The Top Ten Reasons I Loved The Aquarium Hobby in 2001

I've had a great desire to collect and breed all of the Julidochromis species. These little elongated fish I find absolutely fascinating. This is a rare genus in that the females are typically larger than the males.
The parents guard the fry, and they fry really guard each other. Unlike most fish which lay a large batch of eggs each month, Julis lay small batches of eggs each week. So the fry end up being of various sizes. Due to this, you can often keep 50 of these fish (2 adults, 48 offspring) in a 20 gallon tank. I like small fish like this b/c I can get a small glimpse of how they might act in nature...something you cannot do with say a Frontosa unless you have a 200 gallon tank:) The Dickfeldi is the 4th Juli I've breed, sadly I believe that leaves me with just one more...the Ornatus...which no-one here seems to carry...

We moved to our first house in August. Doing so required breaking down and setting up all the aquariums. Since this is quite a task, we made an effort to consolidate the fish into less tanks so that not all the tanks would need to be set up when we reached our new house. One of the tanks that wasn't set back up immediately was our river tank. We put water in the tank, threw in the plants and flipped the lights on and then proceeded to mostly ignore the tank for the next 4 weeks. 4 Weeks later when looking into the tank I realized there where fish swimming around in the water! Amazing as it may seem, our Zebra Danio which had been in the tank had spawned, and the eggs had hatched while the tank was sitting dormant. It was a fun surprise, and even more fun watching the fish grow up in the tank.

This year was almost the year I got interested in Killis. I was doing some pages for the Fish Guide on the site and had two Nothobranchius species to do. While putting the pages together, I was amazed at how pretty the fish were. I had seen killis before, and couldn't believe how much prettier they were in life than in the photos, and that is saying something... The Nothobranchius Rachovii really caught my eye, and I planned to set-up a tank and buy a pair at the fall auction if any were available. I indeed got my
fish at the auction, and for good measure, I actually purchased 2 pairs! Unfortunately on the night of the auction, one of my males jumped out of the tank as killis are known to do... That left me with 1 male and 2 females. They breed one time before my females died, and I was not able to keep the fry. The male still lives, though as a killi, his life-span is certainly short. This is easily one of the prettiest little fish in the world though, and highly recommended despite the problems I had.

I had tried for years to secure a pair of these fish at an auction consistently falling out of bidding as the price escalated. To me, this always seemed to be the most beautiful of Haps, having all the great color of a hap, but being more compressed than the other haps. I finally succeeded in getting some fish at the spring auction. I purchased a young 5-some and placed them in a grow out tank. Haps grow very fast and I had fry and fry and more fry within a few months:) This is a very pretty fish, and since I'm such a big fan of blue, I chose this fish as the name of my web design "business". (AZUREUSDESIGN.COM for the truly interested or bored) A great fish for a 30 gallon or larger! (anybody in the Utah area in need of some fry?)

When I first purchased the threadfin rainbow at an auction, I wasn't quite sure what I had...They were a pretty enough fish, but were very small with even smaller mouths. It turned out, that their size was the only draw-back to this fish. I've decided that the threadfin rainbow is one of the best beginner's fish available. They are very hardy and can take temperatures from 66-78. This makes them perfect for un-heated aquariums. They are also very small, so that if you had 4 of them with a few guppies in a 10 gallon, you wouldn't have to worry too much about missing a water change, and they won't make a smelly mess. What's more, they are a beautiful fish when they have their fins extended, showing a great contrast of yellow, black, and a silvery incandescent body. A fantastic fish that is a lot of fun...and perhaps a bit short-lived, but not nearly so much as a killi:)

The fall auction had many fun fish that I hadn't seen for awhile, one of them was the Purple-Spotted Gudgeon. This fish is a beautiful powder blue with purple fins, and purple spots all over it's body. There was a pair at the auction, which picked my interest as I had once before bought a bunch of these fish with the hopes of breeding them, but had not been successful. The pair went for $20, and I was prepared to go much higher. With more tanks and more luck, I was sure I would find something to suit them. One day, I came to the tank to find hundreds of wrigglers. I moved the mother out, and a few days later, moved the father out. I was so happy with my 200+ fry...and then I found out that the fry are every bit as mean as the adults. (I had an adult beat the snot out of an Oscar...story for a different day) The fry killed each other down to about 5 fish...not many, but enough to sell if they every grow up:) (they are sort of slow growers) Another interesting fish that has been fun to watch...especially since I had tried for over a year to breed them previously...with no luck.

After buying a house, one of the goals was to get all of the aquariums out of the front rooms, and into more confined quarters....call it taking back over the house:) So a large unfinished room downstairs became the fish room. It's certainly not a perfect fish room, I'd prefer having one with a cement floor, and lots of sky-lighting, but it did help put all the tanks together other than a show tank upstairs. Having a room like this has also been interesting as I've become something of a tank collector. Upon seeing I like fish and have a large room dedicated to the hobby, I've received several tanks from different parties to place in the room...This has been fun and allowed me to try some things I might not have tried otherwise. The only real down side might be that our electric bill is getting a bit large:(. Still it's fun to realize one of those life long dreams of a fish room...now I'll work on that life long dream of a fish building.:)

I remember walking casually around a PetSmart when I ran into the TetraTec filter. I was immediately excited about the possibility. Instead of having two things hanging on the back of my tank, I'd just have one. A heater in a filter...and the bio-filtration with pulsing waves seemed fun as well. I saved up and bought one a few months later. I was immediately disappointed. It was much like when I got the wardley sandman. A cool idea that seemed way to difficult to run. What's more, the heater in the filter seemed to ALWAYS be one. Still there is something mesmerizing about watching the pulse chamber fill with water and then empty out...even if it is a little noisy. It's certainly not the bio-wheel, but it's one of the more fun filters I've bought in the last 5 years.

GSLAS=The Great Salt Lake Aquarium Society...of which I am a dues paying member.:) I think I only missed one meeting this last year, and had a great time with all I learned. In addition to the auctions, which are always a treat, I got an education on many things I wouldn't have learned about otherwise...like the International Fancy Guppy Association. I'd of course heard about them when I was raising guppies 20 years ago, but didn't really know what they did. I found out about shows and rules. The rules were actually a good thing in this case as they give those interested a standard set of guidelines to shoot for. Thus you might not really be looking for the prettiest guppy, just the one that fits the definition best. I found this exciting as it gave all those involved something in common to talk about. All to often in this hobby, we are excited about different things and have in common only fish in general...the IFGA allows people to be excited about the same thing. This was just one of many reasons I really enjoyed my local society. The main one was just the chance to talk to seasoned hobbyists about things I don't understand, and to share with new-comers their budding excitement and interest in the hobby.

Back for it's 3rd year on the list...but if it didn't make the list, I think everyone should be worried:) It's been a hard year on the site in some ways. After August, with the financial troubles in the tech sector (that would be my sector:) I found myself with not as much time as I'd had previously to keep the site updated. I dropped my goal of new content weekly and went with new content whenever I get time to work on it...thankfully I received some help this year as some visitors helped supply me with some articles...this was a great help at a bad time for me. In addition, on the 4th try at a Discussion Board, it seems to have finally worked, and we now have a growing ACTIVE discussion community. That is great to be involved with, and I hope to consolidate the other "discussion" areas of the site like "The Fish Log" into the discussion forum. Other positive things this year were that traffic averaged 35,000 hits a month, and the advertising paid for the web hosting costs! It was another great year in the hobby, bring on 2002!