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I wanted to title this post, "On The Road To Perfection", but didn't think it would draw as much attention as the title I choose, & I would REALLY like to hear replies on this! Besides that, I decided I was on another road anyway & it's not that bad of a road.

The thing is, I wanted a "perfect" aquarium......... decorated just so & with the exact species of fish I wanted, in the exact numbers. But I have a husband who wants to help with it.......... wholla! My "perfect" bubble was burst the first time he tried to help. It was then I realized that my aquarium must be like life itself............. my life is not perfect & my aquarium is full of life, so it won't be perfect either.

Then I wondered what the stories were out there of people in a similar situation such as mine, especially after reading about the woman on another post here that said her boyfriend (made, encouraged her) to take down three of her tanks.

I know the stories range from the mild, like mine, to the extreme, like hers. And I'm sure there are the funny ones also. I think we would all like to hear what SOMEONE ELSE did that affected your aquarium or fish, big or small situation. I will start with mine:

We have a home business....... I stay here & take deliveries & answer the phone........ he is out on the road, on the job, to nearby cities, passing the fish stores. That is why we decided to have him stop & get fish occasionally. Incident.........

no.1 - Among other fish he was to get 1 bronze cory. I already had one bronze & was going to build up a small school. He comes home with an emerald cory cause the store had no bronze & the guy there said they would get along. I know no one with a school of either cories to give one away to, so I have to build my own two schools now.

no. 2- I have one female guppy. I want just one more female & one male. He comes home with a bag of eight mixed guppies, cause they were cheap.

no. 3- I have one angel fish & want just one more......... hoping I won't end up with a mated pair cause I don't want to deal with any aggression if they spawn. ( I heard some really aggressive ones can do much damage to other fish ) He brings home one with the beginning of fin rot. We loose it plus most of the guppies. Nope- no quarantine tank.

no.3- ( I'm holding my breath this time ) I have one neon tetra & want five or six more. If one dies, I will still have a school of six........ just what I want. He come home with eight neons. It's several days later & they are all fine. I now have nine neons. No big deal....... the more the merrier. BUT he also brings home a pleco knowing my dislike of them. "The guy at the store said it would only get six inches long." I agree to keep it if that IS the case. I search the net........ this sure looks like a regular monster pleco to me. I inform husband I will give pleco an inch lee way. When he reaches seven inches, he's outta there. By the way........... he is well on the way to seven inches.

no. 4- He is to bring home one angel again to replace the lost one & keep the current one company. ( I'm taking it all very lightly now-he does keep my aquarium hobby interesting). He comes home with two angel fish.......... cause he thought it was the right thing to do. So of course I will end up with a mated pair, since that is not what I want.

So.......... I have an imperfect aquarium..........in just the beginning stages....... that I really love........ & the husband who so generously helps me supply fish for it. It IS a 55 gal., so there is a lot of room for "imperfections". With my memory, I probably got some of the details out of order......... but I'm sure you got the gist of things. Just for the record........ I believe there was two times that he did bring home the exact thing requested.

So, what did someone do that affected YOUR aquarium?! OR what did you do to affect theirs ?!

Your story is very funny and your husband sounds like a sweet heart. At least he's interested and willing to help. Mine wasn't, in any aspect of our life, so I got rid of him.

As for my tanks, I think they look pretty good, but when I see other folks' planted tanks (especially some of the guys here ) I get depressed because my plants don't look anything like that. I know they have a lot of high tech gadgets like CO2 and a major fert routine, but my life is complicted enough as it is, so, for now, I'll have to settle, but my fish are happy and spawning like mad, so they must not care that my tank doesn't look like it was done by Takashi Amano.

On another front, I have a 10 year old son that like to get involved and pick fish. His choices leave a lot to be desired, but I try to be flexible. His choice of cherry barbs of my 29 was spot on. However, he also likes to pick decor and I've moved toward a natural tank and he's always wanting rum drinking skeletons and giant fluorescent clams that open & close. Bless his heart, he does enjoy my fish though.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

You two are too funny.

How influenced/influences me? My wife, no doubt. She reduces my time that I have available for my tanks, she limits my maximum number of tanks (4 - until I smuggle another small one in), and she cares little when I tell her that this tank has algae or that fish died. But she is the first one to ask guest to go downstairs and look at my tanks

Oh, and she is not too wild about me spending so much time on the forum,

But on the other hand, she knows it makes me happy and she knows where I am (the basement).

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Fish patty, I agree with Crazy Red, your hubby sounds lovely.

My husband isn't fussed either way with my hobby, but like Littlefish's wife, will be the first to answer any questions when visitors come. He has no problem in stating: "Our fish" or "Our tanks" or "yes WE clean them every week"!!! Grrrrrrr.

Different story when I need help with moving rocks around, etc., but I prefer it that way - MY WAY!!!

Chees - Crusha

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Those who say they cant, Never will !!!

Hmmm.. My husband is the primary aquarist in the house, but I help out a lot and have a tank of my own which is a 55. He likes to call the 79 gallon his tank. Now a few things have gone wrong often with me trying to hoard fish and he trying to stop me from hoarding the ones I want and trying to hoard the ones that he wants.

So one by one, we have ended up with 21 clown loaches and spend way too much money on their fish food. I live in India and order Japanese fish food that comes to me all the way from US of A.

My 55 gallon is a cichlid tank and I was hoping to keep a pair of salvinis and maybe a pair of convicts in it. He got me a pair of convicts from a different city and flew them down here, but over a period of time, and a few sicknesses later, my female convict died. So I am left with one male and suddenly all the shops have stopped stocking females. Meanwhile, I met a girl on a fishie website who was happy to part with her breeding pair of salvinis. My husband was upset when I got them home because we already have a 5 inch female. Now the breeding pair refuses to breed with each other and the male wont even pay attention to my female. So I go get another male, the big girl likes him, but he doesnt like her, so while I am impatiently waiting for the salvinis to pair up, hubby decides he wants a JD.

I am hoping for a male JD, so I can just throw him in as a companion to the convict and not bother about getting the convict a girl, but as fate would have it, we end up with a female. Because she is still very young, she goes into the clown tank. Since she is a female, we have to get her a mate because otherwise she would be lonely (hubby's theory) so we now have 3 JDs, two in the clown tank - a 1 inch male, a 3+ inches female, and a female in quarantine.

This is my side of the story, I will prolly give hubby a link to this thread so he can vent. I am sure his version will be very different.

Uh oh!........................I'm about to cause marriage disputes!

Good idea though......... to vent your frustration or anger at someone here on FP! You will feel better to get it out of your system that way!

Thanks for those other posts guys! I'm sure a lot of us can relate to each one of those. If everyone else would post their experiences, I'm sure that we would all see that we are not alone in what we think are our own individual cases.

I'll bet some older people have some good stories to tell........... if only they would turn loose of them.

I think there was a teenager on here that got grounded from FP till he brought up his grades. A child that decided to feed Daddy's fish! And the woman I mentioned earlier with the three downed tanks........... I just read they may be getting an indoor pond with their new house & setting up tanks again! And I have a relative that smashed his wife's aquarium! She is still tankless today. So I know the stories are out there about just how human we all are!

fishy patt... thats rather funny how he comes home with extra fish, i think you should have him set up his own tank. so that way any time he messes up, he can keep it. there for not ruining you perfect steup. now in my case when ever people see the tank and say how good it looks, my girlfriend says its her tank, or our tank. but when something goes wrong or when it time for maintnence she says its my tank. go figure

*click *flash *click "whered he go???"

One of the relatively few advantages of living alone is that I am able to exercise due patience, build up the aquarium slowly until it is the way I want it to be, and stock it only with the fishes I want. The Panda Corys are hardly sparkling conversationalists, but they make up for this by being quiet when I need peace and quiet, and confining their madcap antics and spawning mayhem to the little glass box.

The breeding aquarium is in serious need of an overhaul because it's had no fishes in it for some time now, and I have been too busy engaged in job hunting to engage in the somewhat tedious business of swapping spawning Pandas in and out of it to make more babies. In any case, they do a fair job of making babies in the main aquarium without any extra intervention on my part.

Anyone who ends up sharing my home will have to be an avid fishkeeper herself. And, ideally, one who wants to keep something different, so that her aquarium contrasts nicely with mine.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

I'm availble anytime Calli!!!

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

CrazyRed, quick question ... what's the temperature in Texas right now?

I suspect it's a good 20 degress Celsius warmer than it is here at the moment ...

Plus, I don't have central heating. So the house is not the warmest of houses by any stretch of the imagination.

Then you'd have to wade through the clutter of the typical bachelor pad. Except that my clutter isn't typical bachelor pad clutter: where in some places you'd find beer cans, pizza boxes and Sports Illustrated calendar girl pull outs, in my home you would be picking your way between assorted books on topics ranging from tarantula pet care to differential equations, back numbers of TFH, antique computers and assorted entomological specimens awaiting identification. So it would be a bachelor pad with a difference. Pathologically untidy like most bachelor pads, but with some decidedly idiosyncratic clutter.

Then you'd have my neighbours to live with. The less said about those, the better.

I'd stick to what you know. The culture shock would kill you.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

My long-term partner and I have an understanding about our hobbies (mine being the aquariums, his being synthesisers and music) - we let each other do what we have to do, and we try not to complain too much. I bite my lip when he spends another $1000 that I am sure he doesn't really have on a new machine, and he doesn't ask too many questions when I buy a $300 filter when he can't see the difference between that and the $50 filter. (Not that I've spent money on my tanks for a long, long time, seeing as we are still paying off our blow-out trip to the US earlier this year.) We also try hard to indulge each others excited ramblings about topics we're just not that interested in.

However, we still lay done some ground rules - he's not too keen on me having any more than 1 or 2 tanks running at the same time (understandable really given our small apartment), and I've strongly advocated the building of a sound-proof studio for him in our garage so he can move his noisy machines out of my office. He used to help clean the tanks, but now it's pretty much up to me.

Right now he's unhappy with our one large tank in the living room and kitchen, as it only has four fish in it, the leftovers of my mbuna, and therefore looks a little sad and empty. He's constantly urging me to get more fish, but I'm waiting to have enough money to change the set-up entirely to a planted discus tank, at which point I will move the four mbuna into a smaller tank downstairs, or give them to a friend. I tried to explain that to him, and he said "so why don't you spend more money on the tank?". Lovely idea, and nice of him to urge me to spend money on my hobby, but when the cash isn't there it isn't there!

It is my birthday in a couple of weeks though - maybe he'll see that I need a little financial help getting the tank together. But then I was hoping for something a bit different from him this year...

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde

"CrazyRed, quick question ... what's the temperature in Texas right now?"

Correct answer: the wrong temperature.

Just kidding, I love Texas, primarily due to lack of sales tax and great food, not to mention most of my family lives there.

Texas has a sales tax.

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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."

So it does Sirbooks ...

6.25% with exemptions for food and prescription drugs.

States without a sales tax according to that table are:

Alaska
Delaware
Montana
New Hampshire
Oregon

State with lowest extant sales tax is Colorado (2.9%), highest sales tax is California (7.25%).

Source - Federation of Tax Administrators - go here for more info.

Oh, by way of comparison, we have a sales tax here in the UK - it's known as VAT. The rate? A whopping 17.5%. Furthermore, the people who collect it - Her Majesty's Customs And Excise - have powers of entry to your home, seizure of assets and incarceration that would be the envy of some secret police organisations. If you try to cheat the taxman here in the UK, you will quickly learn to regret it.

Right, after that tangential diversion, back to partners and fish tanks.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Last I checked, CA sales tax was 8.25%

It's quite a shock for Oregon residents to cross the border and suddenly find things much more expensive...

><>

Cali-- yep, it's pretty hot here where I am... about 90 deg. F today.

No bachelor pad anywhere under any circumstance would bother me. I'm basically a dude trapped in a chick's body. Not to say that I'm a lesbian or anything...nothing wrong with that....but I'm like a man's man as far as chicks go, but I like guys. I relate more to dudes than to girls. Weird, I know. I watch football and understand it. I LOVE beer. I tend to break all the 'chick' sterotypes.

Cali, nothing at your house would shock me. I have 1 dog, 2 cats, and a kid, so unconventional doesn't even phase me. Call me.

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~~Melissa~~
"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder."

I thought this thread was going to irrupt in marriage disputes, but now it's headed toward match making!

If only my boyfriend liked something besides video games and guinea pigs. Not that I really have anything against either but it's rather restrictive that he not only takes no interest in anything else but generally complains and throws temper tantrums when I try to start up any other hobby. Course if he didn't yell at me to pick things up my various veterinary, pet care, and horse training books would long ago have claimed most of the floor and the rest would be filled with tanks. But so far I've been told every fish I've bought is ugly and my tanks are always boring. The basement is mine when we move. We're(I'm) gonna have a 4' marine tank, 4' cichlid tank, the 55g, a 30long or 40breeder invert tank... I want an indoor pond... Gotta leave space away from the tanks for my mats to practice martial arts but there has to be over 1000sq ft of finished basement so no worries. He can have the little living room(~200-300sq ft) and if anyone wants to whine about fair this house is on the extreme end of fixer upper,no maintenance in about 50years, and I'm doing all the work on it myself. MY house.

on the tax issue, texas has a sales tax of 8.25%. what texas does *not* have is a state *income* tax...

on topic with the thread, my ex would *always* give me grief about my tanks, both the amount of time i spent on them and how much space they took up. we had a large apartment so it was only a problem when she wanted more furniture but if people came over she was only too happy to show off my tanks to them.

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"That's the trouble with political jokes in this country... they get elected!" -- Dave Lippman

Sodaaddict84 - I't actually been discussed about him having his own tank, cause he likes the bigger fish. Maybe someday....... we are supposed to move someday. I don't really want to take care of another tank & he said he didn't want one bad enough to have to take care of it himself. So............... we'll see.

Do you have children sodaaddict 84? Cause when you do & they are being adorable or they did something really good they are yours............. but when they have done something horrible........... it' more like, "Look what your child did!!"

I gave up on a perfect aquarium long ago............ life is too short to worry about something being perfect......... especially an aquarium. Granted, some things in life have to be perfect......... like if an operation went perfectly, that would be nice. I've had disease in my tank already & one plant keeps coming up & I have to keep moving things around to vacuum under them & they don't get put back perfectly & I have an angel with a feeler bitten off & broken wand that was glued back together & now big bubbles come out of that part, a danio that got stuck in an ornament & died........... so who cares about perfect anymore. I will just strive for happy & healthy fish.