one doesn't over extend oneself, have a real advantage. (People who expand to a zillion tanks within a year, will discover that they aren't keeping the fish, the fish are keeping them. In most cases they are out of the hobby by the second year. In one exceptional case, a fairly young guy had a nervous and physical breakdown and was hospitalized. His wife purchased "things" with the same dazzling immoderation and they were divorced within another two years.)
If one gets a couple of tanks and several small filters of the same sort, it is relatively easy to move fish and water back and forth and set up new tanks. As equipment seems to drop through a black hole into a recently established fishroom, it is a heck of a lot easier to establish a new tank because filter, gravel, water and plants can be imported. Voila! Instance nitrogen cycle!
Having said that, while catching up on my e-mail, I started a small siphon from by 15-gallon "start-up" tank. Partway through the top paragraph on this page, I realized that the siphon has exceeded that 5-gallon mark. (It is handy to have been married 30+ years, while still being 23, because we have all the old towels for dog drying, car washing and fish tank over flows onto the tile.) Multiple aquaria make no difference if one is absent minded, except that there is a capacity to do more house damage. ;)
When we first got involved in a local killie club, one of the non-fish-keeping spouses mentioned to my wife, at least I know he is in the basement, not out with the guys at the corner tap. Any passion will have to be balanced with family and other priorities. :)
My old friend Paul of Tarsus suggested one pursue "moderation in all things." Well ... most things. ;)
In our local killie club, only a few of the 30 of us have consistently kept fish over most of their adult lives. "Life stuff" interferes and lots of times it is very wise to gave away the fish and moth-ball or give away the equipment. (I was absolutely dismayed to walk the dog past the remodeling home of a former fish-keeper and see a dozen 10-gallon tanks in the dumpster.)
"What does it profit a person if he breeds every tropical fish in the world and loses his soul?"
Still, fish keeping is a little bit like Malaria. It gets in your blood and reinfects you from time to time. ;) A lot of the organized hobby is "hello, so-long and Hi again!" And, I, of middling faith, hope to get a chance to sometime say hi again to a friend we lost to cancer a couple falls ago.
Never realized all that would come out of buying two 20-gallons on over-under stands. This guy was going away to college and didn't want the responsibility of the fish. Me? I was going into my senior year as a history major and in grad school was even crazy enough one year to haul them (in the back of a borrowed Mustang) to the house several of us were renting. We set up a study room/ fishroom. The star of the room, aside from an 8-track stereo, was a strain of purple snakeskin guppies, the like of which I have never seen again.
All the best,
uncle nostalgia boy
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