Meet the author!

This is the first part of an ongoing 'meet the author' series. Hopefully this will be a weekly or bi-weekly type of event.

Outside of Epic, one of my loves is caring for fish. This week I added two aquariums to my collection - a brackish water and a bayou tank. I've never tackled saltwater aquariums before, so the brackish tank is going to be good training for that. For the uninitiated, brackish water is a mix of salt and fresh water, often found where fresh water rivers meet ocean. It's a small tank, just 10 gallons. The water has been prepping for a few days now, so I'm hoping to start adding fish within the next two weeks. My wife gets to choose the fish, so I'm excited about maintaining a tank specifically for her.

The bayou tank is one I've been anxious to do, as it's sort of a flashback experience for me. When I was a kid, I would dip a net into the bayou behind my uncle's house and put whatever I caught into an aquarium. I got to do that again last week, once again with my uncle behind the same house. It's fascinating to observe up close what exists in our natural environment, and the fish are free. I hauled in four types of minnows, some grass shrimp, a dragonfly nymph, two juvenile crawfish, and a juvenile blue crab. The quarters are cramped, as this is just a 5-gallon tank, but everything is small enough to get along fine. I'm excited about seeing how this one turns out. I actually filled the tank with bayou water, so it should really provide for some neat viewing.

The other tank I have is a 29-gallon fresh water, which I've had sustained for several years. This tank survived two major hurricane landfalls, Katrina and Gustav! My current stock is: one albino senegalus, one large adult pleco, two large tinfoil barbs, one African butterflyfish, and four golden wonder killies. I don't see myself adding much more to this tank, as I don't want to overcrowd it.

I would recommend aquariums to anyone and everyone, as they're so easy to maintain. If you have any body of water nearby, a few swipes of the net can stock your tank for no cost. You never know what you'll drag up!