Family involvement in the hobby

[joeyhatch11]

My wife loves what I do and enjoys the excitement but my daughter loves seeing and holding the star fish/snails. Even helps me off load the orders of CUC I have coming in. She's only 4, soon to be 5, and is all hands on deck. God for bid I mix a new batch of salt mix and dont let her stir it up first. LOL It's a great feeling how we all share in the adventure here.

 

[Tphill]

My wife and I handle most of the tasks together. She does control how much I spend though.
My oldest son and his wife both work in medical research and work with fish, and they are both divers, so they know alot more about the critters than I do, but they don't have any tanks of their own.
My youngest son has a 100G tank here at my house that he has yet to set up in his new house. He's been interested in the hobby since he was very young (he's only 24 now).

 

[Rockit]

I always kept fw "gladiator tanks"...wifes description. When my last crawdad died last year the wife proclaimed we would only have peaceful tanks. Multiple trips to LFS later...after we couldn't find fw fish we agreed upon....she proclaimed we're doing sw. Or tank was started cycling 1/2/18... slowly adding critters started couple weeks ago.
I handle the mechanical end of it...she feeds/ monitors/ plans everything. She's super stressed type A person. Never sits or chills out.. I now find her sitting for an hour sometimes watching "her" starry blenny tear up nori.
Definitely a good thing for her and something we share.

 

[revhtree]

Mostly just me!

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

My family helps out by letting me doing all the maintenance and never touching it and killing everything I've built for years. No but really my entire family can name so many fish because of me, my 5 year old sister knows the scientific name of her "Nemofish" (oddly, she named him Jack, her last one was named Nemo...but he had a run in with a stupidly chosen frogfish). I've gotten my GF on freshwater and she was instantly hooked, still trying to get her on reefs though. It'd be really cool to have someone to swap corals and livestock with.

 

[ca1ore]

My boys always 'say' they're going to help ......

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

Still, it's nice to get compliments when they say "your tank is looking nice, that fat dude (my lawnmower blenny, who eats a huge diet of [INSERT HERE WHEN I FIND OUT EXACTLY WHAT HE EATS ALL DAY]) is pretty cool." But when I have a cyano attack or anything it's just ignored until I fix it.

 

[zcedric]

OMG. no! Haha. Look at it and leave you finger away from it! haha
Don-t t-o-u-c-h

 

[rob safron]

Wife thinks I’m nuts and let’s everyone know I waste money. Kids have no interest other than look at it once in a while. I travel for work, Thank goodness for my mistress, her name is Apex. Maybe talks to me more than the wife

 

[kruley]

My 24 year old son got me into it. So it is him and I running the tank, but my husband is showing some interest recently. Might become a family thing!

 

[NowGlazeIT]

My wife and kids love looking at the tank, and can name most of its inhabitants. Maintenance is all on me though

Samezies!

 

[NowGlazeIT]

Depends on what you mean by involved. My kids love the fish and coral. My Wife also likes the corals and even helps pick them out/ buys some. As for maintenance that’s all me. If I got out of town it’s as if no one was home with the thing beyond maybe feeding.

Edit: The wife also helps me interpret colors for the weekly testing being as I can’t tell the difference between most of them. How could I forget that.

+1 nailed it

 

[Marlon2024]

My daughter wanted a tank of her own so I built her and my son a nano from scratch. They like looking at it and putting corals in it. 6 and 9 tank is 3 weeks old

 

[aurora.k]

Wow, lots of dudes on here, huh? [emoji12]

Wife here who is 100% responsible for all animals other than the dog, because I am definitely leading the charge in acquiring them. My saltwater tank is new and so far my husband’s involvement has been graciously agreeing - when I ask leading questions - that the way I set up the live rock looks awesome and that my brand new frags are great, and laughing at me about how much fun I find water testing to be. Based on my other animals, he will feed stuff and do very minimal maintenance if I am out of town, but I will have to walk him through it on FaceTime.

 

[Greybeard]

Define involved...

One of my daughters did the artwork around my stand... and if I need her to, my wife will feed the tank for me. My grandkids like to look at it

 

[cincyfishguy]

I have a 7 and 5 year old. The oldest has a calendar where he has written down when our water changes are due. He loves helping. The youngest enjoys looking at the tank. The wife enjoys looking but not much interest in helping.

 

[bryan3536]

I have a 7 and 5 year old. The oldest has a calendar where he has written down when our water changes are due. He loves helping. The youngest enjoys looking at the tank. The wife enjoys looking but not much interest in helping.

^^^I’m nearly in same boat. Two boys, 4 and 8, both are into it and we’ve yet to add a fish. Tank is cycling now, and we are away for a few days, they were on the beach yesterday making “aquariums” with toy buckets and my older guy was using “live sand” to import “beneficial bacteria” and asked me if I thought it had “pods” in it. Wife annoyed she agreed to let me do this (she calls it her “weak moment”) but she does see how fascinated my older one is with the science of it. I hope at least that continues, I’m not holding my breath when it comes to maintenance.

 

[foxt]

My wife thinks I am crazy, and enjoys showing our friends how involved the whole thing is. My 13 yr old son, on the other hand, is with me at every step. He's been planning his own setup in a 40g breeder, and started his own thread here back in the early winter. Has been consumed with school and sports since then, but is coming back around to getting his tank set up. His school has recently asked him for help in getting a tank running for science class, so that's cool ...

 

[jason g]

Well let's just say that I was the president of a reef club and my wife was the vice president . My daughter and nephew also help out with water changes and we attend reef shows as a family.
We've been in the hobby since 2008. I've also gotten two cousins and my Uncle in the hobby. They all have reef tanks.

 

[NY_Caveman]

I am setting up a new reef tank now. As I am the experienced aquarist, I made the equipment decisions. The family has given me some equipment as holiday gifts.

Now that we are getting closer to filling the tank, I took my wife to a fish store recently. She was inspired and offered lots of input on livestock choices. I really enjoyed that she was getting excited about it. I did have to spend some time explaining why a Hippo Tang was not a good choice for a 30 gallon.

This weekend I took the two girls (7 and 10) to another fish store and they were enthralled by the little critters in a large reef. The older one watched an abalone for about 15 minutes commenting on everything he did. The younger one tried to track the little fish as they moved around the rockscape. In general they loved the shrimps, crabs and snails poking around the rocks more than the big fish. This works for me as I have always been most fascinated by the behaviors of invertebrates.

I am not expecting them to do much maintenance, but they do seem to be getting quite interested. The kids love the sciences so I am ready to offer as much as they can absorb along the way.