WHY I'M BUILDING THIS

Hi, and firstly, before anything else, thank you for showing an interest in visiting my website.

Below you can see my introduction video on YouTube, which hopefully explains what I am trying to do. But if you would rather read my story, my hopes and my dreams, then please read on.

My love of fish tanks stems from when I was a child. I remember having several tanks around the house. In the living room we had a 4ft fish tank. Nothing like today's setups though. It was basically sat on blocks with a board over the top of it. It was a 4ft x 2ft x 2ft tank with, if I remember correctly, an undergravel filter.

And again, if I remember correctly, the stocking was almost hideous!

We had a goldfish in the tank, in a warm-water setup, that grew absolutely huge, alongside guppies, sailfin mollies, black widow tetras and huge plecs with slate caves. Looking back now, I probably shouldn't admit half of what was in that tank, but that is where my love of fish really started.

We had a second tank in the hallway. This had one large Oscar, one large kissing gourami, a 12" plec and the largest red-tail shark I have ever seen.

I was obsessed.

There was just something about fish that completely mesmerised me, and I desperately wanted my own tank.

Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed one!

Then I turned 16, got myself a job at McDonald's straight out of school, and that was it. There was a new fish shop that had opened in Fleetwood. I cannot, for the life of me, remember the name of it, but they had discus in and I was in love.

I didn't have the money to buy them, or even a tank, so the owner let me pay it off weekly. So I started working every hour God gave me because I wanted this fish tank.

We had agreed that I was going to buy his breeding pair of Blue Turquoise Discus from his personal aquarium, so I just kept working every hour I could. I wanted to get it paid off sooner rather than later.

Eventually, I had enough. The tank and accessories were paid off, and now it was all about getting the parameters right before the discus came.

Exciting times!

The day finally came for me to pick up the discus. His aquarium was simple but beautiful. It was like a big bow-front tank, similar to the Juwel ones. In the centre of the tank he had a giant piece of bogwood, with really bushy plants either side.

It looked amazing.

I got the discus home and settled them in, and within a week they had bred...

I got wrigglers, but unfortunately, as a young, naïve 16-year-old, I didn't know that you had to feed them supplementary food and, well, they just slowly died off.

Then the adults got HITH and died over the next two weeks.

I closed the tank down and that was it for a few years, until I was around 26.

Myself and my partner at the time decided to get a fish tank for our son to watch as he grew. One tank turned into two, and before we knew it there were tanks in every room.

Our weekends consisted of driving around fish shops. Literally every weekend.

Then came a game changer.

We had gone into a shop, Norbreck Aquatics, and someone had dropped off about 30 Malawi cichlids. They had put them all in one tank and the listing was simply: "All fish in this tank £35."

I couldn't say no.

Coincidentally, earlier that day I had been in Maidenhead Aquatics in Blackpool and they had a 5ft ex-display fish tank for sale for £200.

This must have been around January because it was my then-partner's birthday soon. I know this because, for her birthday, I bought "her" a 5ft ex-display fish tank. Haha.

To this day, that Malawi tank was definitely the nicest tank I have ever had. I absolutely loved the activity in it. There was always something happening.

We had multiple breeding tanks on the go. There were tanks in every room. We had breeders everywhere.

Then that relationship came to an abrupt end, and so did my fishkeeping for the next seven years.

Until I started again.

I now have three tanks in my office, with a fourth and a rack about to be set up, and another three in my living room.

The fish range from Acara to Apistogramma, peppermint plecos, calico convicts, Geophagus and Discus, to Red-Breasted Acara.

And I'm building.

My next step is to try and build what you see below.