Okay, so I have been a little destabilised lately I won't turn this into a crying thread.
I'm going to sort of use this as a free form reminisce.
The old "bar sinister" who taught me most of what I know of tropical fish keeping was a truely irrascible ol' cuss named Richard Franklin. He was the owner operator of Brisbane Tropical in Brisbane, California. He was a professional gambler as well. Most of his gambling associates were "not nice" people. He was bald with a white fringe and everybody always said he would make a good "Prof. Challenger" in a movie.
And while he of course had a bank account for his business and other expenditures his gambling funds were always kept in the Bank of The Left Front Pocket. As such he always carried a .38 in his right front pocket. All legal mind you. What he reffered to as a "Frenchman's (cough, cough)". This will come up later.
As he put it he had "fish friends" and "gambling friends" and he didn't like introducing one set to the other because several of the latter were professional grifters. I met one or two peripherally and found them to be frighteningly predatory and deceitful creatures.
Now he had a huge store he kept up and running for 28 years. For decades he specialized in mature cichlids of different sorts, and the large tank mates needed to go with them. He had a nice saltwater section but then in the 90's he fell in love with coral husbandry and the salt section expanded expotentialy.
That's where I learned to keep corals alive. My personal favorite being
Porites corals with the commenseral christmas tree worms. I'm sure everything I know is obsolete now. But I think I could swing it given the right budget and some catch up time. Too bad I've become deathly allergic to corals and cnidarians in general. God's way of saying "find another line of work".
Now we had tanks on top of tanks in this place. Over 300 tanks and only 30 of them 20 gallons or smaller, mainly the "classic aquarium" fishs and the african cichlids. Behind the counter we had a 940 gallon aquarium which always had a half a dozen or so large arowannas and a giant red tailed catfish.
I have so many wierd stories about this place, I don't know where to begin. But I have to rest now though. I'll be back.
BD.