Hi all, thought I would do my intro!
I first picked up a fish tank at University, we had a shared house and we had loads of pets - between the 4 humans we had 2 russian hamsters, 1 rat, 2 gerbils, 5 mice, a snake, occasionally a bunch of tarantula's and scorpions, and two three foot fish tanks.
One tank was mine and I inherited the other when the guy left. I took them home with me and had them for a good 5 years before moving country and giving them to the local fish shop.
Near the end I had the 2 tanks on a stand with the lower tank having the larger fish and a 'deep' look to it - no plants, a bit of bogwood type hollow ceramic thing, sand and a 12"bubbler, the upper tank had a 'shallow' feel to it with gravel, a couple of plants, a matching bubbler to tie the tanks together, and smaller fish.
Lower tank - 2 4" T-Barbs, 2 5-6" Tinfoil Barbs, 13" plec and an eel (I think it was an eel, it had a wobbly nose and hid in the sand, liked eating platy babies so had to go in the lower tank)
Upper tank - 2 dwarf gouramis that were the only things to survive the heater malfunction, and a variety of platy's, neon tetra type things and harlequin rasboras.
Most of the big fish were bought as small from Pet City (nicknamed Pet Cemetary after we realised) - now called Pets at Home - we were assured they would be suitable for a community tank with Neon's
Looking back probably had both tanks overstocked, but they survived!
But that's history, and now 20 years on I am married with 2 kids and a dog, living in Yorkshire and just managed to get the wife to agree to (and in fact bought me for Christmas) a small (2ft) tank.
Some soil substrate covered in gravel in one diagonal half of the tank, the other half sand. Bogwood & plants on their way (hopefully) in the post. The plan is for small Corys and Guppies - crowd pleasers to get the family hooked - especially if we get a few babies!
Cheers,
Afterburned