I had a friend who had a nice size aquarium in the living room of her apartment and I was visiting with her one day and sitting on the sofa watching the fish in the aquarium when all of a sudden the thought came in my mind that the aquarium was going to crack and flood her living room with fish and water. Not even an hour later that is exactly what happened! I promised myself after that no aquarium for me ever!
No, but my wife maintains a large 1500 sq.ft. Terrarium, with a portion of the back yard fenced off and provided with burrows for hibernation. Hal
I discovered this video of a man who “rescued” a live lobster from the grocery store , brought it home (named him “Leon”) and kept him in a huge fish tank as a pet. It is amazing to watch the lobster get acclimated to the fish tank, and how easily he can catch worms and open clam shells.
When I was a kid/teenager I had (4) 10 gallon aquariums, (1) 5 gallon breeding tank, and (1) 2 gallon sick tank. When the pregnant live-bearers were giving birth, you put them in the breeding tank so as to stop the other fish from eating the babies. I once had that tank set up to try to breed egg-layers, but never had any success. You put the sick fish in their own tank to quarantine them and so you could give them meds and elevate the water temp. It also made it cheaper to give them meds when they were in a smaller tank. The fish I used to get 10/$1 are now $4-$5 apiece. I had mundane stuff, nothing really fancy. Back in the day, the Hecht's in Arlington VA used to have a pet department that was a small store separate from the main one. That's where I got most (but not all) of my stuff. The greatest delight was picking out a pregnant fish and having a bag full of babies before you arrived home. I tried setting up a couple of tanks in my adult years, but it wasn't the same and didn't last long.
My son's father in law has a salt water one and it's a lot of work and expensive. Love looking at it though.
I worked at a tropical fish supply operation, in college. I drove the delivery truck to four states, and did maintenance on the tanks at our home plant. I had a 55 gal. freshwater aquarium, and all kinds of fish most have never kept. After that, I had my own aquarium cleaning business for a brief time. Large aquariums are beautiful to look at, but their upkeep is hard work, and is an ongoing thing if you're a serious aquarist. I'd like to have one, now, but I know it would take a commitment I'm not prepared to make, or the services of a company that would cost more than a few bucks a month.