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my flat is quite small and my girlfriend is insistent that i can have no more tanks.

just wondering how everyone gets round their wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends and parents to allow them that extra tank you "need"

i've tried everything!!!

I sneak mine into the office. Good thing I work in a "fishy" environment.

Simple!

first; set up the whole place, tanks and all....

then; find myself a fish-friendly girlfriend.....


works everytime!

Just explain to her that you are following the brick oven theory of heat retention. In the past, ovens were filled with bricks because they would retain heat much longer than air, and would thus keep the ovens at a more stable temperature. When you displace the air in your flat with something with a higher heat retention like water, you will find that the room is easier to keep warm/cold depending on what season it is. An additional tank will also help to put some moisture into the air during the dry winter months.

Just buy her a tank (bigger is better) and then take her to
the fish store to pick out some fish to keep.... hopefully she
already has picked out a few cats she likes! A few weeks
later you fill in the rest with some new cats of your own


Or just tell her you need a quarantine tank... because your
other one is already housing fish of course! Set it up and
wait till it cycles... and now you have a new tank.

The easiest way I have found is to add a 10 gallon tank underneath an existing tank.

My wife still complained about seeing tanks in every room of the house so I converted the back end of our walk in closet into a small fish room moving some tanks out of some rooms but still adding a few more 10 gallon tanks.

http://spaces.msn.com/members/plecocraz ... 02_owner=1

Other than that the only fish that I keep that my wife actually care about is Discus. Maybe those would help peak her interest.

I would agree with PlecoCrazy.

I have a 10gal underneath my 90gal and the wife never said a word.

The key is having a Fishroom. This becomes a mysterious sanctuary that most spouses avoid. You can then bring anything you want in. It is like a cup game, the more cups in play, the harder it is to guess which one the stone is under. I also like Whitepine's idea. A quarentine tank is REALLY necessary. Of course once that one is full you will have to buy another "quarentine tank."
-Shane

I think my wife has just given up
The worst thing you can do is spread them all over, make a rack, get all your tanks together in one place, except for a couple of display tanks of course...

Birger

I'll vote for the "give her a tank" concept. Mind you, that's usually only working if the tank is allowed to contain "her" fish. You can of course add some of yours as long as they don't eat hers. But if she decides to have goldfish or guppies, mixing them with a ferocious fish of some other type may not go down very well...


My fiance is fine with the number of fishtanks we have at the moment, but I doubt that it's going to be easy to get another one anytime soon. Having a small child means that low-level tanks are a bit dangerous (at least for the fish...), so sticking a tank under the big tank may not work...

--
Mats

some great ideas. thanks.

it's just not going to work.

she says if we had a bigger house i could have as many as i wanted. must get bigger house.

she really loves the fish we do have, but she doesn't understand why i "need" more.

i've tried the "why don't i buy you a tank" but she saw straight through that one!!

i'm working on the quarantine idea at the moment, but she made me promise that once my spiny eel is either better or dead then the tank has to go.

she thinks loads of tanks lying around looks untidy, which i suppose is true, so i think i'll work on getting one set up under the main tank. here i can "quarantine" a nice pair of apistos. indefinately!!!

racoll wrote: but she made me promise that once my spiny eel is either better or dead then the tank has to go.

The trick here is to never, never, never promise anything. You are asking for trouble because if you keep the promise, you have just sealed your fate.And, chances are you can't keep your promise: tanks breed while you are asleep and appear without even the tankkeeper being aware of this. Just nod, agree it is alot of tanks and offer to pay more on the electric bill.

We had to buy a bigger house with a large basement and yard for the tanks and ponds. The other half lost interest in fish and began to resent mine. Tried to toss me and the fish out. Tried to move me into the basement with the fish. Tried to relate fishkeeping and collecting to other kinds of collecting and ultimately to trading, with attempts at empathy and support. Reverts to resentment at times.

I moved my fish, mostly, into the fishroom of someone whose wife had banished all fish tanks to the basement, except one show tank.

Problem is, he doen't know he has a fishroom of exotic catfish and some cichlids. He still thinks he is keeping "a room full of" tetras and goldfish.

The goldfish list suggested putting the tanks in old TV frames and telling the other half the set only gets one channel. Or saying the tank has always been around, it just got moved.

troi

sidguppy wrote:Simple!

first; set up the whole place, tanks and all....

then; find myself a fish-friendly girlfriend.....
:twisted:

works everytime!

Hummm. Have you tested this? How aobut the inevitable bickering about how things should be done and where to look it up? I can see fist fights breaking out between fishkeeper of opposite sexes under one roof, esp if both are somewhat experienced.

But, if you could get it too work---wow, what a way to live!

troi

Well.....

I'm really good at keeping fish!

but not so well at keeping a steady relationship

my oldest fish is easily three times as old as the longest relationship I ever had.

the fish were never the problem, mind


my girlfriend just likes to watch the fish.
but if I had reptiles or something instead, she would like that too.
the only things she doesn't like is tarantula's and the like; but my taratula lives at work/school; so do my three roach-colonies


friend of mine actually DOES have a girl (better said: wife; they're married) who's very much into fish; but both like Tanganyikan fish, and she's very much into catfish (and now he's too), so there's very little trouble if any.
their place has many many fishtanks, though

Before i met my boyfriend I was not a fish person, but he made me see how wonderful it is to be a fishkeeper!! now he says im a "fish nuts", and i always tell him HE created a monster!

If it makes you feel any better, I can't find a suitable man to go with all my fish , I just gave up, I'll be single forever They see all my hobbies and RUN!
My exhusband is now helping me with all my tanks, and buying fish ect...doesn't even live in the same city as me.(probly why we get along so well)
I need to buy my own house with a back yard ect, but really not possible with me being the only income, but some how I can always manage to scrounge up the money for a fish or two.
I've got 40 tanks now through out the house, mostly in the basement, and many smaller ones for killies, it's a lot of work and no one but my 6 year old to share my enthusiasim.

gulex wrote: I need to buy my own house with a back yard ect, but really not possible with me being the only income, but some how I can always manage to scrounge up the money for a fish or two.
I've got 40 tanks now through out the house

Get a roommate or look at a "tenancy in common" buying arrangemnet with a serious fish person.

I have to leave my basement and yard this year, most likely. Quite frankly, I'll go anywhere in teh lower US near a major university if I can find affordable space for my fish or a stable situation with another fishy person. Seriously.

troi

why doesn't planet catfish start up a dating forum?

Racoll, hi, I'm new here but I thought I'd jump into this one having a little experience with the problem. First of all, you've got to make sure her real reason is that she thinks there is no more room. Are you sure this is her REAL reason? OK, then what you do is get a cardboard box the size of the tank you want to set up, put it in place, attractively arranged!, and show her it will indeed fit.
This might work.
Hope so.

deb

she says if we had a larger house i could have as many tanks as i liked.

i'll try the box idea, but i don't think it'll convince her!

Well, at least you know what she really wants!
This alone is worth a lot.
Try the box scheme, anyway, and tell her you want to sit down and discuss the whole bigger house idea.
Just discussing it will show her that you take it seriously, and put her in a receptive mood.

deb

deb wrote:Just discussing it will show her that you take it seriously, and put her in a receptive mood.
deb

Ladies and gentlemen of the forum, take heed: truer words were seldom spoken. In a majority of the conflicts between what he wants/what she wants I have seen, it usually boils down to she wanted to heard and have her side acknowledged as a valid concern and he felt he needed to DO something or otherwise take action (or an in this case, void action) and didn't think listening was good enough.

So, maybe just listening to the spouse concerns and letting them talk till they work thru the space issue, the moisture, the electric bill and on into the time and attention and finally the AM I IMPORTANT OR NOT issue might help everyone.

One of the things I heard when we got the fishroom basement was that I was always wiht the fish. Which wasn't exactly true, but I am sure it seemed like that, even if the optioin was to myself be ignored in favor of the TV or the internet.

Now I listen and nod and say yup, a lot of fish. What's on TV tonight?

troi



troi

wise words indeed