Welcome to FWM!

Hey Gary! Glad you could make it!

Welcome to FWM WaterChangeWarrior!

Thanks everyone, for the welcomes! Looks like a nice place!

LOL... .....nice smilies too!

Welcome to FWM!

Welcome to FWM!

WYite

Thanks!

Hello WCW

Seems like we have a few At'ers over here LOL

Good for Goose.....

Good for Gander.....

Nice to come somewhere, and just be a guy, not a owner..

Loving This Forum.

Glad to see you here Gary!

Nuthman~

A little about me and my fish-headedness.

My name is Gary, I'm 49 years old, and as far as I can figure, I must have got into keeping fish at about 8 years old, Not sure which came first...I remember my aunt bringing me a gallon pickle jar with some common guppies, and I also remember my mom taking me to the dime store and getting a goldfish. Regardless, it's typical of how a lot of kids back in the 60's got started keeping fish, guppies and/or goldfish. Got my first aquarium soon afterwards, which soon snowballed into multiple aquariums...to the point where, when I was in high school, there was not a flat level surface in my bedroom that was not taken up with an aquarium or one of the many betta jars. I also had a tank or two in the dining room, tubs of critters (glass shrimp, daphnia, etc) in the backyard, wherever I could find a place I had some type of set-up going.

I soon found out though, that, once you get out on your own, there are all these people with their hands held out, waiting to take away your hard earned fish money. So I had to scale back drastically. Through a lot of years, I was only able to keep one or two tanks going at a time. Throughout that entire time, I can only think of one time (during a divorce) when I was without an aquarium, and that lasted only briefly.

So anyway, after many years of keeping "some" fish, a few years ago we bought a house that had a garage with an attached (former) woodworking shop. Also had a 2 car carport. Any true fishaholic will realize that the cars can go under the carport, then you have this big empty building just waiting to be transformed into a fishroom! And so that is what I did for the next several years. I started out with 5 or 6 tanks from our last house. Not having the resources to spend a whole lot of money putting this dream together, I picked up most of my tanks secondhand. The room kind of came together a piece at a time, with whatever I was able to find. It was an absolute blast to work on! While most people outside of the hobby would probably not find it all that attractive, in my mind it was the best place in the world to be, I loved spending time working out there.

Add a refrigerator (necessary for keeping frozen fish food...also handy for cold beverages!), and a CD player to a room full of fish tanks and you've got a great place to be! Depending on what I was keeping, I took tanks down and set others up, so my stocklist and tanks were always changing. I believe the most tanks that I had up and running at one time was 45 though.

Unfortunately, this past January, I lost nearly everything in my fishroom. Middle of the month, windchill temperatures hitting almost 40 below zero, I lost one of the heaters in the fishroom at the same time that the furnace in my house went out. With me focusing on getting the house heat back on before pipes started freezing (ultimately had to get a new furnace), I did not catch the heater loss in the fish room until temps had dropped to 40 degrees. The worst fish loss I have ever experienced. I had started downsizing last summer, and had cut my tanks down to 16 from 45, so these were all fish that I had decided were the ones that I really wanted to keep and work with.....and I lost them all. I was punched in the gut. I had fish that I will never be able to replace again....stuff that I picked up from breeders who have since got out of the hobby, stuff I picked up at fish conventions.

So...at this point in time I am in a re-building phase. Cleaning up the fishroom, basically gutting everything out of it and restarting from scratch. Taking this opportunity to fix or do-over things I didn't like about the way the old one was set up. I currently have a blue crayfish that a friend of mine gave me. And just the other day I picked up some cherry shrimp, which have got their own tank, see if they will breed for me. Just a "little something" to keep me going until I can get my room back up again.

Other than that....I worked for a while part time at a local saltwater-only fish store, had a blast with that and learned a ton. I am out there on many aquarium sites....I am currently site manager at Aquatic-Terrors, been there for a few years now....the folks there are like a second family to me. I can learn something new about this hobby every day, which I love, and I am always looking for new people to share my passion for this hobby, which brought me to this site. You have put together a great site and have some great people here. As you can tell, once I get started talking about my fish, I tend to ramble on and on... (look at the size of this post!)

Guess I'll leave it at that for now....thanks for having me here!

Definately a great story and I know a hell of a lot more about you WaterChangeWarrior. I appreciate you taking the time to tell us all about you and your fish. Thanks for the compliments and thanks again for signing up...looking forward to seeing you around!