any fishkeepers?

can't believe that with all you fishermen and women, more of you don't have fish in the home. would like to see your tanks. this is my little piece of the Amazon. wild discus, wild Festivums, and a school on Lemon tetras in a 120 gal. tank. so relaxing to watch. great for the blood pressure.

Wow nice setup! How come I never see fish like that at the local pet store?

thanks. lol, you never will. my discus are about the size of nice bluegills. 6-7".

That IS very cool. I love watching fish in the tanks, but alas....none to be found in my house. I don't have the time or the space.

We do have some members that are into fish tanks though. Some even breed their fish. I recall someone breeding a breed of catfish if my memory serves me right. Can't remember who it was though. #-o

very nice discus ...
I have a 150 gal fresh water tank that has mostly tetras black angles 8 types of plecos and 9 schools of diffrent cory cats
i have breed the angles and cats

i have breed the angles and cats

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Now I remember.....it was Redbug. :LOL2:

I've got a 55 gallon freshwater tank. It's a planted tank with Guppies, mollies, platties, neon tetras, an algae eating shrimp ( he runs around like a little crackhead it's pretty funny), and an albino bristlenose pleco that's about 6". With the exception of 1 amazon swoard plant,the shrimp, some jungle val, and anacharis I have raised everything in the tank. I had an awseome strand of guppies that I had worked pretty hard on but got a fungus on them and wiped out 95% of my guppies. Some of the good color survived so I am starting over breeding them. The tank has been running for a year and a half and is doing really well. I had it set up with chiclids that went from 2" to 6" but it crashed when I went home for 5 days in the winter and accidentaly turned off the heater and they froze :shock: . Hated it but it happened. Also had 3 piranah's that were about 8" when I got the tank, they got boring so I got rid of them. I'll get some pictures of my tank up sometime.

3dees said:

can't believe that with all you fishermen and women, more of you don't have fish in the home. would like to see your tanks. this is my little piece of the Amazon. wild discus, wild Festivums, and a school on Lemon tetras in a 120 gal. tank. so relaxing to watch. great for the blood pressure.

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That's a great looking tank. What kind of plants are floating on top. Love the dark natural look. Do you just have spot lights instead of a tube? Also do you have the back of the tank painted black? Nice looking tank. I want a bigger one as soon as I quit moving around. Probably gonna go straight to the 265 freshwater or a 150 tall tank.

I have a 18'x8' pond next to the house, does that count? One winter we brought some goldfish inside but five 4" fish in a ten gallon tank wasn't the greatest for the fish. Over the last couple weeks I upped the size from 7x7 and now it feels huge. Today I dumped 100 rosie reds and fifteen feeder goldies in the pond and the bigger (6-7") goldfish are chasing them around.

Here's a picture from last week when I was transplanting the water lillies.


I'd love to have a big tank inside.
Jamie

thanks andrewt,
floating plants are Brizillian Pennywort. they can be planted or floated. easy to grow, don't need much light. black painted background. I have led and t8 lighting. the pics were taken with two flashes above the tank.

Ranchero50 said:

I have a 18'x8' pond next to the house, does that count? One winter we brought some goldfish inside but five 4" fish in a ten gallon tank wasn't the greatest for the fish. Over the last couple weeks I upped the size from 7x7 and now it feels huge. Today I dumped 100 rosie reds and fifteen feeder goldies in the pond and the bigger (6-7") goldfish are chasing them around.

Here's a picture from last week when I was transplanting the water lillies.

I'd love to have a big tank inside.
Jamie

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nice pond. what do you do in the winter?

Wave at them through the ice :LOL2:

They overwinter fine, the dogs keep a hole licked though the ice and I run the aquarium bubbler all year round to keep them well aerated. I do pull the pumps. We usually have 3-4" of ice max, Koi won't survive but the goldfish and rosie reds do fine.

Having the pond is the most relaxing thing I do.

Jamie

I keep North American natives (primarily darters and minnows). Going out in the creeks with a dipnet is half the fun; you never know what will come up in the net. These are not my pictures or my site, but these are the kinds of fish that are available that I think rival tropicals in many ways.
https://johno.myiglou.com/fish/darters.html

3dees said:

can't believe that with all you fishermen and women, more of you don't have fish in the home. would like to see your tanks. this is my little piece of the Amazon. wild discus, wild Festivums, and a school on Lemon tetras in a 120 gal. tank. so relaxing to watch. great for the blood pressure.

Click to expand...

I had a 160 tank with live plants and discus. It was beautiful. I enlisted in the Army and it was just too hard to move.

I have a 60 gallon with goldfish and a blue gill I caught out of the river. The blue gill has been alive almost a year now. I also have a pond with at least a dozen gold fish in it.

I've got a 90 gallon aquarium that I inset into the living room wall (used a closet in the room on the other side of the wall for the tank to fit in) I have 3 different types of South American Anostomadae (Head-standers) in the tank. I have the about 4 of the Leporinus, 3 of the "Pencil Fish", and about 1/2 dozen of the regular anostomadae.








It used to be a saltwater reef aquarium, I had about 90 pounds of live rock, I had a head of sunflower coral, pulsating xinnia coral, kenya tree corals, mushroom polyps, etc. Had the metal halide lights, actinic light, UV sterilizer, chiller unit, protein skimmer, wet/dry filter, cooling fans, etc, etc, etc. It was a lot of work, and when I spent more time with it in the beginning, it was really something. I had everything on a schedule, did a 25% water change every month, used only reverse osmosis water to make up the new salt water with



I had everything so in balance, that I had a mated pair of skunk cleaner shrimp that would actually spawn, although, I think most everything they released got eaten.

(I called them 'fokkers' because the color scheme on them reminded me of a German fighter plane.)




Anyhow, at some point, water quality got out of whack, and I had issues with snot-grass (hair algae) as well as aptasia anenomes, and then I could never get the phosphate levels back to normal, despite water changes, etc. Then little by little, corals started dying off, the snot grass took over the live rock, and I threw my hands up with it, went to a freshwater tank.

I also have a 2000 gallon pond in the backyard with some large koi, a couple of them are over 2 feet in length. I use a regular sand filter for a pool to filter the water, as well as a UV sterilizer, along with a pre-filter box and an overflow weir. The water is filtered, then returned to the pond via a 4 foot high waterfall to provide aeration. All of this combined gives me crystal clear water that's clean enough to drink, despite it being well water from a shallow well with a lot of iron sediment. (I do have a water filter on the spigot that goes to my pond, to pre-filter the sediment out of the well water.)







In the winter time, I do have problems with herons, but we fix that by suspending a net over the pond, using strings from the limbs of the oak tree that hang over the top of the pond. The net goes on in November, when the bait fish leave the creek, and it stays until about March or April, when the bait fish return to the creek and the herons can go out there to hunt.

Nice job on photography! Discus are hard to keep, good job.

I had a 55 gal planted one up in canada...just kept the simple stuff. Looking to get into a 100 gal or so here in Nevada once we get back into a house again. Maybe do piranhas and some other amazons this time.

i took mine down to install wood flooring,and havent set it back up.i think i'm going to do a saltwater this time.

Beautiful discus there my favorite of the fresh water. I use to have a 75g planted discus setup until an ice storm killed the power for 2-3 days a couple winters ago. They eventually got sick and died. I was crazy bummed about that loss. Since then i tried my hand with a smaller 30g reef setup and now I'm in the middle of getting the old 75g water right to transfer things over from the 30g. I'll get some pics in a few days.

I have a bait well in my boat I keep minnows in that that count? LOL
I put a aerator in it so they do not die & stay god til next fishing trip. Always have a supply of minnows for fishing.

Mrs. says I live at the lake and that is my aquarium

LOL, wallijig!

I guess I fall into that category as well, as I have bait pens at my dock/boat slip, with shrimp, minnows, and fiddler crabs that I keep on hand for fishing. And the only reason I can do that is because I keep that channel maintained by grinding it out with my outboard, which keeps water at low tide...otherwise, it would be a mud flat (yes, this is horrible on props and water pumps, that's why I change them often)

At some point, I'd like to build a saltwater pond in my yard, and stock it with fish, maybe even try to mariculture some shellfish, and see if I can grow those as well. I know how to grow oysters out in the creek, but it would be interesting to try it in a mariculture pond.

My only logistical problem is that I'm not on waterfront property, so, it's not just a simple matter of running a high and a low level conduit to fill and partially drain the pond on every change of the tide. And I believe if you do that (have it connected to the marsh) technically, the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) and DNR own and control any body of water that is connected to state waters.


I'm one row back from the water, so, I would have to have a closed loop system. And that means doing water changes. No problem draining the water out, I have a ditch in front of the house that is connected to the creek. But the problem arises in how to get water from the creek back to the pond that's 300 feet away from the creek. That means having a big water pump, and stretching out hoses, etc, etc.....in other words, a major PITA.

So, that's the only reason I haven't built a saltwater pond yet.

If I never build a SW pond, I guarantee at some point, I WILL build a freshwater pond, and stock it with bream, etc. In the winter time, or at least when the water temp is below 70, I can also stock it with rainbow trout, but I just have to harvest them all before warm weather arrives in the spring, as they will die off when the water gets above 70. That would be so cool, take the bream buster out in the front yard, pull up a lawn chair, and catch rainbow trout in my own pond at my house on the coast, no more having to drive 7 hours to the mountains to the trout streams or the trout farms.