This is the story about how I got into fish keeping. This was no more than a year and a half ago.

You can see two goldfish in a tiny container. In the background you can see the bright red colors of a carnival booth with different colored bowls of water. You all know the game. The object is to toss ping pong balls into these bowls to win goldfish as a prize. Well I won two little goldfish that I knew nothing about. I left them with my girlfriend, who knew just as little about fish as I did.

One of these guys lasted long enough to get a new, bigger home.

I started my own 10 gallon fish tank with tropical fish. It at least had a heater and a filter, not because I knew better, but because the kit included them. You can see I have some of the Lucky Bamboo from PETCO that is not truly aquatic. It went to crap pretty quickly, as did the fish. As I started to lose fish, I did some reading to figure out why and discovered the nitrogen cycle. After losing some of the fish, I realized I needed to do regular water changes and had my girlfriend do the same for her goldfish.

You can see that I also have a breeder net with some fry. I was caught off guard by the arrival of fry. The fast reproduction rate of livebearers was a whole other battle I had to fight. I had no idea fish could breed faster than rabbits.

Like a lot aquarium keepers, I learned the hard way, for both myself and the fish. Lesson learned. Research before jumping in on things. All the headaches and heartache are not worth the instant gratification you get from getting things right away.