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This 55-gallon aquarium bought the farm a few years ago when we had a nasty January ice storm. Power was out all over Western NY since 6am, including at our apartment. Our office was closing around 2pm, and I got a hold of one of my roommates, who was already drunk and high. He thought it would be funny to tell me that the power was back on, which was relieving to me, because my fish would then be ok and wouldn't freeze. I took off to my buddy's house, we got ready, had a couple drinks, hit happy hour, rocked out all night, crashed at his house, and got back to my apartment at about 2pm the next day. The power was still out. Dead fish floating.
I had airstones under the volcano, in the skull, and an airline plugged into the castle, and the pressure popped up the drawbridge. I had plans to make the airlines look neater, possibly encased in thin black plastic piping. Everything is at my sister's house, and once I settle in one place I'll build it again. I'm going to stain and finish the canopy and stand, as well as bevel-mirror the tank's frame and the entire back. That's for another day though...
Let's flashback to the early days of this aquarium, when I first built it at my parents' house.
In the foreground is a catfish, about 4" in length. One summer day, I bought this really cool blue lobster that was about half the size of him, and roamed around like a pimp on the aquatic floor. The catfish dind't seem to enjoy his presence, and made that well known. About four days later, I stopped home during lunch on a Saturday, and Mr. Blue Lobster was in pieces, scattered about his stomping grounds. I think I learned more of a lesson that day than Mr. Lobster.
A little bit behind him is 2Pac. I'm not really one for naming fish, but this nigga was crazy. See, fish are pretty neurotic when you bring them home because they're tied up in a bag with limited oxygen, placed into a dark paper bag, and bounced all around during the course of the journey to their destination, albeit a rising temperature. 'Pac never calmed down. For that I blame my mother's cat, Snickers.
She, seen below learning at a young age, made quite the hobby out of terrorizing marine life. Sure, she looked innocent, as seen in the second image, but the following picture shows her devious and cruel intentions. It got to the point where 2Pac was even afraid of food. He was my big, bad tri-color shark, and acted like a schizophrenic bitch, sprinting from end to end when someone (usually Snickers) came anywhere near the glass.
Here's 2Pac shark again, this time flanking a tin-foil barb. This barb was about as big as a hardball. They're known to be somewhat hostile, but I took my chances and he was fairly relaxed.
My marble-sailfin pleco (algae-eater). This guy was great, but I could never clear up his scales. I tried so many things, but he always looked patchy.
This little blue guy is an african cichlid. Pretty nice guy, made friends anywhere he went. Short police record, but that was all from when he was young. You know, in schools.
When I was moving out of my parents' house, I had to find a way to move this thing. I decided to use six 5-gallon pails and taking as much water as I could inside, and the fish could travel in them. I filled the buckets and set them on the front porch, with the lids covering them well, but I didn't want to take the chance of them losing oxygen, so I didn't snap them down.
As I was scooping the last of the gravel from the tank, my father yells to me in his "deal with your own shit" voice, "David, you've got a fish flopping around on the ground out here."
Low and behold, 2Pac bailed out of his rest bucket, over the edge, off the porch, into the pine needle-covered stones around one of my mother's planted pine trees, and onto the hot concrete porch walk. I picked him up and dropped him back into the water, and he lethargically swam around, showing no signs of reattempting the feat.
That motherfcuker was a trooper. 
Last edited by DigitalMP on Apr-14-2006 at 17:40
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cant believe i just read all that, nice tropical setup you have there mate, but i heard cichlids are african fish who cant be mixed with tropical fish, but im not sure, aquarium keeping is quite hard, you have to change 1/4 water every week, feed them everyday, clean the filters, clean clean clean... i enjoy it though and i want to buy a bigger tank, maybe ill go for a 60ltr tank when i have the time for it. 
