Flukeworld
Member
Hello dear "colleagues",
This is how we call each other who are into this hobby in my country. I am from Bulgaria, small country in eastern Europe. We are very happy to have an access to the world, which was not the case when I was a kid. As a young teenager I have live trough the USSR communism till 1989, when my country adopted the democracy..
I am starting this far, because after buying an aquarium for my kid, I recalled it was the greatest hobby I had as a kid. For around 5 years as an early teen I had 6 aquariums with around 500 livebearers. I am grateful to my father, who made this possible and helped me a lot to get what I needed and is possible at that time for the hobby.
So, nowadays I knew I got it, went to the shop, argued a bit with the sells guy, being a bit disappointed that my daughter 3rd birthday is tomorrow, but I cant put any fish in my tank present. Anyway, I got 17 litters (4.5 gallons) aqua, filter, heater, white-blue stones substrate and starter bacteria. I did not go cheap, so I am happy I got somewhere good hardware following the merchant advice. After around 9 months I still had keep the aqua and the hardware as a livebearer babies growing place.
So, after it cycled (I believe it was), somewhere on the forth day I have put 6 fish as present for my daughter's birthday. We also put together all the seа shells we have collected in last years. I got 2 plants too, сo a bit of a very "beginner" picture here to see from where to where it got in time.
The fish was 2 swordtail helleri, 2 black mollies, 2 plattas and 1 ancitrus. After few weeks it turned out that all of them are male and just 1 molly is a female. Then she died. It had such a big affect on me - I believed I have been doing everything wright, applying everything that I knew from my childhood, including I was following everything that people told me in the shop - how to change the water, hot to clean the substrate and the filter, how to feed, adapt water and so on. After getting on the internets, looking for what could have been gone wrong - it woke up. I got so deep into this being very happy that there is so much to read, so much options, possibilities and hardware to have money for in the shops. I realized I have forgotten what it was for me to be into this aquarium science. So, I fixed it. We collected some stones with the kids from around our house, rend some with a hammer, then glued them as we liked, planned the aquascape, glued the moss - a result of my passionate internet digging and youtube wathing. So here the result:
Well, it did not end there. I was so excited and carried away, that I started to imagine what I want as my "aqua space" in our house. My wife was not excited at all, but now she likes the result. So I started imaging, scratching and planning things, so here a photo:
Well, I have some computer skills (I am very modest here) so I created a "project" and ordered it from a local company. It turned out, they are amazingly good.
So the result:
Once again I did not go cheap. Here is where it all went very deep and this is what I do/read/help where I can/think trough the day for several months now. I got into issues with time, still have a lot to fix but this is how I found this forum - for now a great source of knowledge and experience. Soon we will meet at "issues" topics
Here, some pictures of the current state - the small one is 9 months old, 17 litter tank, and the big one is 6 months old and 170 litters (somewhere 130 litters in real). Enjoy
This is how we call each other who are into this hobby in my country. I am from Bulgaria, small country in eastern Europe. We are very happy to have an access to the world, which was not the case when I was a kid. As a young teenager I have live trough the USSR communism till 1989, when my country adopted the democracy..
I am starting this far, because after buying an aquarium for my kid, I recalled it was the greatest hobby I had as a kid. For around 5 years as an early teen I had 6 aquariums with around 500 livebearers. I am grateful to my father, who made this possible and helped me a lot to get what I needed and is possible at that time for the hobby.
So, nowadays I knew I got it, went to the shop, argued a bit with the sells guy, being a bit disappointed that my daughter 3rd birthday is tomorrow, but I cant put any fish in my tank present. Anyway, I got 17 litters (4.5 gallons) aqua, filter, heater, white-blue stones substrate and starter bacteria. I did not go cheap, so I am happy I got somewhere good hardware following the merchant advice. After around 9 months I still had keep the aqua and the hardware as a livebearer babies growing place.
So, after it cycled (I believe it was), somewhere on the forth day I have put 6 fish as present for my daughter's birthday. We also put together all the seа shells we have collected in last years. I got 2 plants too, сo a bit of a very "beginner" picture here to see from where to where it got in time.
The fish was 2 swordtail helleri, 2 black mollies, 2 plattas and 1 ancitrus. After few weeks it turned out that all of them are male and just 1 molly is a female. Then she died. It had such a big affect on me - I believed I have been doing everything wright, applying everything that I knew from my childhood, including I was following everything that people told me in the shop - how to change the water, hot to clean the substrate and the filter, how to feed, adapt water and so on. After getting on the internets, looking for what could have been gone wrong - it woke up. I got so deep into this being very happy that there is so much to read, so much options, possibilities and hardware to have money for in the shops. I realized I have forgotten what it was for me to be into this aquarium science. So, I fixed it. We collected some stones with the kids from around our house, rend some with a hammer, then glued them as we liked, planned the aquascape, glued the moss - a result of my passionate internet digging and youtube wathing. So here the result:
Well, it did not end there. I was so excited and carried away, that I started to imagine what I want as my "aqua space" in our house. My wife was not excited at all, but now she likes the result. So I started imaging, scratching and planning things, so here a photo:
Well, I have some computer skills (I am very modest here) so I created a "project" and ordered it from a local company. It turned out, they are amazingly good.
So the result:
Once again I did not go cheap. Here is where it all went very deep and this is what I do/read/help where I can/think trough the day for several months now. I got into issues with time, still have a lot to fix but this is how I found this forum - for now a great source of knowledge and experience. Soon we will meet at "issues" topics
Here, some pictures of the current state - the small one is 9 months old, 17 litter tank, and the big one is 6 months old and 170 litters (somewhere 130 litters in real). Enjoy