Who or what got you into the SW hobby?
 

As the title states who or what got you into the hobby?

A friend of mine convinced me to start in the hobby as he was a SW hobbyist and I haven't looked back since.

i was bored, and my koi pond dream did not happen at the time.

I remember always being amazed at all the fish in the local pet store , just had to try the hobby . 35 years later , am still in it & still amazed !

One of my earliest childhood memories is of my father's fish tank back in Penang, Malaysia. I remember catching wild guppies, barbs, and danios with my little dip net in the local ditches, rice paddies and ponds.

Started my first personal tank at age 8 (overstocked fw community).

Kept my first w/c seahorse in 1981 (fed them live brine shrimp imported from San Francisco Bay and purchased weekly from Main Aquarium in Vancouver)

Started my first sw fish only tank around 1983 (110g & smaller tank with a hand-trained lionfish - big mistake).

Decades later, tens of thousands of dollars and dozens of tanks later, still an addict.

Anthony

I had freshwater tanks with Bala sharks growing up. I have up the hobby for a while and when I hit 30 decided that a saltwater tank was needed. I have always been interested in saltwater tanks and finally took the plunge. Blown I would have a hard time not having a tank!

always watched animal movies as a kid but my wife wanted a tank. I always said it was too much work but I eventually gave in

i'm not gonna lie it was finding nemo :biggrin:

In 2005 my sister was going to buy some fiddler crabs from petsmart. I did some research for her and discovered they were brackish water not freshwater like petsmart claimed. She lost interest so I turned the 15g into a nano reef. Almost 12 years later still haven't lost interest.

I have pretty much always had (freshwater) tanks of my own for the last 16 years, before that it was family tanks. 5 years ago I got bored of my African Cichlids and made the move to saltwater and haven't regretted it or thought about switching back since.

+1
My kids and finding nemo :-)


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Other. Worked at a petstore during university and they wanted to start selling SW so I started learning on their dollar!

kind of a combination of options for me... my dad's first job when he moved to the city in the 70's was at a local pet store in stoon called speers seed and pet and he brought me home a 10g tank for my 6th bday. i kept freshwater for 30 years following that until one day i went to a friends place who had a young saltwater tank with just a few zoas and an anemone. as soon as i saw the color i was converted.

I picked "magazine", closest thing to "book". :)

In the early '90s (I was a tweenie) I used to go to the library with my mom (she read a lot), and they had this section that was about 3 feet long that was all aquarium books. There were a few in there that had freshwater and saltwater in them, and I remember seeing a Copperband Butterflyfish in one of these books and thinking, "I gotta get one of those!" I never did buy a CBB, thankfully. I bought much worse though... So I then spent my time "special ordering" saltwater books from other libraries once I discovered you could do that.

My mom used to drive me to a small town in the USA (we lived really close to the border) about 45 mins away which was the closest store to me that had SW. I used to spend ALL my babysitting money there - $40 a week. I remember the first time I saw hydroid medusa swimming in my first tank (a 20-gallon hexagonal tank with an UGF, a non-submersible heater, and a single T8 bulb), and both my mom and I were totally in awe! That's definitely THEE most memorable reef keeping moment for me.

This was one of my staple books: You and Your Aquarium by Dick Mills, 1986.
http://rcdn-1.fishpond.co.nz/0006/20...5829789/6.jpeg


I remember The Conscientious Marine Aquarist, 1996 being brand new, and was so excited to get a new book from the library transfer program.
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...UkVO6zU_esYugQ

Sorry Mindy I did try to add book to the list but the edit timer passed by