Anyone collect tropical or marine fish?

[llsteve80]

I don't. I'm sick of them. I am around 100's of thousands of gallons of the stuff a day. Sometimes it's cool and I want a tank but don't really feel like taking care of it. The place where I work sells the fish to the pet stores. If you live in the midwest, and have a fish, I saw it first

Just wondering if there's any hobbyists around here. Anyone interested in how the fish got from where ever to you, let me know and I'll share some pics of the process. Don't really want to do it too publicly though. Although, maybe it wouldn't matter.

Here's a couple I took with my phone, uploaded to facebook with the BB/Facebook app, and then snatched from facebook with photobucket. Yes, I am bored. ( about an hr ago, I took some dry ice and water and blew up an empty soda bottle in the dock )

[solchitlins]

I used to, taking a break from it now.

Ive had fresh and salt, still have an 6ft tank in the basement ready to go. My favorite fresh is the Blue Frontosa from Zaire, plan on getting a colony some day soon.

not my pics/I wish

I also enjoy ultra rare clownfish, although thats what eventually brought down my salt tanks, didn't quarenteen long enough, had a nasty disease, crashed my salt tanks trying to stop it.

[llsteve80]

not my pics/I wish

I also enjoy ultra rare clownfish, although thats what eventually brought down my salt tanks, didn't quarenteen long enough, had a nasty disease, crashed my salt tanks trying to stop it.

I hate that. I had a 20 gal reef tank going, totally crammed. I had a big (40 gal?) tupperware tank under it with bio-balls and the whole 9. Basic idea was, the more water, the more I could fit. The tank was just all you could see. I had corals, inverts, anenomea, couple clowns, it was cool. But lots of work. Tested the water daily. Go on vacation for 5 days and came home to cloudy water, dead fish, ehhh. I'm done. I think an anenomae died and killed everything.

[USMC8404]

Hey Steve,

I have been keeping salt water fish for years without any problems. I found that the more you mess with it the more trouble you will have. I don't do anything more than a 20% water change per month. Once your tank is established you don't need to do anything else with it (except keeping the glass clean). I have a wet dry system and a lot of live rock in my large bowfront tank. I also have a 1.5 gal. hex with a clown an anamone and an emerald crab in it. It has an undergravel filter system and I change the water in it about once per week. I just recycle it into the larger tank.

[radiohead101]

I had a 10g saltwater, let it run for many months, slowly added things like they said (a crab after a couple of months, then a clownfish.) Got to two clownfish, came home one day and my $3 crab ate both of my $24 clownfish. I said screw this

[Chronus]

doesn't josh dabble with fish too ? (and no this is not a leftfield joke about chinese, triads, GTA, fish etc)

[llsteve80]

USMC, my problem was that I tried to start balls out right away. I ran just water for a week, and then popped everything in. I had to keep a close eye on it for a while. My Dad and his boss sucessfully did basically the same thing with about 60,000 gallons past July, so it's not impossible. They just know what they're doing.

Thats one crazy system by the way. Each row of about 100(?) tanks has it's own computer and UV sterilizers. Under the tanks are vats filled with bio-balls and the computer controls temperature, salt levels, ph, who knows what else. There are 3 5,000 gallon plastic water towers that the water gets mixed in, and the system drains new water from them as needed. Each row of tanks is on it's own seperate filtration system, and closed off entirely from the rest to avoid losing everything if something goes terribly wrong in just one row.

I don't know exactly how much water gets changed a day, but when fish are picked/packed, they have to be in water, obviously, and that comes directly out of the tanks. Each salwater fish is placed in it's own bag.