# How do you enjoy your fish?



## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

With tartar sauce!

No but really. How DO you enjoy your fish. I mean, i actually like the whole maintenance thing, it's got this zen quality to it, but i imagine everyone's got a little routine they undertake to sit back and enjoy their aquariums.

Personally, every day i get off work I stroll home, grab a beer, spark a smoke and sit infront of my aquarium for a good 45 minutes. it's a great way to unwind. only then will i shower/get on with life.

What about the rest of you?


----------



## MacFish (Jun 15, 2006)

I must say it's getting harder now that I own a house and have a wee one. My list of things to do is growing quickly and I have less time to relax in front of the tanks. 

I still steal at least a half hour almost every day to still and watch the fish. I've got 6 tanks so I don;t get to see them all every day but I try to at least have a quick peak. 

Can't say I find the maintenance relaxing. I typically have an excited puppy and a little girl following me around every step of the way.


----------



## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

yeah, i can see that. i suppose as well that i'm pretty new to the hobby so there's a fair degree of novelty. once that wears off.....well, who knows. 

kids are a ways off for me yet.


----------



## Shattered (Feb 13, 2008)

I enjoy them with my kids, they help me with the maintenance and they love sitting and watching the fish. 

Each one has a tank in their room, and I've timed the lights so that they can have a fishy night-light when they go to bed. For a couple hours at least. 

One tip I've learned with kids is that a hood is mandatory. One of my gouramis had a car accident. I was re-finishing the hood in my son's room, so while I was gone; Seth thought they would like playing with his toy cars, so he dropped one on the gourami.


----------



## Calmer (Mar 9, 2008)

Maintenance is more enjoyable for me now that I don't have to haul buckets of water around the house.  I get the most enjoyment after working on the tank and then sitting back and looking at the improvements that were just made. Fish feeding time is also a good time as well. It works best when the aquariums are out of high household traffic areas so the tranquillity is not disturbed.


----------



## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

I am learning how to get things all running together and more efficiently... I also am learning how to not fret over the smallest thing. Snails? eh.. its okay.. Algae? Ehh.. turn the lights off for a while. 

All is good... LOL

I find with my job stability dwindling away (i work in production) the tanks really help me destress... I just recently moved my planted tank to the bedroom right beside the bed. Its really really nice just watching the fish with bob for a while before bed.


----------



## gunnerx (Mar 20, 2008)

The best time to watch them I find is after a WC. I do my WC's quite late at night. Sometimes I start at 12am and finish at 1:30am. It's great because their all sleeping so no one's out when I'm vacuuming and such. Howeverr, once I finish filling up the tank, they all come out and investigate and start to interact with each other. Some things I don't really see at other times I see at this time.

One time, one lonely Brevis male was determined to get one of the females and had started cleaning up a shell. Whenever I got near the area with the vacuum he would start attacking the tube.  Once I was done with the WC, he went back to remove sand from the shell and made the area presentable. Then one of the pairs came out of a larger shell and the male went to investigate something. The lonely male took the chance and got the female and started showing off his 2 shells that he had cleaned up. When the other male saw this he rushed in and got the female back and shoved her into their shell.  That lonely male is still lonely and keeps on cleaning other shells. The last WC, I took out the small shells that were too small for them and replaced them with much newer ones and larger. Maybe that will help him get a partner. Or maybe I should get 2 females so the 2 lonely males can get  paired up.


----------



## KnaveTO (May 13, 2007)

In my home I have the tanks set up in my livingroom, some of which I use as a room divider separating my office area from my TV area. So when I am at my desk (like now) I can sit back an watch the fish while I am working. Definately very relaxing during some more stressful moments... lol


----------



## UnderTheSea (Jun 2, 2008)

I enjoy the whole thing I have with my 3 year old daughter. Every night when I get home from work we go to the basement to feed the fish and run some RO water down the air tube on the skimmer. She gets up on a step stool and puts on her rubber gloves to clean the outside of the glass. We also become animal rescuers (Dora / Diego) for the turtled snails or corals that have been knocked over. We then go to the other room (entertainment room as it is an in-wall setup) and watch the fish for a couple of minutes, then it's dinner time for us hehehehe.  

I take a half hour once a month to clean up some of my equipment, other than that there is little maintenance (oh and a 30% water change 4 times a year). This is one thing that I love about SW, less work once it's stabilized. No worries about changing sponges or carbon, changing airstones. I do less maintenance on my 170G SW then I did on my 33G FW.

It's great to sit back, relax and watch my 52" widescreen and then off in the other corner watch my 60" live picture (my aquarium), it's such a great double feature.


----------



## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

I spend time every few days watching a bit. also watch for a few minutes at feeding time. The most time spent is when I'm in the mood to shoot them.......with a camera.


----------



## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

KnaveTO said:


> In my home I have the tanks set up in my livingroom, some of which I use as a room divider separating my office area from my TV area. So when I am at my desk (like now) I can sit back an watch the fish while I am working. Definately very relaxing during some more stressful moments... lol


do you find that the tank on your desk is disturbed by your movements at the desk? i'm clumsy as hell and had to move one of my tanks off of my desk cuz evertime i sat down water would slosh around and the little guys would be tossed every which way. not to mention water running all over ...


----------



## KnaveTO (May 13, 2007)

The tank that divides my room is a 50gal so it definately does not sit on my desk but perpendicular to it, thus separating my living room and office space.


----------



## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

ah, i see. that sounds pretty nice actually.


----------



## Westender (Mar 24, 2006)

I squeeze time in when I can - 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there. My planted tank is along the wall of our dining room, and as we all sit down at the table to eat supper each night, we watch the fish having theirs too. Often that's when we spot new members who are old enough to leave the safety of the plant cover to feed. My 3 year old daughter loves to feed the fish with me and also likes to help when I'm trimming plants etc.

My wife sometimes feels a little neglected at supper. She once threatened to paint the glass black so we would look at each other while we ate!


----------



## ameekplec. (May 1, 2008)

twoheadedfish said:


> do you find that the tank on your desk is disturbed by your movements at the desk? i'm clumsy as hell and had to move one of my tanks off of my desk cuz evertime i sat down water would slosh around and the little guys would be tossed every which way. not to mention water running all over ...


I have a 10 gal sitting on my desk,and after a few days of being jittery whenever I sat down, now everyone seems happy. I find it most relaxing to stop once in a while and look at the shrimps scurrying about or the cpd darting in and out of the plants.

I think I enjoy my tanks a few minutes each day just checking on everyone and then sitting back at feeding time. I love watching my plecs the best now. They all seem to have such personality, and it's hilarious to watch them scooting around defending their little turfs.


----------



## Katalyst (Jul 29, 2007)

I'm surrounded I have no choice but to enjoy them.  Especially the 6 & 11 inch oranda's who smack their lips, spit water & gravel out of the tank if the top is left open.


----------



## Tamakun (Mar 30, 2008)

I have my tank situated right by the entrance to the kitchen in my condo, so I pass by it every hour or two, and every time I pass by the fish will swim to a certain area (where I normally feed them) - if it's the morning they're even more active as they're hungry 

I find I'll just rest against the door jamb and watch them swim about, going about their business, and resist tampering with the setup ^^;;


----------



## Pixelated_Pirate (May 9, 2008)

I enjoy my fish by watching them while I practice the bass. They give me something to concentrate on so that I will not get distracted and start to just fool around than actually practising.


----------



## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

I'm having fun photographing them. Challenging too...I use my manual focus lenses.


----------



## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

Katalyst said:


> I'm surrounded I have no choice but to enjoy them.  Especially the 6 & 11 inch oranda's who smack their lips, spit water & gravel out of the tank if the top is left open.


Ha! i could watch them alll day....  And hug them, and tell them stories.. >.>


----------



## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

Westender said:


> I squeeze time in when I can - 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there. My planted tank is along the wall of our dining room, and as we all sit down at the table to eat supper each night, we watch the fish having theirs too. Often that's when we spot new members who are old enough to leave the safety of the plant cover to feed. My 3 year old daughter loves to feed the fish with me and also likes to help when I'm trimming plants etc.
> 
> My wife sometimes feels a little neglected at supper. She once threatened to paint the glass black so we would look at each other while we ate!


Rofl ohh poor west. Just tell her to get one of those things they use for horses? Ya know so they only look forward? lol


----------



## Westender (Mar 24, 2006)

Ciddian said:


> Rofl ohh poor west. Just tell her to get one of those things they use for horses? Ya know so they only look forward? lol


Oh, man. If she reads this, I'm toast! It'll be blinkers all the time! Particularly when I'm fish shopping.


----------



## gunnerx (Mar 20, 2008)

Haha. I actually have a massage chair right beside my 29g tank and faces the 120g tank. So I can get a nice massage while I watch the 120g or turn and check out the 29g from the side.  And of course there are times where I just sit or kneel in front of the tanks holding my camera waiting for some good picture opportunities.


----------



## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

When I'm stressed out (which has been a LOT lately), I find that I sit and watch my fish. It calms me down. I observe my lil' gobies, with their bulldog faces, and I say, "Hey you, calm down, okay? Relax, life's not so bad". I go to my next tank and I find my hiding Kuhli's and I say, "Hey, come out and play, the water's nice, and nobody's going to hurt you". I walk by the tank with a big white and orange angel and clown loaches, and I watch the loaches cavort, and play like dolphins, and the angel fish slowly gliding around, then upon seeing me, he comes to the glass and begs for snacks. 

Then I go look in the tank that has a horsehead loach, kuhlis, and mollies, to see if I can find any buried loachy treasure. A buried loach is hard to spot. 
He's like an aquatic mole. He's only happy when he's buried, and he's very skittish, and will go hide whenever he feels he's been seen. Then if I need cheering up, I watch my "smiling" Laetacara Curviceps, or my clown loaches, and they cheer me up, or my fry tank. Right now it's got about 50 baby hybrid-Platies. I've probably had a lot more molly babies than I can account for. Most of them probably were tasty snacks for the angel fish who used to be in the molly tank. Thinking about all this stuff is just an escape from the rest of my life, which is a whole lot less easy to manage than these little idyllic aquatic microcosms. 

W


----------

