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A funny story. And as an "OldTimer" and a parent, just one thing to remember it is "Mom's" house and living room and it is with her permission the tank or any tanks in the house are there, so take a deep breath, try to see her point and remember "agree to disagree."

Last edited by OldTimer at 07-Mar-2005 17:20

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

I think its because plecos will 'snuffle over' (if you will) faeces, perhaps giving the impression that they're eating it, but in reality they're just ignoring it and testing the gravel for _real_ food.

"if she cant see it from the couch then just move the couch"

Very good point.
If your mom wants to have an opinion then you should yell her that she has to sit in on "ALL" of the maintenance!
My fiance is alway complaining about my 20 gallon and my 55 gallon, so I give her the run down and get her doubting herself, and she leaves me alone for a while She sees me doing must of the maintenance and wants nothing to do with it... though she wants to call the 20 hers

Past that... BEST OF LUCK TO YOU!!!!!!
Try to teach her as much as you can about the hobby. If she is anything like my mother she won't be able to keep up with all the have to knows

a little off topic, but where the heck do people get the idea that plecos eat poo??

:%) I know how everybody feels. All I have is a teeny five gallon, but after buying all the supplies for it (Decorations, gravels, plants, pH down, test strips, heater, blahblahblah) I was strapped for cash. So, as a birthday present, my sister agreed to buy me my fish.

Unfortunately, she also decided to tag along instead of handing me the money. "Oo, get some of these. *Points to large Gouramis*" "Oo, oo, you should get an Angelfish! That would be so pretty." "Why are you looking at such small fish-- Aha, here. Get one of these big brown things. They eat poo. (Plecos" "Why are you only getting one fish? My friend had a big tank and got all her fish at once and they were fine!"

I wasn't too knowledgable about fish at the time but I knew Gouramis, Angels, or Plecos were a recipe for DISASTER in a five gallon. Not to mention all the fish at once, nevermind Cycling!

Luckily I avoided the temptation and cycled with just one lonely fish.

Go the moving... I think the more control u have over tanks (i.e., in your own room) the better :-)

Actually I pay rent so it isn't really just "her house." The rent for the place is very cheap so I pay about half of it, in addition to the money I pay for my dorm room at school (NOT cheap). I would love to hand her the cleaning supplies and tell her to do it herself but I don't have it in me to stand by and watch fish be mistreated like that. She would think it OK to get a common pleco "to eat the poo" and never do water changes. I don't even think she knows what a cycle is or anything and it would inconvenience her too much to bother to learn. Honestly the woman is 40, I am 20 and probably more the adult in the house, fishkeeping is just another area where she can't handle responsibility out of many.

My cards don't seem pleased with the zebras and all of their activity. ] I think I'll be packing them up on the weekend and taking them to the auction. I don't particularly like kribs so they are out. I am actually starting to think that it may be best to strip the tank and move it into my bedroom so she'll stop complaining about it. If she wants a tank for the living room she can do the maintenance on it and pay for it. She is using my bedroom for storage of some things while I'm at school but I will move them out to make space for the tank and stand. Only problem is I can't physically move the tank on my own.....any volunteers? uggghhghvhfdshfhu ]

You know what I would do, hand her the bucket and the gravel vac, and tell her to do it herself. And if she wants fish she can buy them herself.
I know it would be hard to sit back and watch, but seriously, move your cards out to a small tank for now, and let her run the show. In 2 months when shes sick of the work and dead fish, she will give up.
Or, move the tank into your bedroom. Tell her if she wants fish, she can get a tank of her own and do it herself and pay for it herself. Like it or lump it.


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I guess I should have worded my comment differently in that you should explain to your Mom that what she wants to do may be not the best for the fish and the reasons why, but at the same time you need to remember it is up to her whether the tank stays or not. So like I said take a deep breath and approach it with a postive attitude and don't get in a shouting match over it.

Remember, most people don't share your love of the hobby and as such don't have the understanding or even the desire to understand what needs to be done.

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

I don't believe its particularly fair to agree to disagree, and defer to someone who isn't familiar with fishkeeping where the health of livestock is in question :-( Just because someone is a parent doesn't mean their incapable of fishy-ignorance. :-P

I have only just (recently) convinced my dad that Bronze Comets don't belong in 2 gallon tanks, that goldfish are supposed to grow to 12"+, not 2", and that 6 years is *not* a good run for a goldfish lifespan :-( - so to all those with ignorant parents - I feel your pain ;-)

move out

Get some Serpae Tetras. They will add some nice bright color to the tank. And they are schoolers. So get six of 'em at least.

As for Mommy Dearest, just remember, someday YOU may be a mom, and believe it or not, you WILL start to sound just like her someday

Well....

Non-fish people that think aquariums are just living room decoration are super annoying, especially when they're your parents and you have to live with them. She has been complaining about my 29 gallon tank that's in our living room and I'm getting really sick of it. I got the tank as a gift from my uncle because he didn't have space for it in his new apartment, and decided to put it in the living room, which I am starting to regret.

She has been complaining about the tank non-stop. Her biggest complaint is that the tank is understocked for now. It is only understocked because I'm only home on weekends and haven't had the time or money to really fill it up and I do NOT want her going out and buying random fish for it. she is the kind of person that will buy anything in a store because it's "cute" without doing any research and will pack a tank full of fish like the ones you see on those tank kits where the fish have no room to swim.

For the past week the only thing in the tank was my school of cardinal tetras and my amano shrimp because I moved my corys out of the tank to keep a closer watch on them, and also because they didn't seem to appreciate the sand substrate in there (long story). Yesterday I took a trip to the fish shop to get some wild-type bettas and she had a temper tantrum at the store and threatened to give the tank back to my uncle if I didn't get something for the tank in the living room. ]

She didn't want to spend any more than $10 and wanted something that she "would be able to see swimming around from the couch" (UGH, my tank is not a TV ] so I caved and got 6 zebra danios. As angry as I was at having to put something in my tank that I don't really want, I really don't want her packing it up and giving my large cards back to the store while I'm at school. It was SUPPOSED to be a South American community tank so I was NOT pleased about being bullied into getting something from another continent that I didn't really want. Zebra danios are ok, but I kept them 10 years ago and honestly I was looking for something a bit less common. All of the fish I planned to put in it get complaints:

"too small to see from the couch"
"not active enough"
"they don't swim near the top where I can see them from the couch"
"the tank looks empty when people come over"
"they hide too much"
"it's a big tank, why don't you put big fish in it? they only grow to the size of the tank anyway" ()
"not enough colour to stand out when I have people over"
"catfish are ugly/boring/not colourful enough"

]:|

So, looks like the tank isn't mine any more, and I need to redo the stocking plans for it. The cardinal tetras need to stay, I have 6 of them now. Looks like I will also have to keep the zebras. My mom wants something really colourful and she's a big fan of mutt livebearers from the LFS but I am NOT going to go there. I was thinking an angel might work as a centrepiece but I'm not willing to spend the money on a large angel and my mom thinks the small ones don't look impressive enough. She has no patience and mine is wearing very thin.

At this point the tank is almost not worth the amount of time I have to spend listening to her complain about it. I am the one who does ALL of the maintenance on it and have spent quite a bit of money on the equipment and decorations. I am really tempted to just pack it up in storage so I don't have to listen to her nag me about it but then my cardinals would be homeless and let's face it, who really wants to pack a tank up? Maybe I could move it to my bedroom but until I get the racking system in there (which is coming when this term is over) I really don't have anywhere to put it.

So, ideas anyone? Is there any way we can comprimise so that we're both happy? I am really frustrated !

I KNOW how you feel.

I had a 20 G long in the sitting room and it ended up looking awful cos i couldn't get the fish i wanted(neons and shell dwelling cichlidsit will happen one day!!). I ended up with guppies cos they are cute (i did try to enter into the whole selective breeding thing)

now after the 20 leaked (fair play that was annoying) i have this STUPID hex tank that is really only good for plastic plants and guppies.

in fact if any one knows of a half decent fish that could live happily in a hex?>?? who invented the damn things in the first place.

so don't let any one come with you to the fish shop !!!or change you mind

this is kinda like giving in to your mum but could you keep a pair of kribs?? they are at least colourful?

GFG





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Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey S. Firestone

You know, it's funny how alike this sounds to my case. I had to move a 30g out of my room (to make room for bigger tanks), but didn't wna tot get rid of the fish, so I moved it down to the family room. I made it a pretty planted tank (and had to battle with them to avoid technicolor gravel and plastic castles), but they thought my fish were boring (rams and harlies are NOT boring!).

I solved this case by getting two powder blue gouramis and some lights that highlighted their blue. Now that they can see these big, gaudy fish from the couch, they're satisfied.

Gouramies are large and colorful, so try showing some to them.

ALSO... what I did to negotiate was decide they could choose half the fish, I could choose half, and I told them to just trust me on what would look nice. I'm sort of the home decorator (I make the paintings for the house and all that), so maybe that has to do with it... but just try to split it 50-50 somehow, or maybe 30-70 if it works better for them (that is, if the mother is particularly tyrannical).

Good luck, those non-fish people sure know how to make some ugly tanks if it's left in their hands

Last edited by smantzer at 07-Mar-2005 16:11

I have the same problem and pretty much have a combination of everyone's suggestions above. My stepdad also claims the 2, 15w lights on the 29g are too much power and don't need to be on all the time. I ended up removing the buttons to turn them off and plugging them into the timer so he couldn't mess with them. For stocking I did black neons which show up pretty well even in low light and are a bit bigger than neons or cardinals, 3blue rams, 1 angelfish, and a gold nugget pleco. From across the house you can see the rams and angelfish and on the occasion the pleco comes out he's very colorful and interesting. With the neons to fill it in they aren't producing a lot of bioload and add some activity. I also put a penguin mini on there with the other filter so I could really clean the tank without losing the bacteria. Then I planted it in crypts and walmart aponogeton bulbs. Nitrates stay low, tank is stocked, everyone is happy(except my stepdad but he gave up complaining about the light). I also have MY tanks in my room where I can do what I want with them including stocking a 20g rivertank in nothing but shy bottom dwelling fish I rarely see

I had a similar experience with my mom about a week ago when I got only one "ugly", drab fish for my aquarium. My fish is not ugly! ]

It's really hard to make somebody understand that you can't cram all the fish you want to into any size aquarium. LFS don't help any either. "But the pet store had a lot more fish in their aquariums, and their tank was smaller than yours." I’ve tried to get her to read things so she’d understand why you can’t stick a foot long fish in a small tank. “You’ve never had a fish that got that big before!” No, mom, I haven’t. Because I don’t have the room to house a foot long fish. Which is why all those fish stayed behind. Maybe in a few months when my fish starts to get bigger she’ll understand why there’s only going to be one fish in that tank.

Good luck!

I feel bad for you too, but the way you told that story was really funny.

If you are serious, why not up the school of cardinals to about 20 and get a bolivan ram as your centerpiece. I think a 29gallon is too small for an angel.

Not many people can disagree over the beauty of a large school of cardinals (although I don't know your mother.)

My Scapes

Man, your mom does not seem to be the kind of customer I would enjoy helping. I feel bad for you Tryst, and I understand your situation. I had the same thing happen with my little sister, but I talked to her about how Nick's fish tank was Nick's tank, no matter how much time she spent looking at it. She got the message, but I guess your mom hasn't. Anyways...

If you don't mind spending a little extra money, get a colorful pleco just to show your mom how cool catfish can be. Or, get a bristlenose to spite her. Adolfoi cory catfish are beautiful catfish as well, if you can locate them. I am of the opinion that all tanks need catfish if they have the space, so...

Some kind of colorful dwarf cichlid would be fine, like rams or Apistos. Just in case your mom ever decides to touch your tank, try to get a hardier kind, like Bolivian rams.
There are plenty of colorful and hardy tetras out there, like lemons and flame tetras. You might need to get something a little larger though, to suit your mother. Emperor tetras should do the trick.

Hope that helps, and good luck.

Last edited by sirbooks at 07-Mar-2005 11:02

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

"catfish are ugly/boring/not colourful enough"

I already dislike your mother.

Okay, Here's what I'd do:
Ramirez, german or otherwise
Hachetfish
Surface dwelling chars, such as bloodfins
Rummies/run of the mill colorful tets
pencils
apistos/checkerboard/dwarf cichlids