My obsession with fish started when I was seven years old, when my parents gave me a ten gallon aquarium for my birthday. It was one of those slate-bottom aquariums with a stainless steel frame and some kind of tar for sealant at the edges. My dad and I raised guppies, mollies, platys and angelfish until the glass cracked, and all the water leaked out on the family room floor!
Since that time, we have always had aquariums in the house, and all of our children have grown up with fish tanks in their bedrooms. The number of aquariums in the house has always varied, along with our level of interest, but over the years, we have bred Corys, Plecos, Angelfish, Swordtails, Guppies, Platys, Danios, and a wide variety of other livebearers, as well as an assortment of African and South American Cichlids. Along the way, we have also had a number of marine and reef aquariums ranging in size from 20 gallons to 125 gallons. But as a family, we began breeding fish “enthusiastically” in 2007. At the time, my (daughter (19) and son (12)), decided they wanted to try breeding Bettas. They were so successful, that within 4 months, our basement shelves were lined with plastic cups of Bettas! Everyone we knew had been “gifted” with a vase containing a beautiful Betta and a philodendron!
Around the same time, my son and daughter and I went to a Greater Chicago Cichlid Association (GCCA) Swap Meet. My son was staring at a bag of silver angels on one of the vendor’s tables, and since it was close to closing, the man gave the bag of angels to my son. He took those fish home and put them in our 125 gallon tank. From those humble beginnings, our hobby was born. The first year, we started with two ten-gallon aquariums in our basement, and as every hobbyist knows, this is like an infectious disease, and you can’t stop with just a couple of tanks. Within two years, we had already outgrown the basement and garage, and were “forced” to build a separate dedicated fish room (garage) attached to our home. Today, we maintain approximately 70 aquariums ranging in size from 10 to 125 gallons.