So after about 2 weeks and like 8 dead fish we decide its time to go see the big guns we head to Pet Cetera to ask some questions. The associate that helped us was awesome, he told us that now that our aquarium was established its time to add some algae eaters to help keep it clean. So my roommate and I were trying to decide on the type of algae eater to buy. We walked into pet smart and there they were, a tank full of Pleco's we knew that was what we were going to get. They were so little and cute (kind of) and they sucked to the side of the tank, what an interesting type of fish. They were no longer then 2 cm's and really how big could they really get??? They'll be great for our little 10 gallon aquarium. NOT!!!!!!!! Right now they are both at 30cm's long and getting much bigger. That is in 3 years, apparently there are 3 different sizes of Pleco's and we got the medium ones. We have had to upgraded our tanks just to keep them and it still isn't big enough. The moral of this story, its ok to ask questions, and if the sales person doesn't know find someone who does because the last thing you need is 60 cm's of pleco's in a 20 gallon tank...........Where do the fish go?????

getting started

So I finally had made the decision to buy my own house and was 3 months away from moving in. I bought it pre-construction if anyone really cares. I was out with my mom who needed to buy some cat food. We were in New West and were going to go to Wal-Mart but of course she wants to go into Pet Cetera. I went in the front doors and walked into the fish section, they had their 10 gallon tanks on for 39.99 and suddenly I just had to buy the aquarium. How hard could it be to have tropical fish??? To me I thought piece of cake, I had a Betta named Gil I named him after Gil Grissom from CSI not because he was a fish and had gills. He was fairly easy to keep and I enjoyed just sitting there watching him swim around, come up to glass and look at me, you could almost here him say is it dinnertime yet??? So finally we moved in and set up the tank, we had it going and all I wanted to do was buy fish and put them into it. But of course being a responsible pet owner I followed the instructions and waited 24 hours before putting any fish into the tank. We then went to Pet Smart to look at what fish we wanted to buy, there were so many types and sizes of fish to choose from. When the associate came up and asked if we were ready I looked at her and asked where do we start, she then started explaining that you should only have 1 inch of fish for each gallon of water, this fish can't mix with that fish, this fish has to be at this temperature and that fish needs a higher temperature. The kicker was when she said and you don't want to get this fish because it will eat all the others. Wow I thought this was supposed to be a nice and easy past time..........Big mistake......... We ended up bringing home a couple of balloon Mollies and a couple of Platies to start and well there were many more to come.............to be continued next story is about pleico's