Info AquaScape

If you post an online picture of a beautiful hobbyist-owned aquarium packed full of fish, you'll probably get several reactions: OMG, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen! (＾▽＾) OMG, that is the cruelest thing I've ever seen! ((╬◣﹏◢)) OMG, how did they accomplish that? I must know! ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ) That's because there are sooo many differing opinions on how many fish in a tank is too many. Asking "How many fish can I keep in my aquarium?" is like asking "How many cats can I keep in my house?" – it totally depends on each person's preferences and lifestyle. Clearly, five cats is not enough. You need at least six in a school or else they start getting nippy. Huge props to the Real Fish Talk: How Much Is Too Much? video for breaking it down like this: The more fish you have, The more food they eat, The more waste they create, The more work you have to do to keep the tank clean. In other words, more fish = more time you'll have to in...

All this time, I've proclaimed the wonders of the Friendship Funnel and how great the method has worked for meeting people and making new friends . Today's where the rubber meets the road. Let me tell you about four different friendships in my life and what it really looks like to put these relationship tools into practice. 3 Decades and Counting Technically I met my best friend at age three, so this counts more as a childhood friendship. However, in adulthood we went to colleges 800+ miles apart, started our first professional jobs in the same city, and then split up once more a couple of years after getting married. And most likely, I'll never live in the same state as her again. So why is she still my BFF to this day? I can't remember who started it, but in college we decided to become accountability partners in our walks with Christ. Ever since then, we've maintained a weekly call, hangout, or video chat to ask how the other is doing and pray for one ...

In this series so far, we've talked about the Friendship Funnel and how to make friends by meeting, filtering, and investing in people. Part 2 focused on where and how to meet potential friends. Part 3 explores what it means to filter and invest in people. These two steps go hand in hand because in order to determine if someone is a friend worth keeping, you need to invest time to really get to know him or her. Spend Time Together If you've met an individual several times in group settings and your personalities seem to click, now it's time to test the waters and find out what kind of friend she is. For me, that involves hanging out on a one-to-one basis. Conversations tend to deepen once you get past the small talk and you find out what the other person actually thinks about his boss, spouse, and even political and religious views. Take the Initiative You need to make the first step, not wait on the other person. People get busy with life and may not make fri...

Last week I introduced the Friendship Funnel and how you need to continually meet, filter, and invest in people to make new friends. In this article, let's focus on the "meet" part of the equation – how do you intentionally encounter new groups of people? Top 4 Places for Finding Friends There are a ton of situations and gatherings where you can meet new people, but the groups where I've had the most success had these things in common: An area of interest for you Regularly occurring meetings that happen at least once a month (or are supplemented with active social media channels, chatrooms, or forums) Growing membership with both new and longtime participants Here are a few examples of where I have personally found and made friends despite not knowing anyone: Church Churches encourage fellowship, community, and love for your fellow man, so usually members have a culture of being very open to making new friends. (If not, try another church.) Upon find...

There's an art to making friends as an adult. Many studies and articles have been written about how easy it is to make friends in school because you're in constant proximity, but as adults we get busy with life – work, travel, the kids' soccer games, family commitments, etc. Our social circle (I'm talking about real friends, not social media followers) get smaller and smaller, and before you know it, your life has somehow become more isolated and, well, boring. Starting from Square One When Mr. Gamer and I moved to another state to be closer to family, I was suddenly dropped into a world where I worked from home and knew no one except my husband and parents-in-law. Video chats with my old friends back home weren't cutting it; I was painfully lonely and desperate to meet new people. Over the course of three years, I developed a systematic method for finding and making friends when you're starting from zero. Obviously, this technique may not be for ever...

This is a hard lesson to learn. When you first begin the hobby, it's so exciting and you just want beautiful fish in your aquarium now now now. You already went through the trouble of cycling your tank , so finally it's time to go on a huge fish shopping spree, right? Right? Patience is key. Don't rush things. You hear that over and over again on the forums, but... I don't think there's really any way to comprehend how much waiting fish keeping requires until you kill a buncha fish and walk through that depression. Here are three real-life stories how I inadvertently killed my fish with impatience: 1) Quarantining multiple fish from different sources "Hobbyist mediated pandemic" was a phrase I first heard from this quarantining new fish , but like many excited newbies, I was buying fish from multiple stores and quarantining them all together... For example, I once purchased some marbled hatchetfish and put them into quarantine. A week later I decid...

Don't Panic About Aquarium Cycling! Despite being a habitual researcher, I balked at learning about the aquarium cycle. It's because everyone made it sound so tedius! They would immediately dive into complex chemical terms and scientific names, and it made my eyes roll into my head in boredom. Here's the very simple, "Cycling for Dummies" explanation... What Does Cycling an Aquarium Mean? It means your fish or other aquatic animals have the ability to live in an aquarium without dying in their own waste (like ammonia and urea). This can be accomplished in several ways: Do frequent water changes to manually remove the waste.  Grow beneficial bacteria that will convert the fish waste into a less toxic chemical, which buys you more time between water changes. Use live plants (or algae) that will directly uptake ammonia and convert it into new leaves and plant growth. Note: That means that putting water in your tank and letting it sit without fish for a week wi...