Today I said good-bye to my 150 gallon aquarium. Today I gave it, the custom stand, and the accumulated pumps, filters, lighting and miscellaneous fish gear of the past 20 years, to people I didn't know, friends of my nephew's friend. I've been mulling this decision for a couple of years now, since I emptied the aquarium and took the fish to Petco. A hard decision because I've had aquariums for a hobby since I was just a kid. My mom was a school teacher who always had a small (20 gallon) aquarium in her classroom and would bring it home for the summers. When a fancy new tropical fish store opened in Scottsdale when I was a teen, we'd travel there on the weekends and spend a couple of hours window shopping and seeing what was new in the fish world. My interest started with the basics, mollies, moons and swordtails. I didn't have an aquarium when I first went to college and during 4 years of a failing marriage, but when I was back in college and in my own apartment, I started up again with a 10 gallon aquarium and some neon and rasbora tetras.
My first foray into larger aquariums was a 45 gallon octagonal tank. By that time I was 40 years old and wanted to try my hand at planted tanks. I enjoyed the tank immensely and learned a lot, but because I wanted to try different things I gave the tank to my workplace for the waiting room and maintained it there for years. I also set up a 15 gallon tall tank in my office and learned why tall tanks are not the best idea.
Because I always research subjects to death, I learned that a shallower tank can be better for plants so I purchased a used 40 gallon long tank and enjoyed it for awhile.
My favorite, and most successful tank, was a 75 gallon tank where, somehow, I hit the sweet spot where it was placed the apartment, the mix of fish, the cleaning schedule . . . whatever it was, where the fish thrived and were spawning all the time. I know that white cloud mountain minnows are prolific and easy to spawn fish but I was over the moon when the two kuhli loaches I had purchased while at a conference for work in St. Cloud, MN, started spawning under the under gravel filter plates in the tank. Kuhli loaches were my favorites and I was SO happy with the success of the tank. Then we moved to our house. There wasn't a good place on the main floor of the house to place an aquarium. The inside walls were all recipients of too much daylight and the outside walls were just too cold to keep a fish tank a a good temperature for tropical fish (we live in ND of all places). I sold the aquarium to my landlord and decided to move on.
But with a nice back yard came the idea for a pond. Not a real, in-ground, pond, that would be nearly impossible to maintain in our climate, but a stock tank pond. I started with a 75 gallon stock tank and took the goldfish back to Petco in the fall. But then I had to have a bigger tank so 400 gallons seemed the next logical step. A goldfish and a koi did well in the tank and, of course, I got attached to the fish so I saw an ad for the 150 gallon tank and stand in the local paper and decided that would be an appropriate place to overwinter the fish in the basement where there was no outside light and goldfish and koi are cool water fish anyway, so I wouldn't have to heat the tank. That's when the 150 gallon tank moved in.
The bare minimum lighting on a timer, hang on the back filtration and goldfish food worked well for a couple of years. A BIG net to move the fish back and forth, from inside to outside and back and all was pretty good. There was never any problem with predation from birds but I lost a coupe of fish when they jumped out of the tank. The big problem turned out to be maintenance. Anyone with a pond of any kind knows the need for good and regular maintenance to keep the fish healthy. Setting up the tank and taking it down in the fall got to be a bigger job than I wanted to handle on my own so I gave the fish to a co-worker with an in-ground pond (she also took the tank to overwinter the fish in her heated garage) and I was fishless for just awhile.
I had visions of the planted tank of my dreams. I tried different lighting set-ups and lamps, different filtration systems for better water quality and ease of maintenance, but I eventually learned that a 150 gallon tank is too deep for most fresh water plants to do well. A few plants eventually took off but they took light from the lower growing plants. I had a small number of smaller fish for the tank and I enjoyed the fish immensely but the size of the tank made maintenance (which is essential for the fish and plant health) became daunting. I finally understood that I would never have a tank that looks like one sees on the Aquatic Gardeners website and I lost my enthusiasm for the tank and the hobby. I'd have given almost anything to have back the 75 gallon tank that had done so well for me in our apartment but the effort to try to sell, and move, the 150 gallon tank was too much for me to contemplate. So I didn't. I called Dave, the fellow in town who sets up tanks in businesses and schools (he had maintained this tank in its previous home and moved it to my house, for a fee, of course) and asked him if he'd be willing to purchase and moved the tank to use in his business, but he said no, that he found it much easier to buy new tanks each time and commiserated with me on the difficulties of trying to move such a large tank. He said it would probably be easier to just give it away rather than try to sell it.
So that's what I did today. The tank had sat empty for at least 10 years. I had mourned the loss of $$ that I spent on lighting, pumps and filtration that sat unused. I contemplated refilling it with plastic plants and lots of tetras but knew that I no longer had the desire to maintain a tank that sits in the basement that I would rarely go down to sit and enjoy. So, my nephew found someone who was not only willing to take the tank and move it themselves but would take every last piece of aquarium equipment I had and dispose of whatever they couldn't use or didn't want. I kept it so long because I have a habit of regretting the abandonment of hobbies and then taking them up again, but I'm now 73 years old and know I won't do that with such a BIG tank. I no longer want to commit to that kind of hobby maintenance. Except for the dogs, that is. And they are not a hobby, they are family.
So the tank is gone, the fish hobby is gone . . . and I'm OK with it.