Tanks for the Memories!

H

hurtmypony

Members
I thought I might try writing down some of the fun and fuss I’ve had establishing my first tank in 5 or so years.

I’ll warn you now - my humble fifty-five gallon set up is certainly not going to impress you.

I am no Ted, who’s meticulously planned and ingeniously improvised fish room is so packed with technological wizardry, it makes a NORAD Command Center look as sophisticated as a one-room Algerian schoolhouse. Nor am I Greg, with his exquisitely aquascaped 240 gallon “Malawi Manorâ€, which is precisely what every Mbuna would dream of every night if only they could close their eyes.

Nor do I possess the knowledge someone like Tony has, who, while guiding us through his YouTube videos, effortlessly tosses out so many Latin names it sounds like he is reading incantations from the Necronomicon. (Oops! I was just trying to name some of the Haplochromis in this tank, and I accidentally opened up a Hell Gate!)

Nor am I any of the other CCA forum regulars, who, from the few glimpses of your knowledge and your tanks that I have had the pleasure of seeing, make my paltry 55 gallon (and stunted brain) look like a guppy in a tacky souvenir Spring Break of ’99 shot glass.

But, for the sake of vanity and other, nobler things, I figured I would take a crack at chronicling my journey back into the hobby. I have read a few of those “My New Tank†posts, and they are always exciting and entertaining reads for me, so I thought I could share some of my sweetest victories and agonizing defeats as well.

Let’s start at the beginning:

I have entered and left the fish-keeping hobby at least a couple of times in the past, and the one thing I consistently forget is the price of admission. Somehow, between tanks, I forget that setting even one up (the way I like it set up) costs approximately the Gross National Product of Sweden. Sure, with proper willpower, you can escape Pet Smart with a Betta, a bowl and a bag of food for under $30, but that is impossible for me. I am a man with:

1. Poor impulse control.
2. An internet connection.

These two things always combine into something costly and dangerous, like a meth addict finding a tool shed full of Sudafed.

Mouseclick.

Ah, there’s some affordable fluorescent lighting.

Mouseclick.

Oh, even better…LEDs.

Mouseclick.

Oh my! Metal Halides so powerful and colorful they can be seen from orbit.

AddToShoppingCart.

It’s like that with every component! I completely forget the initial moment I was walking through Petco, spying the tanks on sale, and saying to myself, “these tanks are only $55! I can have a lavish tank up and running for under $150!â€

Oh, what sweet, sweet lies I tell myself.

Anyway, I have just begun the cycling process, so I am nearing the finish line. I’ll backtrack a bit in my next post and cover some of the trials and tribulations I had gathering the pieces and setting them up. I’ll try and entertain you while I cover my equipment selection, my choice of décor and the fishless cycle I am trying for the first time. With any luck, I’ll make it to the part where I can actually add fish. I’ll even toss up some pictures once I build up enough courage to brave the elements, leave the house and buy some Double As for the crappy digital camera I have.
 
H

hurtmypony

Members
Thank you, guys! Sometimes my writing falls very short and only entertains me, so I appreciate the kind words. I will misinterpret your charity as incentive to continue!

Chapter Two: Bow Down Before the Rock Gods

Wife-to-be (Marley): “If you flood the basement, the couch where you will be sleeping from now on will be very damp.”

While doing my research for the décor of this tank, I discover the wondrous world of aquascaping. At first, it is bizarre to me that there would be an entire niche of hobbyists that concentrate solely on the populating their tanks with plants. The idea that you would have a tank and few or no fish is completely foreign to me - until I see their tanks. These pristine underwater landscapes, where every speck of gravel, plant and stone are painstakingly planned and placed, would not be improved by a mob of mischievous little cichlids going on a redecorating crusade.

Red Devil: “I think all the substrate would look wonderful in a gigantic, cantankerous mound on one side of the tank. Let me get started on that.”

The tanks of Japanese aquascaper and photographer Takashi Amano are particularly appealing to me so I set about in a flawed attempt to see if I can simulate his tank designs using entirely artificial plants and very real rocks.

I start with the rocks. Early one snowy Saturday morning, I visit Irwin Stone to find the perfect “Takashi Selection”.

Irwin Stone is an awesome place, and they are familiar with aquarists. Some of you clearly have “tamed the frontier” for me! I am warmly welcomed, at least initially, as half the staff came up to hear me ramble on about how I am going to immortalize their simple rocks in A MAGICAL 55 GALLON UNDERWATER KINGDOM.

I use my full arsenal of newly-learned aquatic and artistic vocabulary – “Takashi”, “aquascaping”, “The Rule of Thirds” “Vinegar Test” and “The Golden Ratio”.

When I learn something new, I never miss an opportunity to flaunt it. All perfect evidence pointing to the fact that I am an incorrigible geek with poor self-esteem and troubling delusions of grandeur.

I lose my audience somewhere around the time I am jabbering about “horizon lines” and ”dividing formations of interest through negative space”. Irwin Stone’s Mike, realizing they have a madman on their property, inches closer to the counter, either to trigger a silent alarm or unholster the .357 magnum surely duct-taped under the register.

I determine it would be best to simply shut up and see some rocks.

They usher me onto the back lot of their property and proudly show me various house-sized piles of rubble. Each pile has a mysterious name like Silver Lake #84, and Loose Wall #456. After 40 minutes, Irwin Stone sends me away with a pat on the back and 100 pounds worth of a trunk full of rock that cost me about $14.00.

Watching me unload my rock windfall, the wife-to-be gets a little nervous. She isn’t seeing rocks. She is seeing dozens of little time bombs set to explode at that most inopportune time in the future. Possibly during a dinner party.

Only my very passionate and terribly unscientific testimony about the application of egg crate to prevent avalanches, explosions of glass and flooding in the TV room earns me entry back into the house.

Blistering with confidence, I boldly declare the bottom floor bathroom to be my official rock-bathing facility, clean the rocks with a brush and drop them in a few buckets to soak for days.

Days later, during the design phase, I cannot get the rocks high enough in the empty tank to satisfy my desire for a vertically interesting formation without the future worry of some diggers toppling them and shattering the tank. I consider silicon, but, having engineering skills equivalent to that of The First Little Pig, I worry about my ability to pull off a structurally sound formation without using so much silicon that my rock piles will look like the miniature monster models used to shoot the 1988 film The Blob.

I am also thinking about that warning sticker on the aquarium stand:

NOT TO EXCEED 610 POUNDS.

Life was simpler when the weight of one gallon of water was a mystery few knew. Darn you, Google!

All these rocks will have to be abandoned. They are vertically-challenged, and I am weight-shy and engineering-impaired.

Then, in the radiant glow of another night spent on the Internet, I discover Texas Holey Rock!

TO BE CONTINUED.
 
chris_todd

chris_todd

Members
I loved the first post, and thought "OK, this guy is promising, I'll pay attention to his posts".

:)

This is WAAAY beyond promising, I'm now starting to wonder if you're a professional comedian or writer. Why?

THAT WAS FRIGGIN' HILARIOUS!

Please, PLEASE, keep posting on your adventures! I am so totally bookmarking this thread! (Gawd, I hope I don't sound like a 13 year old girl when I say that, because it's just embarrassing when a 42 year-old guy sounds like a 13 year old girl).
 
Reel Addiction

Reel Addiction

Members
Great postings, Looks like you have a following. Maybe you can autograph a picture for Chris, he can hang it on his wall lol.

I see your going with or went with THR, maybe the next tank look in the stacked stone section of the rock yard. Stack that up and leave slots and overhangs for the fish to hide around and under.
 
cmcpart0422

cmcpart0422

Members
hurtmypony said:
Days later, during the design phase, I cannot get the rocks high enough in the empty tank to satisfy my desire for a vertically interesting formation without the future worry of some diggers toppling them and shattering the tank. I consider silicon, but, having engineering skills equivalent to that of The First Little Pig, I worry about my ability to pull off a structurally sound formation without using so much silicon that my rock piles will look like the miniature monster models used to shoot the 1988 film The Blob.
Click to expand...
:D Thats funny!
 
H

hurtmypony

Members
Thank you for the kind words!

Chapter Three: Texas, The Limestone Lone Star State

Mom: “What is this continued fascination with fish? Your father kept tanks before you were born. It is a stinky, disgusting hobby.”

Having abandoned the Irwin Stone rock, I needed something tall, something light and above all something cheap with which to decorate the tank. I was grossly over my meager tank budget and needed a miracle.

TEXAS HOLEY ROCK SEEMED LIKE THE PERFECT SOLUTION.

A quick synopsis of the two things I learned about Texas Holey Rock:

1. It has “Texas” in the name because the particular kind aquarists like is mostly unearthed in The Lone Star State.

2. It has “Holey” in the name because when the local fish store cashier rings it up, the purchaser goes, “Holey crap! That stuff is four bucks a pound?”

Here’s the salt in the wound:
It also isn’t the feather light rock I imagined. I can offer no logical explanation why I assumed it would be as light as lava rock, but that’s what I initially thought, based on my highly technical analysis of clicking to enlarge no more than three grainy Google photos of the stuff taken by cheap phones in dim rooms with shaky hands.

That is an exaggeration. There was one gorgeous shot that started the romance for me:
http://www.cichlids.com/uploads/tx_usercichlids/user_pics/8654/1.jpg_306d6f6229.jpg

BUYING THE STUFF:

When purchasing Texas Holey Rock, it may help you to use this formula I created:

$4.00 Per Pound Price x Density of a collapsing star = thoroughly entertained and well-compensated Texan.

Texas hasn’t had this much lucrative fun since last century when they convinced us to base our entire transportation system on some stinky black bubbly liquid they also had a whole bunch of.

As the depressing realization sunk in that I would likely need to wait a paycheck or two to get an adequate collection of holey rock, the Little Lady surprised me by offering to purchase some of the Non-Texas-But-Still-Holey-and-Also-Fake Rock as discovered on www.designsbynature.net. Though no more inexpensive than the real stuff, it at least weighed significantly less than a tanker truck.

I thanked her for her unbounded love, her endless compassion and strong sense of charity.

It turns out she was simply unconvinced by my wild assertion that Fish Tank Bottoms Can Even Deflect Bullets If You Have a Layer of Egg Crate on It. She was worrying about exploding tanks and collapsing stands again. Her fake rock purchase was not a display of her unyielding love for me – it was merely some insurance to protect the carpet from Cracked Glass and Flash Flooding.

I am no less thankful for the solution!

Her gigantic piece, coupled with the smaller pieces I scored from Congressional Aquariums should fill out the tank nicely.

TO BE CONTINUED
 
Last edited:
Tony

Tony

Alligator Snapping Turtle/Past Pres
hurtmypony said:
Days later, during the design phase, I cannot get the rocks high enough in the empty tank to satisfy my desire for a vertically interesting formation without the future worry of some diggers toppling them and shattering the tank. I consider silicon, but, having engineering skills equivalent to that of The First Little Pig, I worry about my ability to pull off a structurally sound formation without using so much silicon that my rock piles will look like the miniature monster models used to shoot the 1988 film The Blob.
Click to expand...

Oh. My. God. You are nuts, dude. Like... good nuts and and all, but nuts none-the-less. :p

I'm glad you're having fun with your newly re-discovered hobby.

I really like THR and all, but the stuff is just way too darn expensive. You hit it on the head with that whole density thing. I'd rather drop my loot on more fish and use large (cheap/free) pieces of slate-looking rock. Yeah.... it's not as fancy, but meh. Easy to build nice caves.

Keep it up, Tim. :happy0144:
 
YSS

YSS

Members
I nominate Tim as our next speaker at the meeting. By the way, I am not a big fan of THR. I love the lace rocks. They are lighter and looks nicer, I think. Welcome to the forum, by the way.
 
W

WendyFish

Members
Hysterical... especially apt on the impact of the internet on shopping habits. Our UPS guy must think we have four times the number of tanks we do.
 
H

hurtmypony

Members
Thank you, everyone for the warm reception to the forums and this particular thread! We are nearing "present day" on my Tank Journal, and would likely be there already if I wasn't such a wordy jerk!

YSS: Thank you for the flattering comment! Writing works far better for me than actually talking to people, as you'll see when I show up for the next club meeting (I'll pay my membership next pay day) and meet some of you. Sentences come out of me in all the wrong order. When I write, I at least have the luxury of arranging them properly before someone has to endure my drivel.

In person, I sound like the garbled mess you get when you spin the radio dial from one end of the band to the other really quickly - a long string of mostly indecipherable noise punctuated by random snippets of immature morning show humor, poorly sung lyrics, heated political discussions and soulless advertising.

If only there was a cut and paste option for real life!
 
H

hurtmypony

Members
Chapter 4: Death to the In-fish-dels!
The Social Perils of Cycling Your Tank without Fish

Excerpt from another website’s introduction to the Fishless Cycle:

“Before we can have a discussion of fishless cycle, we need to make sure everyone understands what we mean by the term "cycle."”

Rule #1 when visiting small, family-established hardware stores: Don’t wear combat boots, a decades-old tattered punk rock shirt and a suspicious goatee when you are flaunting the chemical names of the products you want.

After a quick, failed reconnaissance around the small, empty store, I present myself at the counter of White’s Hardware and ask for Ammonium Chloride. I ask by name because that’s what the forums told me would be the safest bet for a fishless tank cycling. That earns me a strange once-over from the middle-aged son at the counter, and even a brief appearance of the older man as he leans back his chair far enough to peer through the doorway of the office behind the register.

“We don’t have Ammonium Chloride”, answers the son.

“Do you have 100% pure ammonia?” (Which, I immediately realize, is probably an unintentionally condescending way of simplifying the same question.)

“We have Janitorial Strength Ammonia. First aisle. Three quarters of the way down. On the right.”

I follow the coordinates and search the bottle for an ingredients list. I don’t want any “flavoring”. No scents, no soap, no coloration or anything else. It looks like the right stuff.

I march back towards the counter.

The son has risen from his chair and stepped aside. The old man is waiting for me, front and center, with palms on the counter and elbows akimbo. He’s taking in every inch of my disheveled appearance as I shamble up to the counter.

From under his historically-proportioned mustache, his mouth softly spills these words:

“What are you going to do with it?”

Which, I gather, is his polite way of less specifically asking, “Are you somehow using this to get high, or are you somehow using it to make explosives?” He suspects the only truthful answer will be one of those two things. Or possibly both.

Oh, crap! I realize I just bumped the White’s Hardware Threat Level to YELLOW – Elevated. Significant Risk of Terrorist Attack or Drug Use.

“I’m using it to cycle a fish tank.”

“What?”

“I’m using it to cycle a fish tank. You know, prepare the water.”

I don’t think he believes me.

“To make the water fish-ready. The good bacteria?” I emphasize the words “The good bacteria” like that will somehow perfectly explain The Nitrogen Cycle to someone who apparently rarely sees fish outside of a plate.

His palms have not left the counter. They are in no rush to complete this sale.

My brain starts to seize up as it always does in awkward situations, and, with a sudden desire to be most direct, I almost say:

“I AM GOING TO USE THIS TO SIMULATE FISH URINE”

Certainly an honest explanation, but one that will immediately result in me being tackled and subsequently bound with $7.99 dollars worth of on-sale gardening hose until the police can arrive and determine whether or not I am indeed the Two of Diamonds in the Terrorist Deck of Playing Cards.

Instead, I say:

“You can’t just put fish in a tank of tap water. This stuff helps makes the water pleasant for them.”

The palms leave the counter, and he silently rings up the purchase. I still suspect doesn’t believe me, as he is giving me the silent treatment. Despite no deceit on my part and having no meth lab or terrorist cell to report to, I somehow cannot look him in the eye as I pay him.

I carry home my humiliation in an unmarked brown paper bag and pour 5mls of it into my 55 gallon tank. Let the Nitrogen Cycle begin, and my cycle of shame continue!
 
minifoot77

minifoot77

Members
i think i should do the same thing cause that was a pretty accurate description of me but you needed to add long hair nice write ups so far tim :)
 
H

hurtmypony

Members
minifoot77 said:
i think i should do the same thing cause that was a pretty accurate description of me but you needed to add long hair nice write ups so far tim :)
Click to expand...

Oh, I wish I could still have long hair! My hairline has made a beeline for my be-hind. Now, I have to wear it military length, or I look like Art Garfunkel.

A few years ago, the company I worked 13 years for was packing up and moving operations to New Jersey. I wasn't going with them. On my last day of work, I thought I would entertain everyone by showing up with one of the hairstyles of my youth - a spiked-up mohawk.

Once all the shaving was done and the hairspray generously applied, I was most distressed to discover a very prominent bald patch right in the center of my tall blade of punk rock hair.

Nothing strangles the dreams of being a rockstar better than the cruel hands of aging (even if you just want to pretend to be one for a single day). Unless you are Keith Richards. If you are him, you get to keep all your hair and live forever.

How does he do it? Do they put Rogaine in Heroin, now?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top