The Start: How did I get into aquariums? The 75 gallon 150…

Hello! Welcome to the first post of this blog. In this blog I’m going to give you an idea of how I started keeping aquariums, failures, successes, and more!

Time to dive in.

My first aquarium was a 10 gallon kit from Island Pet. They have unfortunately closed early this year (Jan 2026), a great store to start learning. I got this kit for Christmas and was excited to start keeping aquariums. After setting up the heater, light, getting the gravel, I had my first aquarium. This tank is where I learned the basic fish and started to get into plants. The following year a got a 20 gallon kit again from Island Pet. The bigger tank taught me more of how much life stock can be roughly in a tank and gave more life stock opportunities. I kept Bamboo shrimp, kuhli loaches, and a nerite snail I still have today (around 5 years old at this point). But as anyone who has gotten a tank and “upgraded”, you typically want more.

This is when I started planning out my 75 gallon aquarium. Or the biggest my parents said I could have. I researched filters, lights, heater, how to do everything on the cheap, and scoured Facebook Marketplace looking for something that was cheap but didn’t look terrible. After pricing everything, I found a tank. It was 4ft long and that’s about as much as I remember about the tank. We drove down to a weird road off highway 20 and met the person. The person who greeted me and my uncle (who went with me) but was not the person who we communicated with but the daughter. Close enough for me. We entered the house and was instantly surprised at the smell. They had tanks everywhere. Filled with lizards and more lizards and a hamster (I believe, some small animal) in a storage box. Racks of lizards who were kept separate due to being territorial. It was crazy.

She guided us through the hallway of tanks toward the tank we were looking toward purchasing. This tank was massive! I was so excited to get the tank that I wanted it whether it was a smart idea or not. We agreed to the price, and began getting this behemoth of a tank into my dad’s truck. However, this thing was heavy. It had to have weighed a good 300-400 pounds and was solid thick glass. I was about 14 at the time and this was about as much as I could carry with my Uncle. After getting the tank in, we got some filters (horror story here), a crappy stand, and some plastic decorations like a ship and other little knick knacks. All of the little things came in a laundry bin, which had to have been sitting for ages.

After getting the aquarium home, going through all of the things it had, I decided that the best thing to do first was to reinforce the stand. It was terrible, and I was worried about the weight of such a big tank on this stand. It was thin aged plywood, and so light that I wouldn’t trust it to hold the tank itself for long. After patiently (and impatiently) waiting for weekends for my Dad and Uncle to help me reinforce the stand, we got it done. The interior was redone with lots of 2×4’s, and was much stronger. Then came the part I had realized should be done. I should reseal this tank.

Its so old, who knows how old? It had turtles in it at one point and that’s all I knew. After watching a certain Serpa Design video where he said that he likes to reseal old aquariums and when he repurposes a tank he’s had in storage or set up for a while, I concluded that I should do the same. I watched several videos on the matter, and it didn’t seem terrible. Use some sort of tool (razor blade seemed most common) to scrape out the old silicone, clean it with isopropyl alcohol, and apply new silicone with a caulking gun. Easy? Right?

As a 14 year old, the scraping all of the silicone took me a couple weeks, even longer. All I had was a 5 in 1 tool and something about this tank had the thinking it was bigger than 75 gallons. Before I knew gallon calculations, I put in the dimensions into a calculator I had found online, and I understood why this thing was so heavy. It was much. much bigger than 75 gallons.

It was 150 gallons! It finally hit me why was this thing was so huge…

Twice as big as my parents said, and 31 inches tall, and for 14 year old me was very hard to get all of the silicone out with a 5 in 1. Nevertheless I got all of the silicone out, had my Dad and Uncle help me reseal it, and I was ready. Right?

Nope.

Once I had the 4ft 150 resealed, I had waited about 2 weeks before doing anything. Which is incredibly hard whether your 14 or 40. I then filled it up, which took forever, and did an overnight water test. It passed! After draining all of the water out, we got the tank in my room. After a couple days I filled it up again and tried out the canister filters I got with the tank. I connected all of the hosing and what not, and turned it on. It worked magically for a second. I was so happy. Yes! I could start the next step of getting it ready for my 20 gallon livestock to go in!

But no.

The canister filter started gushing out water like its only mission was to drain the water into my carpeted room. I quickly unplugged the canister filter, but at this time I didn’t know how siphons worked (well not with canister filters, and later sumps). I eventually figured out that lifting the intake and outake prevented more water going on to my floor, but it was too late. My floor was soaked. I dried it up as best as I could, and put a fan under the stand where it leaked. This made me cry. I had spent many hours of lawn mowing money and even more hours on researching everything. This was a huge setback. I’d have wait another 2-3 months to save up money for a filter. 150 gallon requires a lot of filtration, and a lot of filtration requires a lot of money if you don’t DIY. At this point I don’t think I even knew what a sump was, and buying another tank to filter another wouldn’t have looked good for parents perspective.

But don’t worry, my parents came to my rescue. After a sad day of school my Uncle told me to come downstairs. I was bummed because downstairs is where my tank was and that’s where all of the problems where at the time. However I looked down and saw a box that I couldn’t believe. It was an FX6! A top of the line filter and the same one I still use today. I set it up and was back in business! Hooray! Thanks Dad!

But no.

Well, I was ready, but I had another problem. You see, I really, really wanted plants in this tank, and from all the research I did I found the deeper (depth wise) the tank the harder it is to light for plants. I could not convince my parents, or save up enough money, for fancy plant lights. The lights would cost more than I had spent of the entire tank this far! However, my parents came to my rescue, and bought me some lights. They weren’t plant lights, but appeared bright enough to light the huge tank.

I was finally at the point where everything was ready, equipment wise anyways…

The next step was to figure out my substrate. At the time I deduced that the best thing I could do was a deep sand bed for plants. I could even do root tabs If I wanted. I wanted to do Black Diamond blasting sand because I liked the color and the price. However the decision was made for me. This was some people who had some residues in the sand from blasting and metal pieces sometimes as well. My Uncle decided to get some rainbow river rock (I think that’s what it’s called), and we used that instead. I liked the color anyway, and underwater it popped. We got it full of the rock (it was pea gravel size, maybe a bit bigger), and got the tank filled up.

I was almost done!

Well I had to heat this thing first. I had gotten 2 300 watt ( I think, it’s been a while) Fluval heaters that displayed the temp so I could see it across the room. However these heaters simply wouldn’t work. They read the temp as 64 ish, and that was too cold for them to even start. Lame. However, I had a 500 watt Hygger heater I got from the tank, and plugged that in. It worked instantly and helped help get the tank warm enough to where the Fluval heaters could start working. I then added the driftwood I had been slowly buying and other pieces my parents had bought for me, and I was ecstatic.

Now I was ready.

After weeks of getting the tank ready, I could finally move over my fish. I had a hang on the back filter, and I let it get extra filthy to put in the canister filter. I don’t think it helped much but it was as much as I knew about cycling at the time. I had Prime and Stability to help condition the water and add bacteria to help my cycle as well. Shoutout to the Kaveman Aquatics videos who helped me figure out a fish in cycle.

I was finally done! This project was months long and the most tedious project I’d have ever done at this point.. Seeing my fish move in from a 20 gallon to a 150 gallon was amazing. After letting them settle in for a few weeks, I really wanted more fish in the tank. I won’t bore you with every fish I added, plenty of kuhli loaches, rainbowfish, loaches, and other weirdos were added in. I even added in an African Butterfly fish who I trained to eat flake food. I bought plants, crypts, basic stems, some swords, and had some sucess. The stems would always melt away, the swords would grow a new leaf but lose another, but it was fine. This tank was more a fish tank than a planted tank. This tank helped me learn how to keep a big tank, and discipline that sports or school couldn’t teach me.

I’m going to end this blog here. There is more to this tank, but I’m leaving it for another time. Thanks for reading!

Remember, TwoCurrentAquatics, Maintenance Made Easy!

Tank on,

Dylan