I had a medium-size aquarium I used for fresh water fish many decades ago. I kept it going for a few years and then stopped.

It required more attention and maintenance time than I wanted to spend. It may be that the quality of fish available to buy and the chemicals used to maintain the water/treat fish conditions are better now than they were. Just one unexpected "for instance", we lost power in our house for a few days following a rainstorm. My wife and I were fine, the house never got much below 60 degrees. But the aquarium had a couple of small heaters to keep the water in the high 70's and, of course, they were electric heaters. We lost all the fish. It wasn't a matter of cost, the fish we had and the ones we bought to replace them were moderately priced. Nothing too exotic. It was just the point that it seemed to be one problem after another.

It was too much trouble and not worth it.

We don’t but DH has expressed an inteest from time to time. We stopped in recently to inquire. very expensive for upkeep.

The fish are do beautiful and peaceful to watch.

Pets that never leave their containment, receive neither joy nor benefit from captivity or human interaction. Why? So we can look at them in passing from time to time? Hopefully they’re essentially brainless, because anything that could think in the slightest would be miserable.

We had a couple goldfish that my kids brought home from camp one summer. I tried, I bought all the suggested stuff and a large tank. But I was happy - for THEM - when they died.

Our DS went through a few childhood years of buying fish, burying fish, buying more fish. Lots of trips to a pet store! He's now seen this from the other side with is own DS, who became crazy about fish after seeing "Finding Nemo". (He refused to eat any fish for a year or more.)

I think the large Chicagoland appliance dealer, Abt Appliance, still has a gigantic fish tank. I bet you could see it on their website. Then there is the Shedd Aquarium along Chicago's lakefront. I'm of two minds about the dolphin shows there and at other aquariums. Our DGD loves their penguins.

Did you know a LOT of aquarium fish are captured in the wild? I looked up why, the colors are more intense. That's not right.

My brother had a fish tank. One fish head butted other fish...killed them....but in the wild that wasn't a problem. Small tanks create situations. Coral carries bacteria, every time he'd get a new piece of coral, all the fish died.

Mandolay Bay. Every morning the dead fish are scooped off the top....new ones added...I was told by people that work there.

I had a pond when I lived in Venice, and it had a waterfall coming out of a large pumice rock that my neighbor gave me.

As you can see, I had frogs in addition to goldfish - this was a leopard frog, and the goldfish were feeder fish that I got for cheap at a pet store. I think they were content, since they multiplied. They would also come to greet me if I fed them, but they really did not need to be fed, as they could eat insects that fell into the pond. The frogs would go out into the yard to hunt. I also had some tree frogs for a while, which would hang out on the orange tree next to the pond, but they did not stick around. I had quite a few waterlilies in the pond, but the tropical blue ones were my favorite. They had a fragrance (if you got close enough to them), but it was not a fragrance that I liked.

Back in the late 60' s thru 70's, I raised and showed fancy goldfish. I had 22 aquariums and 16 varieties of fancy goldfish. Two aquariums were in the house and the rest were in a "fish house" in the backyard. I primarily raised orandas, but I kept other varieties as part of my collection.

In the '90's I had a large greenhouse and I raised telescope goldfish...which are like black moors...bulging eyes. I didn't show them, but I had blue, black, orange, red and white, calico, white, and one albino.

I also raised koi, Japanese carp, for many years, but in ponds. I lost all of my koi in the Harvey flood. Now I raise Shubunkins, which are calico, single tailed goldfish, in my water lily tanks.

I loved raising fish. It was just a hobby, but one I thoroughly enjoyed.

I took orandas as far away as Akron, Ohio to show. It was as much as having a chance to meet others in the hobby, as winning a ribbon. I also had a very common fish...called a Piggy that won Best in Show at the Houston Show, much to the consternation of other exhibitors with much rarer and exotic fish. The Piggy was a salt water fish that came from my husband's shrimp boat, when he was tiny, and I raised him. I also had 2 pet gars....Hagar and Cigar.

Sorry, no pictures. I lost them all in the Harvey flood.

Keeping freshwater fish was my favorite hobby over 10 years ago. I had fancy bettas, (black moor, pearl scale, oranda) goldfish, angel fish, fancy guppies, tetras, sword fish, Amano shrimps. My preferred setup would be au naturel as in the style of Diana Waldstad method of planted aquarium with lots of live plants. Once the ecology of my planted aquaria became balanced, only minimal maintenance was needed. Then my life got super busy with extended business trips and overseas work I had to put off the hobby. Still have many empty aquariums from 10g to 120g in the garage waiting to come back to life.

Interestingly my mom used to tell me keeping fish was like putting them in jails although she enjoyed watching the serene relaxed settings. All my fish were not wild caught, and they had distinct personalities, especially the goldfish, one named Piggy.

We had one when I was growing up. Nothing too fancy, there were guppies (which had babies), zebra fish, couple of other types and I had a small green catfish of some kind that helped to keep the glass clean. I really enjoyed that little fish but don't remember now its true type name.

Several years ago my brother invested a small fortune in a salt water tank. Very interesting fish and lots of up keep. After a few years he tired of it as he can do - i think it stayed with the house when he sold that and moved across the river from Oregon.

I've considered them from time to time but haven't seriously looked into any appropriate. I'd love to raise one of the mini octopus but i understand they are quite short lived which wouldn't suit me - also are little escape artists and hard to contain so I likely wouldn't try.

(nice to 'see' you Marilyn- your presence is missed when you aren't here)

We no longer have tanks, but very much enjoyed several for about 15 years. No salt water fish, though. While they are beautiful, they're expensive and tricky to get their environment right.

We enjoyed the live bearers (Guppies, Mollies, Platies) and had 20 gallon tanks for each of those. I loved watching the females give birth. When we were overrun, a local aquarium was willing to take the extras off our hands.

We also had a 20 gallon gallon tank that held a pair of Kribensis Cichlids. Some cichlids are aggressive, but the Kribensis are peaceful fish. We kept them alone in a 20 gallon tank in hopes of breeding (just for fun) and we weren't disappointed! They're beautiful. They're mouth breeders and that was so interesting to observe.

We also had a 100 gallon tank for the larger fish, which we kept at the foot of our bed. Instead of counting sheep, we counted fish, LOL. We had beautiful angelfish and the janitors - Plecostamus, and we added some pretty Neon Tetras for interest. But the star of that tank was a 15" Bichir (much like the picture below). For months all was well and then we noticed fish were disappearing, not just the littler ones. Turns out the Bichir was sucking them down while we slept. We kept the Bichir and gave the rest of the fish in that tank to friends. He lived a long life and enjoyed worms and shrimp.

ok here's my story. We are not sure when exactly we got it but we know we got it while in our first house from which we moved in 1990. So it's definitely before 1990.

We bought a newt, and then another newt. After we moved in 1990,, one of them died. So we still have ONE NEWT. We got it for our "kids" who were born in 1982 and 1985.

It's not an exciting pet by any means, but we have gone away for 2 weeks at a time and forget we have it, ( not inentionally negligent) and he or she still lives on.

Each time our grands come by they are excited to feed it and then watch it for about 2 minutes and move onto something else. DH cleans the tank, changes the water, every few months and we do feed it.... this animal is the lowest maintenance pet.

When we've googled it it seems they don;t live as long as ours but as I said we know we got it before 1990 and it's still rocking on in our basement.

We think it's a yellow bellied or CAlifornia newt but not sure.

Interesting answers! I love to go to the pet store and watch the little "sharks" (they're not sharks, they're minnows with large dorsal fins), and wish I could, but I realize it'd be so much work!!!

I don't think I find a tank any more jail like than a house for a cat, food? But I can see where you're coming from.

My child would own axolotls if she could (newts and axolotls are salamanders).

and yes, very nice to see you Marilyn!

i started in the reef tank hobby in 2004 with a biocube and eventually graduated to a 75g tank. the work was intense but that was partly because of my OCD. i had many different fish and inverts over the years.

i left the hobby about 8 years ago when i had to be 7K miles away from home for 6 weeks. i had a house/dog sitter who moved in. i gave her very strict feeding instructions for my tank but she overfed it every single day. when i got home, the algae was so thick, i could hardly see through the glass. many of my corals died. although the fish survived, some were in very poor shape. i was so discouraged that i tore the whole thing down, took the surviving fish to an aquarium store, gave the whole tank away.

sea urchin. they're interesting critters. they cruise around the tank and pick things up to decorate themselves with. this is used for camo in the wild.

plate coral, a filter feeder. when i fed the tank, this piece would get all puffed up and double in size.

the clam next to the plate coral was one of my prized possessions. it was 1" when i bought it, grew to almost 5" before the tank crashed.

a brittle starfish. such an interesting creature. this one got huge and would eat out of my hand. he was my favorite invertebrate.

We had a 50 gallon, freshwater aquarium for several years back in the 80s - 90s. Like Donna, we also kept Chichlids, the more peaceful ones, including a pair of Kribensis. The tank was situated by my chair and the fish would "greet me" whenever I sat down. Towards the end of our aquarium period, we tried keeping Discus but they required a lot of attention.

In 1998 we abandoned our aquarium and built our first pond. It's not near the maintenance and still has the pleasures of fish watching. We still have one of our original Koi, 27 years later.

DS won the typical goldfish-in-a-bag at a school fair when he was six. I mistakenly bought a large bowl for it, allowing it room to grow. DS loved that fish and would run to see "Flash" the minute he got home from school. It lived several years -- partly because I'd check on it every afternoon and 'walk' it around in salt water when I found it floating. By then, DS was old enough to accept its demise. We burried Flash in the beautiful purple velvet casket from a bottle of Shalimar someone had given me.

I had goldfish as a child since I wasn't allowed any pets. Years later I went through a betta fish time. I loved seeing these beautiful fish swim up to greet me. My cat got one, and thereafter I covered the bowl.

41 years ago, when we bought this 1840 farmhouse, there was a goldfish pond by the porch, which was covered over since the people had little kids. It was built in the 20s. So we uncovered it and put in goldfish (one lived to 16) and mistakenly a few koi. They grew quickly so we had to build a big pond with a waterfall, probably 35 years ago. There are now 15 large koi in there and they are all related. Big Mama is the original, and all are her offspring. The youngest offspring are about 12 and then we took all plants out so they could eat the babies when they were minuscule, because the pond cannot sustain all these koi. Some weigh 12 pounds

@chisue.... 'walk' it around in salt water when I found it floating

What does THAT mean....?

We enjoyed keeping an aquarium many years ago. It was quite a bit of work to keep clean. It never occurred to me we might be torturing fish. We have an outdoor pond now but no fish because we have problems with raccoons wrecking the lilies and eating the fish. I put in a few mosquito fish every summer.

Off topic a bit, does anyone follow "Leon the Lobster" on youtube? A man rescued a lobster from the tank at the grocery store and kept him in a large tank for a couple years. Leon finally died, in spite of great care, and now he has Leon #2. It's kinda fun to follow.

Ooh a digression!

Leon II

I have not heard of this YouTube channel but I think I'm going to watch it because I am dying to have some fish in my view (I cannot own them, because I can't keep up with them at this point!).

We had one years ago, and after having a variety of freshwater fish, we settled on angel fish. We would buy them dime sized, grow them to the size of your palm, then turn them in to pet store for dime sized again. Beautiful to watch, such graceful fish. Upkeep was a pain. Cleaning was a pain. Our water was not great and we went to the next county with 5 gallon buckets to get water. It was a 30 gallon tank. Once the kids tired of it all, we sold it all off.