So, what kind of setup do they need to survive? I have a 125g that I haven't set up yet. It's drilled for a sump, if I want it. I was originally going to go saltwater with the setup, but I just can't afford 225 lbs of rock for it. If I could just do sand, a few rocks and some SW plants, I'd love to have a seahorse tank.

You can get what they call Shoal Grass, a few rocks maybe 25-50 pounds a 1-2" sandbed and possibly something like a few maidens hair, or bottle brush plants, some sponges if you want and the tank would run pretty stable. You can add the following fish to a seahorse tank
Mandarin Goby (when copepods are established enough)
Firefish Goby
Scooter blenny
cardinal fish PJ or Banghai
Gulf Coast Eaco-Systems has a website where you can order the macro algaes

Also the old rule of thumb for 1 pound of rock for each gallon of water isnt even suggested anymore. Most tanks are going for a minimalist look and the filtration now with protein skimmers and media reactors allows for this. I had about $45,000 in acropora in a 65 gallon tank, 2x250 watt metal halides and about 25 pounds of tonga branch rock all I had for filtration was a big ball of cheatomorpha.
Its all about import and export in a reef tank.

Thanks for the advice, fellas. I love aquariums and want to get one, but am a little worried about how much of a hassle it'll be at the office.

when you read up on doing maintenance and water changes/cleaning the gravel bottom, this is a great tool. I had a similar one when I was in the hobby and the nearest sink to drain old and add new water was a ways away. I started with doing the bucket carrying back and forth to change out old and fill it back up and that's a hassle. This is one of the tools that helps with the hassle.

hooks right up to the sink faucet and has multiple fitting attachments

http://www.petco.com/product/2762/Py...FUtp7AodkiMAKg

I have a 29gallon bio cube and the maintenance is minimal once it's up and running. Everything is built into the unit and its a cool looking enclosure.

If that's the size you want (29 gallon) and want minimal upkeep, a bio cube may be your best bet.

beautiful looking snakes dude! I remember talking with ya a couple years back when I was contemplating getting a ball python. Never did get one but might down the road. How big those blood pythons get?

So we have a water garden in our back yard. It is about 800 gallons maybe a little bigger. For the last 3-4 weeks the comet goldfish have been spawning like crazy. Now the adults love eating the eggs so I am suspicious that they are only producing them for their eating pleasure.

Regardless, many fish are hatching and watching them grow is quite enjoyable. I had set up one of my unused 55 gallons in the house to raise some of them so that I could get a higher rate of survivors and hopefully sell them next year. These fish aren't exactly cheap.

Almost as soon as I got the tank set up they spawned again. I removed one of the plants the eggs had attached to and place them in the aquarium. Yesterday, they all started hatching. For the first day or so they don't really behave like fish or look like fish. As soon as they hatch they just find something to stick to, such as the walls, to absorb the remaining nutrients from the egg. I expect they will be free swimming today or tomorrow. Since they don't move it makes for easy counting and there is well over a hundred of them. It will be fun to see what colors they all turn out to be since there are many possible combinations due to the variety of adult colors. I will try to take a picture later, but for now here is a picture I found that is basically what mine look like right now. They just stick to the glass.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a1...uro/Day001.jpg

Our koi in the pond spawn 4 or 5 times a summer. It wears them out and pretty much destroys the pond vegetation but then again, some of them weight 20 pounds or so.

Even though these spawns produce hundreds of fry each, generally only a half dozen or so survive to 2 inches and until last year, we never had any survive to 4 inches or larger due to predation and winter.

We have two 4-inch babies that survived this winter and we're keeping them. I sold four 2-inch babies for $5 each last weekend. I also sold one fancy comet for $20 and a 5-pound shubunkin for $25.

And as far as these fish not being cheap, I have two offers for $100 on 16-inch koi and had a guy offer me $800 for one of my large platinums.

Nice! I am hoping to sell the yearlings next season for a few dollars each. Our basement is unfinished so we are prepared to expand and would probably just utilize large tubs if we have enough reach a few inches in the next month.

Outdoors, we typically will see 10-12 survive the first winter, and once they do, they have typically made it for good. The top level of our pond is raised about 18 inches so we don't have to worry about predators. If a crane happened to fly over it would see the fish, but with the pond being raised it wouldn't be able to slowly approach it to hunt.

And that is one big shubunkin. I imagine your pond is at least 3,000 gallons or so? Makes for a lot of room for those comets and shubunkins to grow large and grow fast.

I have two synodontis multi punctuates cats, 7" each. Anyone want them? They're too big for my tank.

When I said "predation" I meant from the larger fish. We don't have an issue with birds or raccoons or anything but some of the largest koi in our pond can swallow a 2 or 3-inch baby fish whole. So when we have babies, they have to survive not only the winter, they have to survive it as the only source of food in the pond since we don't feed at all from November to March or so.

Our pond also had a raised edge. We actually have steep inclines (almost vertical all the way around) so it's nearly impossible for birds or other animals to snatch fish because there's no shallow water. Our pond is only about 1500 gallons but it's almost 4 feet deep as well.

If you have exclusively comets, they don't have big sucker mouths so once the fry grow even a little bit, they're safe from being cannibalized. Be careful because if you don't have external predators, you're going to end up overcrowded very quickly.

I have a synodontis nigriventis that outgrew my tank too. I just can't part with him, he's too freaking cool.

That is good that you have a raised edge and no shallow water. I would be very upset if a raccoon was hunting some $100 fish. I could have built the pond larger to house koi, but they are so much more destructive than the goldfish, and my wife loves all of the varieties of plants we can have so we kept it smaller with the intent of only having goldfish.

I have no issues or worries with overcrowding because with just a few fish naturally surviving we can give the extras away. We only actually keep 15 fish or so. From this batch if we get some unique colors we may keep one or two more but that is it. The rest we intend to see if selling them will be something we can do.

Right now the pond has probably a hundred fry that are at a half inch to an inch in length. The majority of those won't survive the summer and through winter unless we bring them inside, which we may do depending on the success of the ones that actually hatched inside.

My 5 year old nephew has a plecostomus in his 10 gallon tank. It does a great job but it is growing so fast. He wants me to put him in the pond eventually, but I just hope he doesn't ask about him next season. Now that I think about it I could put him in the 55 gallon fry tank I just set up once they get larger.