There have been suggestions that I post a video tour of my fish room on this forum, as well as a thread describing an upgrade that is just about to get started, so I thought I'd combine the two into a single thread. But let’s start at the beginning.
Chapter 1; the Beginning.
‘Where did it all begin?’ My interest in fishes did not begin with an aquarium; it began by the shores of Barney Pond, in northern Rhode Island. As a boy I would spend most Saturdays at the pond, collecting samples for my microscope, getting wet trying to catch frogs or turtles, generally having a great time. But my favourite time was spring, when I would spend hours watching mated pairs of sunfish build nests, then care for their young in the shallow water. Magical.
Soon thereafter I acquired my first ‘pet’ fish; a free goldfish from the local department store, which of course required a non-free goldfish bowl. That bowl became a 5-gallon tank, then a 10, and soon the goldfish was replaced by platys and tetras, and the tank acquired a pump and heater. And so it began.
My father got interested, and before long we had a number of small tanks in our living room. Was that a fish room? Probably not.
I had a single 20g tank through college containing Apistogramma. These sparkling little jewels built nests and raised fry just like the sunfish in Barney Pond! From that point, I was well and truly hooked.
During my first year in graduate school a mind-boggling array of cichlids from the Great Rift Lakes in East Africa began to arrive in this country. From my apartment in central NJ, within easy driving distance of the major importers in NY, I had ready access to all these new and wonderful fishes.
By graduation a few years later, I had a small collection of tanks with a variety of rock-dwelling fishes from Lake Malawi (Mbuna), and was selling fry to LFS’s on a regular basis. My first fish room? Perhaps. But the first real fish room didn’t happen until I moved to New Haven for my postdoctoral fellowship in the mid-70’s. But that’s Chapter 2.
Here’s a pic of the first Malawian to breed under my care; Labeotropheus fuelleborni. My WC pair, RT male and OB female (not shown), produced abundant fry that were in great demand, and helped pay for all the fish food!
Chapter 1; the Beginning.
‘Where did it all begin?’ My interest in fishes did not begin with an aquarium; it began by the shores of Barney Pond, in northern Rhode Island. As a boy I would spend most Saturdays at the pond, collecting samples for my microscope, getting wet trying to catch frogs or turtles, generally having a great time. But my favourite time was spring, when I would spend hours watching mated pairs of sunfish build nests, then care for their young in the shallow water. Magical.
Soon thereafter I acquired my first ‘pet’ fish; a free goldfish from the local department store, which of course required a non-free goldfish bowl. That bowl became a 5-gallon tank, then a 10, and soon the goldfish was replaced by platys and tetras, and the tank acquired a pump and heater. And so it began.
My father got interested, and before long we had a number of small tanks in our living room. Was that a fish room? Probably not.
I had a single 20g tank through college containing Apistogramma. These sparkling little jewels built nests and raised fry just like the sunfish in Barney Pond! From that point, I was well and truly hooked.
During my first year in graduate school a mind-boggling array of cichlids from the Great Rift Lakes in East Africa began to arrive in this country. From my apartment in central NJ, within easy driving distance of the major importers in NY, I had ready access to all these new and wonderful fishes.
By graduation a few years later, I had a small collection of tanks with a variety of rock-dwelling fishes from Lake Malawi (Mbuna), and was selling fry to LFS’s on a regular basis. My first fish room? Perhaps. But the first real fish room didn’t happen until I moved to New Haven for my postdoctoral fellowship in the mid-70’s. But that’s Chapter 2.
Here’s a pic of the first Malawian to breed under my care; Labeotropheus fuelleborni. My WC pair, RT male and OB female (not shown), produced abundant fry that were in great demand, and helped pay for all the fish food!
), you tend not to notice how crusty your tanks get over time just in routine use. This 45L has only been set up for about 5 years, but I couldn't believe how much salt creep had accumulated around the edges. Granted, reaching to the back of one of these lower-level tanks is not easy, and my water is full of minerals and buffers, but even so. This is one reason that I'm not going to wider tanks on the bottom levels, sticking with the 45L's (12" wide) over 40B's (18" wide). The tank cleaned up OK for now; the next step will be to repaint the back in black. I've been using Krylon Fusion Gloss Black spray paint for this, and it works great. The retro crystal paint backgrounds were fun, but it's time for a change, and some of my fishes will show much better against the black. 
