Your clueless times with fish

[Eelzor]

I would like to know what did you used to think with fish? By that I mean, when you were a child or when you had no clue on how to treat fish. I always thought you just put them in a tank with nothing! Just fish swimming around in a clear tank filled with water! Hope to hear uncanny replies!

 

[millym]

i always hated seeing fish in little bowls, birds in cages all that stuff & always wanted to set them free, (still do have to refrain from rescuing anything i think doesnt look happy!!)but then my parents were mad animal lovers & their views must have reflected on me & my sister.

 

[CJK]

Hi, I am the wife of CJK I brought my young son two goldfish, quite a few years ago now (he's 8 was only about 4 then). I put them into what must have been round about 7gallons of square tank. Brought them a bubble wall, weed, undergravel filter and cleaned them out twice a week!! Those poor goldfish when I look back, were put into room temperature water with no water conditioner added I had no idea at that point that this stuff had been invented or needed!!! The worse part was....100per cent water changes twice a week I was so proud of them, always in a clean tank, always swimming in the bubble wall, I thought I was such a good fishkeeper 8) In the end I gave them to a friend to put into his huge pond in his back garden because my son lost interest in them, cos they never did anything Those poor fish, I wonder what their life was really like for them with the 100per cent water changes with no conditioner added. I have to add though, I never had them fall sick and they looked very healthy with good colouring so who knows!!! Outgrew the tank though by the age of one year.
Sharon

 

[platypus]

My sister kept fish before I did, and when I said I was getting a tank for my boyf as a present she gave me all sorts of 'advice' - like don't bother with live plants coz they're a pain to maintain, and clean your tank out once every month or so.... she ended with the words 'don't get too attached to your fish or give them names, you'll find they die on you REALLY easily'..... hmmm, I wonder why her fish died on her?

Thankfully I did my own research, found this place, asked around and the rest is history! My sister has a cat now... poor kitty

 

[Alien Anna]

I used to believe that fish died really easily too. My first was a goldfish I won at the fair (unbelieveably cruel and stupid practice). I put it in a bowl (unfiltered, no dechlorinator) with some Elodea which promptly rotted. Algae was a terrible problem.

I bought him a friend (believing that goldfish were schooling fish, which they aren't really, although they do like a companion). He died and the friend survived (this was all within the first week). I kept it for another few weeks but cleaning it out (total strip-down) every week became a real drag and my fish got fin-rot. I successfully treated that with methylene blue and then it got ich! Somehow it survived the ich (I put the bowl near the radiator to warm it up) but I really wasn't coping. So me and a friend sneaked in to the college garden and "liberated" the fish in the ornamental pond. Even if he got eaten by a heron, at least he has his chance of freedom.

I vowed I'd never keep a goldfish in a bowl after that and finances would never allow tropical fish, until I was given a tank by a friend (supposedly to calm my autistic son down).

 

[juanveldez]

okay I wll pipe in with my story when I was like 6 years old, my older brother took me fishing and we caught a bunch of blue gill, well needless to say we took them home froze them, then one day my grandma decided that fish would be good for dinner and so I grabbed them out of her hand ran across the sub division with them hid and waited for them to thaw out so that I could set them free

 

[dixaisy930]

Well, I have a REAL fish horror story...

About four years ago before I actually did research on fish care and what not, I bout a 1/2 gallon fish bowl at a garage sale, and thought four calico goldfish would be fine in it! ) ) Needless to say, they did not last long.