From memory, it all started when my older brother set up a 3-foot tropical tank in our parent's place. I was probably 9 or 10 years old. I can still remember being mesmerized by the beautiful colours of the Cardinal tetras and a blue/red Siamese fighting fish.
Since then and until just a few years ago, I've always had at least one fish tank at any given time. Over the years I experimented with tropical aquariums, Discus tanks, Cichlids, reef tanks and planted tanks. Usually sized between 3 foot and 6 foot, although I owed a few unusual ones :-)
Reef tanks are my favourite type of aquarium but are also the most demanding, time-consuming and expensive aquariums to set up and maintain.
Some years ago I was forced to choose between buying cigarettes or getting rid of my fish tanks to reduce the outrageous power bill. LED lights were still expensive so of course, I chose to keep smoking :-)
I stopped smoking eventually, and the price of LED fittings came down a lot since then :-) .... but I decided the next time I set up an aquarium will be when I finally buy my own place and it will probably be a small nano tank lol, I miss having fishtanks around but I'm fed up with having to move them. My back and knees are permanently damaged because of that :-(
Unfortunately, I don't have much to show, most of my old photos were lost in a hard disk crash years ago and I could only find a handful of photos.