About Me...

Well, my name is Stephanie, but you might have already guessed that. My husband, Dave, and I live in rural SW Washington State with two great dogs, two cats, and four llamas who spend the summers mowing our pasture. I have entertained myself the last few years with restoring a few classic cars and a 17' 1968 Airstream Trailer - pictured above, and believe it or not I actually did the work myself. In January 2006 I decided to return to my first love...tropical fish.

My earliest memories are of curling up in the overstuffed recliner next to the big chrome-framed aquarium in my parent's living room and falling asleep to the sounds of the bubbles. They raised Jack Dempseys, though not too successfully. One of my Dad's favorite stories was how he came home to find the dempseys tending a huge spawn of fry. He immediately went to see his fish guy for advice on raising the fry, and the guy said he would pay Dad 25 cents apiece when they were big enough to sell. Twenty-five cents apiece? There were hundreds of them! He was rich! Dad rushed home to check on his charges, thinking fish-keeping was finally going to pay off, only to find they had eaten them all! Well, that was just his first attempt, and he didn't give up. When I was a young teenager I saved up my money for a pair of fancy goldfish and a bowl. They did fine for a long time, but eventually passed away causing much trauma.

As my teenage years progressed I got more tanks, eventually getting a job at a family-owned pet store in my hometown running the fish room (this was before the big-box pet stores took over the market). I knew all the fish, what conditions they preferred, and did my best to help people get set up right so their fish would live long healthy lives. I learned a lot and I hope I taught a lot. It was a fun job, but my grandma complained every flat spot in the house had a fish tank on it from all the cool fish I brought home! Occasionally my paycheck was nearly spent by the time I got paid! When I graduated high school my boss gave me the Encyclopedia of Tropical Fish as a graduation present, a gift I still have and use to this day.

I went to college, intending to study Fisheries Science. I really wanted to work with fish! Preferably tropical fish. However, when I got there I found the field was more aimed at hairy-armed mountain men interested in running salmon fisheries, and as a girl I felt discouraged to pursue that course. I ended up going into computers and eventually earned a degree in Software Engineering from Oregon Tech.

I got a job in computers and kept various community and species tanks around the house. I tried breeding fish off and on when I had the room for the extra tanks and peripherals. I was modestly successful, but didn't have the room to dedicate to it without driving my new husband nuts. I eventually stuck to community tanks.

When we bought our house the first piece of furniture I bought was this tank - a 55g Tru-Vue black-back acrylic aquarium with an oak cabinet stand and a matching oak topper. It is a real piece of furniture, and was the tank I had always dreamed of - something that could be in the living room for company to ooh and ahh over - and they do!

Unfortunately my fish tend to live a long long time, and a community tank, once it's full, gets kind of boring. It's all maintenance and fish gazing.

So I took up another hobby I had grown more and more interested in - classic cars. You can check out my other website for details on that long strange adventure. Ten years later, I was getting tired of the dirt and grease, crushing my fingers, handling dangerous tools and toxic chemicals. I was surfing Craiglist for parts when I noticed fish tanks - they were cheap! Every week there were tons of fish tanks listed for give-away prices. Dang, I thought, I should get back into fish, and there is that back room which is supposed to be my hobby room...

I evicted my husband's stuff from my hobby room and started planning and building my fish room. My fish of choice - bettas. I have always had bettas, including one particularly long lived fellow who lived in a jug on my desk through most of college, moving with me from school to home and back again many times. I had bred bettas in the 90s, but the fish available to me then were the plain pet store variety (not that they weren't beautiful too), unless I wanted to mail away for fish sight unseen (which I did once to get some veiltail butterflies which weren't as impressive as I'd hoped) and in 2006 there was the web making beautiful bettas easily available through online auctions and breeder's stock shops.

Unfortunately the bettas didn't work out. Despite being able to buy beautiful stock easily, the fry I produced were runty, deformed, and misshapen. After a year of disappointing spawns I decided to cut back on the bettas. I really felt I was giving them the best care in my ability and yet the fry were dissatisfactory, and the adult breeders were kicking off before I could get more than one spawn out of them. My conclusion is the the current fancy bettas are just too inbred, making them delicate and susceptible to disease and conditions. After a year I took down the betta room.

And that's where I am now. I have a small fish room, years of experience, and a lot of enthusiasm for fish. I think I will stick to just a few large tanks - I can get some cichlids and breed those. I am very interested in seeing their behaviors as they pair off and raise their fry. I am going to concentrate on doing what entertains me, and not worrying about raising fish to sell. I already have some red severums, and would like to get some Jewel Cichlids, maybe some Salvini, and Blue Acaras. I also have a large community tank for anything else that strikes my fancy.

Oh, and that community tank picture above, see the little green severum just right of center? I bought three severums when I got the tank, because I love those guys. When I was in high school a friend bought a gold severum for her little 2 gallon hex desktop aquarium. I told her he would get too big, but she bought him anyway. A bit later she asked me to take him because he'd outgrown the tank. So I put him in my 20g, and his name was Curious George because he would hide in his cave and come peeking out at us. George was a great fish, I took him to college with me, and he moved with me after college, and after we got married. He lived for years, and moved many times. When he died he was as big as my hand. He wasn't just a fish, he was a regular pet.

So anyway, that little green severum in the picture above started getting beat up by the other severums, so I took them back to the pet store and kept the green guy and named him George II. Today, 7 years later, George II is bigger than George ever was - about as big as my hand and a couple inches more! He gobbled up the rasboras but has come to a sort of truce with the Congos and Clown Loaches he shares the tank with now. He hides and peeks out from behind his driftwood, rearranges the silk plants to his liking, eats the real plants when I'm silly enough to put some in there, and sometimes takes food out of my hand. He is a regular member of the family.

- Stephanie