’ve ever had. That combined with mold throughout our ductwork and HVAC, it was a terrible environment.

I’m glad I’m feeling better, too! I’ve missed you all. 😊

That’s so crazy and unfortunate. If that happened to me I’d have no idea to even think about the mattress. I’m so glad you were able to figure it out.

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/24/2023 at 5:58 AM, Hobbit said:

Feeling better did two things. It gave me the energy to pick up a second job, as well as the energy to re-evaluate a lot of things in my life. I found I had new dreams and ended up leaving my online job to pursue… something new. Still figuring that out. 😄 Now I have no jobs and lots of introspection time. And I’m just now getting back to thinking about fish.

It's very good to hear that you're doing better.  It's definitely a process trying to figure out "what's next".

[Anjum]

On 6/24/2023 at 5:58 AM, Hobbit said:

This seems like a good thread to add to after a long time away from the forum. 🙂 

Same 😅 Glad to hear you're doing well 🙂

I myself have just been extraordinarily busy. Between work & yardwork & life, I can see how the hobby takes a backseat for a lot of people in the summer. But I've been itching to get some things going. I have 4 tanks I bought in April still sitting empty. Soon, soon..

I was at the co-op a couple weeks ago & got some new shrimp & plants. And I just made another plant order, so that should spur me into action. 

I've had some ups & downs with my tanks. Thankfully 2 of them are very stable & running on autopilot. The other 2 are in a window & I've been battling cyanobacteria. I thought they'd be fine, they've been there since last August. But I now realize, that the light intensity was steadily decreasing when I set them up, and when spring rolled around this year & the light steadily increased, problems started. One of them is a 5 gal w/ no animals in it anymore, which I'll be tearing down. But the other has fish in it which I'll be moving once I set up one of those aforementioned tanks... For now, I've mostly blacked it out & the cyanobacteria isn't spreading. 

One thing at a time... sometimes I shoot myself in the foot by having too many options. 🤷‍♀️