And so I gained another 20

While searching through a bunch of junk, I found a 20 gallon long tank in the basement in early May. It had a bunch of scratches in the glass and the silicone in the corners looked like it was scraped out, so I filled it up to see if it would hold water. I let it sit for two days while my dad took me out to buy another filter. Once I had everything ready to set up, I still hadn't gotten a stand, so I took a few milk crates and a plastic shelf and made my own. It was pretty sketchy, but it worked the same way any other one would. With this new tank, I bought a female crowntail betta, the same colors as Gary (I have yet to mention that "Gary" is short for Gyarados, like the Pokémon), and named her Setsuki. She helped start the cycle for the new tank, and two weeks later, I bought two female and one male mickey mouse Swordtails from PetCo.

I had heard somewhere that many fish people have an LFS, or local fish store, and don't go to regular pet stores for fish and live plants, but rather for just supplies. So I Google searched for aquarium and fish stores around my area, and the closest one I could find was The Aquarium Store, about 30 minutes from my house. My parents took me there to check it out, and I bought my first live plant, water wisteria (Hygrophila difformis), which seems to do really well in soft water with low light. It doesn't really die or anything when algae attaches to its leaves either.

Anyway, I got three male guppies from PetsMart to add to the 20 long around the end of May. Setsuki didn't take too well to the guppies, so I moved her into the 20 gallon tall. By now, I already knew this tank was really overstocked, with a kissing gourami, a female betta, eight tiger barbs, a bristlenose pleco, and three emerald green cory catfish. The gourami seemed to like her, and even protected her from the tiger barbs' harassment. One of the guppies died after three days, so I took him back and replaced him. This new one died a few days later, and the other two about a week after. The sales clerk finally told me that the pH in my water was too low for the guppies, even though everything I read about them said they could handle anything. It was only down around 6.7, so all I know is that I'm never getting guppies again.

The gourami started to get really aggressive toward the tiger barbs, so I switched the barbs with the swordtails, which they all seemed to be a bit happier with. The swordtails and gourami got ick from the stress of moving, but I treated the fish as soon as I saw it, and it disappeared forever; thankfully I didn't lose any fish. Around the beginning of June, just after school ended, I decided I was going to go for my goal. I posted an ad on Craig's List for pet-sitting, and got a couple dogs. I also moved both male bettas to a gallon-sized jar, sold their tanks and added the money to my savings. For the first few nights in the jar, Rowdy had some swim bladder problems, but I gave him some time, and he got better soon after. I started changing 100% of their water every week, sometimes twice a week if I felt it necessary. Once I had about $150, I found a tank on Craig's List that came with everything I needed, and more, for way less than was expecting to pay.