Jason's Big Aquarium

Kendra does pretty much all of the posting on our blog. I only did one post, just after Max was born. She really does a great job, much better then I would. So I just leave it to her. She is very creative as can be plainly seen. But I wanted to do a post on here to show my hobby.

First off, Kendra has only herself to blame for my hobby. I got our first aquarium to house a turtle I caught for Kendra. She though they were so cute that she wanted one. Soon some minnows from the canal next to the house were added, then a couple of gold fish. The turtle then died, the gold fish would not. (Many parents have experienced the undying goldfish brought home from the fair.) Then I started trying other fish from the store which got sick and died just days after I added them. With some research, I found out that tropical fish needed a heater. Imagine that.

Once I got the hang of some to the basics of fish keeping, I was off to the races. I got a bigger tank and more fish. Kendra fell in love with angelfish so I went ahead and added one of those as well and her new friend, a blue lobster. She never like the tank as much as I did, but she loved "her" fish in the tanks.

After we moved back to Oregon, I got a bigger tank and more fish. I also found out about growing real plants in the aquariums. They look much better than the fake plants and the little houses and shipwrecks you see at petsmart and other stores. (The multi-color gravel with the shipwreck and skulls are the jokes of the planted aquarium community.) Another year later and I was getting more and more into planted tanks. Trust me, planted tanks are a vortex that will pull a person into the hobby and never let them go.

For my birthday this year, my Mom came to visit us. As a birthday present, she offered to just take me to the fish store and let me go on a little shopping spree. I was excited. Just inside the door there was a large 75 gallon tank for sale and as I passed it, I mentioned how my dream was to have a big tank like that or bigger. So while I was looking around the store, she figured out how much it would cost and ended up offering to buy it for me or give me the money to buy the setup I wanted. I was stunned. I took the money and found a 125 gallon tank on Craigslist. I had additional money from selling my old tank, plus money from my fish tank fund Kendra started, to get things set up. You can see the results below.

Here is what I stared out with.




Here it is set up in the house near the end of February.



Here it is near the end of April.


Beginning of July.


Mid August.


And here is basically what it looks like right now. I recently started adding more fertilizers and light to get the plants growing a lot better.


Kendra still mutters about how crazy I am. (Others have now joined her). But just like before, she is attached to the fish in the tank. Just the other day she got upset because I was going send some of the angelfish to someone in South Carolina to trade for some plants and shrimp.

Here are a couple of quick pictures of some of my favorite fish and plants in the aquarium.





For a more detailed account of this aquarium, you can read my tank journal at this link.