Your Very First Tank
 

Hey there,

Any of you start this hobby as a teenager? My son is 15 and already an addict. If so, what was your first tank like? Upgrade coming :)

Thanks!

It is addictive lol

Here we go in order lol

1 -30g
2-750g
3-90g
4-33g
5-110g
6-180g
7-200g
8-60g
9-20g
10-90g
11-25g
12-75g

I'm sure I'm leaving a few out lol this doesn't include frag tanks or qt etc

Haha Denny…that's insane. Not only will you be getting him a new fish tank, you'll be looking for a new husband for me too ;)

He nearly fell off his chair with envy when he was the 750g in your list :) He needs a better part time job...

First tank was a complete mess lol low Bio load and packed with algae lol

Out of them all that was the only true crash and total write off heater brought tank to over a hundred degrees lol

I could probably have him help at the shop if he would like to earn some extra cash and learn the ropes we'll talk when I'm back in sat:)

He says YES!!!! And I just noticed that I posted this thread in buy/sell…oops…My son says "newb"...

He has NOTHING to do until February 2!!! Except hockey :)

My first tank was a 20-gallon hexagonal tank in 1993 that I spent all my babysitting money on. I had colonial hydroids in the tank which I had no idea what they were, and thought the little "jellyfish" (medusa stage) were simply awe-inspiring. I had a Sebae Clownfish, a Sebae Anemone, a Coral Banded Jerk (Shrimp), one piece of base rock, and a couple plastic corals. My highly sophisticated filtration included an undergravel filter with coral gravel, and I might have had a powerhead on one of the uptakes to improve filtration. ;) I did love the tank though. I think my mom has pics somewhere...

Haha…we laughed out loud at the "jerk"…this site needs a "like" button like Facebook…We also have a coral banded "half jerk"… :)

I am sensing a new build thread coming...

1 - 5 g in my room since I was a baby .
2- 10
3 - 25
4- 45
5- 33
6- 50
7 - 50
8- 99g 45 g sump

Not including reptile tanks and feeding tanks and ya you get it .

1 - 15g
2 - 20g
3 - 33g
4 - 90g
5 - 120g and 33g sump
6 - 45g cube and 25g sump

72 bow front
55 standard
14g bio cube
150
8' 280
90g breeder
75g
2g pico
Another 14g bio cube
29g bio cube
20g cubish
24" cubish 45g
112g shallow 6'x30x12
3'x24x20


my list of fresh water tanks is probably 3x as long

Let's see reef only right

5 gallon
10 gallon
30 gallon tall tank
8 gallon aqua giant nano
34 gallon neo tank with 8 gallon seahorse tank
82.7 gallon tank 1 piece starfire eurobrace 1st one from concepts

That's not to bad I guess lol

Hello

Seeing some of you guys having so many tanks we should be able to do some feature tank or feature member write up.


Titus

Only 2 for me...

75G - Mixed Reef ran for 2 years then upgrades to my current 180G. No more upgrades for a while.... Unless I can convince my wife otherwise. :wink:

Here's what it looked like about a year in:
http://i1160.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4ad05541.jpg

I am just starting to put together my first saltwater tank. I've had freshwater fish/tanks going on and off for 30 years, I have 16 going right now.

I'm in the oil and gas industry and I think I need to add a part time job to pay for this hobby....LOL

Hello

I thought ppl in the oil / gas industry are one of the top paid ones.


Titus

Don't get me wrong, I make good money but living on an acreage and feeding my 3 dogs burns through my pay cheque pretty quick. Management and field personel get paid much better than I but I like not being either one of those.

Oh the memories of numerous tanks we spent money and time on. I have had the following:

46 gallon bow front
5 gallon
86 gallon
2 gallon
5 gallon
10 gallon
30 gallon

I started when I was 16, parent sponsored of course.

I started at the age of 16 with a 2 Gallon Marina Betta tank and a half moon betta. Then to a free 10 gallon setup that a friend gave me. And from there.... it was a hoarding nightmare!! And the worst thing is... i'm sure I am forgetting a few setups. lol.

Here's my total including freshwater!

FRESHWATER
1- 2 gallon Betta (half moon)
2- 5 gallon Betta (crown tail)
3- 10 gallon freshwater community
4- 60 gallon cichlid tank
5- 40 gallon brackish archerfish/puffer/mono sebae tank
6- 80 gallon bowfront cichlid tank
7- 8 gallon betta vase (crown tail)
8- 8 gallon betta vase (half moon)
9- 10 gallon serpae tetra mini reef (fake reef, white sand) freshwater
10- 30 Gallon Tiger Barb / semi agressive community
11- 30 gallon Angelfish tank
12- 180 gallon arowana tank (22" Jardini + tiger oscars + jack dempsey + frontosa)
13- 80 Gallon Half circle premium cichlid community (one of my faves!)
14- 10 Gallon tetra/danio community tank (office tank)
15- 77 Gallon half circle community tank (fake reef)
16- 2X20 gallon breeders for apple snails

SALTWATER
17- 110g FOWLR
18- 50g Reef
19- 10g Nano
20- 5g Pico
21- 2.5g Pico
22- 14g Biocube Reef
23- 14g Biocube Mantis Shrimp Tank
24- 30g reef (fully setup and wet.. never added livestock)
25- 29g Bowfront Reef
26- 10g Kitchen Nano
27- 29g Biocube Reef
28- 90g FOWLR
29- 30g Shallow Clam Tank
30- 187g Reef (so far was my favorite tank ever)
31- 155g Bowfront Reef (only set up for a month before getting smashed)
32- 131g FOWLR
33- Fluval Edge Nano
34- 39g bowfront Reef
35- On my last final build with one massive tank, filter room... hopefully my permanent one!!

Tanks I currently have sitting around dry:
90 Gallon drilled (48")
170 Gallon (84")
175 Gallon Sump (72")
40 Gallon (48")
50 Gallon (48")
20 Gallon (24" shallow cube)
20 Gallon (24" shallow cube)
10 Gallon
10 Gallon
5 Gallon
2.5 Gallon

I think that I might need help.....

HOLY! You weren't kidding when you said hoarding. I am sure its not a nightmare though :biggrin:.

I also have to say that 90% of my saltwater tanks were purchased and sold in the canreef for sale section... so thank you canreef!

my first tank looked like ****. 90g worth of ****. That is all, carry on.

Well maybe my son is doing ok, his tank looks pretty good (maybe not to a discerning "expert" eye, like some on this forum). But no algae, nothing has died (knock on wood), and his levels are pretty good…

He's smart enough to know that we wouldn't "sponsor" his upgrade if it were any other way :)

Will be ordering his new tank today or tomorrow :)

Ya, it has definitely gotten A LOT easier to set up a decent tank these days. You can pretty much buy an all-in-one off the shelf tank, plug it in, dump in some water, salt, corals, fish and you're done, with decent results to boot. Such conveniences didn't exist when I set up my first tank many many many many many moons ago :-)

I started off with guppies in a margarine container that I bought from Woolco, I was about 8 years old at the time. Once my mom found them we upgraded to a bowl, and it was all uphill from there lol. My first Marine tank was a 108 gal failure, now I have my 60 gal, and I'm pretty happy with it :)

How do you guys remember all these tanks? I don't remember all mine. I'm not even sure that the one I remember as my first one was really my first one. :o

Of course?? I had my first tank when I was 11, and my parents never sponsored my tanks. :lol:

I have pictures of all the tanks I have owned in a big folder, individually named with the size! Right down do my first ones!

Here is the Betta Tank that started it all!

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3...a/SDC11518.jpg
http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3...a/SDC11534.jpg

Guess I've been a slacker:

1. 8 gallon Biocube
2. 10 gallon
3. 75 gallon
4. 2.5ish gallon pico
5. 34 gallon Red Sea Max
6. 120 gallon sitting dry waiting to be plumbed and filled with goodies :)

My first fw tank that I owned myself was a heavily, heavily overstocked 5 gallon that I bought with some money my parents left us when they went on vacation (ok, it was for food, but I wanted a fish tank). Boy did the LFS owners see me coming cause they loaded up this unsuspecting kid with a brand new 5 g and about 30 small tropical fish and sent him on his way (by bus) home to figure it out before he killed everything.

Fortunately, when my dad came back, he saw the tank, took me to Fraser Aquarium and bought me a new 33g. That was back when I was a weee little lad of eight years old.

My first sw tank was in the early 80s (around 1980-81) and it was a seahorse tank. 10 gallons with no live rock (what's live rock???) and I kept the wc seahorse alive for almost a year on live brine shrimp that I would cycle out to Main Aquarium in Vancouver to buy every week. Then there was a huge storm in San Francisco and all the brine shrimp that they usually collected for the petshop trade were washed out to sea and the poor little guy eventually starved :cry::cry: cause I couldn't raise adult brine shrimp from eggs fast enough. 30+ years later, still traumatized (jk) but really, still remember that terrible feeling of hoping a new brine shrimp shipment would come in time and being disappointed each time.:cry:

My first two bigger sw tanks was in the mid-80s. Had a 33g for a Volitan lionfish (got it at 3" and raised to over 12" before he poisoned me while I was cleaning his glass and I sold him. The other tank was a 110g with a Passer King Angel, Smooth Horn Shark, Moorish Idol, and Snowflake Moray Eel. 110g was the largest tank you could get back then and I used to hand-feed all these fish with squid and smelts. Wow, that was 30 years ago. Ok, now I feel old.

Anthony

What an awesome story! I laugh at envisioning 30 fish in a 5g…and how you would be shamed for feeding strictly brine fish (cause there's no nutritional value to it)….fortunately there were no forums around back then :)
Well we just returned from ordering my son his new tank…Jumping in…hope I still have a husband when this is all said and done ;)

I was eight and naive back then. I trusted the LFS owner. First and last time:wink: Now I do my own research before I buy anything. Ask my wife, hehe.

As for the seahorse's diet, I was feeding the brine shrimp powdered baby fish food and also growing phytoplankton cultures on my window sill to feed to the BS before feeding them to the seahorse. I was able to keep my first WC seahorse alive on adult brine shrimp for about a year on that diet, which is not bad considering this was decades before the internet or Canreef or seahorse.org. There was also NO mysis shrimp for sale. I was in high school at the time, but nobody really knew much about seahorse husbandry back in the 80s.:wink: I was doing what I thought was logical with the resources available.

Anthony

1-20g
2-40g
3-55g
4-90g
5-110g
6-90g
7-55g
8-65g
9-29g
10-90g
11-110g
12-145g
13-90g
14-90g (5 foot long)
15-135g
16-180g
17-90g
18-1200G

So I guess you like a 90G tank? :) I want to see that 1200 g tank some day! Still fish only?

Pretty sure my first tank was an ice cream bucket with minnows in it.

I killed my first goldfish when I was 7
When I was 10 I was breeding Betas and Guppies
Then no fish until I was 20 and had a 6' 120g, 2 20s and a 10g, with lots of boring tropical stuff plus my prized 18" pleco. He was buried in the back yard when he was done
Couple years after that the 120 was setup again as well as a 33g (both freshwater)
Couple years after that I was breeding cichlids in the 120 and the 33 was setup as a community 'tropical' tank in my parents' LR. Mom loved coming home to watch the fish
Things were moved around and sold
Then no tanks for 20 years
Another 125g freshwater with a 36g shrimp tank and a couple 20s for QT etc

Salt started when I became frustrated with stag algae that kept killing all my freshwater plants

I first got into saltwater ate the age of 15 when I bought a fully stocked 14 gallon biocube. After a year of hard work everything was still alive and flourishing, the half dead hammer frag I got with it was 5 or six big heads, toadstool I didn't know was in the tank grew huge!
After I saw my success I upgraded to the 29HQI Biocube, kept that running for two years and then moved some of the live rock into a little 8 gallon rimless tank that I have currently.
I have just purchased a 90 gallon and dipping my feet into the larger reef world, man this is the best hobby ever!!!

So just three reefs in the past, probably 50 freshwater in the past as well. Currently just took down my last freshwater…spend a little more time reefing :)

Like many, I started off with FW when I was young, but was out of the hobby for many years. Then we bought a house 3.5 years ago with a 100g SW tank already in place. That got me started with the reef hobby. I added a 130g downstairs a couple years later. Both tanks are doing fine, but my original 100g upstairs tank is still my main show tank. Here is my tank journal for the complete history.
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...d.php?t=102101

I started salt in 1996 with a10g. Moved to a 90g. Then a 45, upgraded to 75, then a 150. Downgraded back to the 75, then 90wide. Upgraded that to the current 180.
A bit of time trivia. Live rock was $20/lb when I started -lol But live rock came with corals on it, and all kinds of "live"

First was a standard 70g fresh water tank in 1972........first salt tank was a 110g long tank and my 70g tank in early 80,s. First reef tank was a 3ft. 60g style tank around 1989 I guess. Not enough room to list all the reef tanks since...:lol: