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My name is Daniel and I live in the
beautiful city of Hamburg, Germany. I was born in 1979 and at present I
still live with my father and - during weekends and vacations - with my
girlfriend Nina. Nina is responsible for the English part of this site.
I appreciate her help! It is great to have such a
supportive girlfriend. I think that was enough about me because this site is meant to deal with my animals and not with me. Everything started with the fixed ideas of two little boys: My brothers, who are about 10 years older than me, both wanted to have an aquarium when they were young. The aquariums were bought but only two months later my mother had to do all the work although my brothers had promised that they would care for their aquariums by themselves. After a few weeks the aquariums were removed and given away. But - years later- of course the youngest member of the family also planned on having an aquarium when he was only 14 years old. My mother still remembered the bad experiences she had made with my brothers and so my wish was postponed until my 16th birthday. I had to wait for a long time but when my 16th birthday was coming up I renewed my "application" and got the following answer: If you manage to earn enough money to buy an aquarium during the summer vacations you can have one. Nothing was easier than that! I jumped on my bike and worked as a courier in the streets of Hamburg. When the vacations were over I had all the money I needed and proudly showed it to my parents. But in the meantime they had changed their mind and only shook their heads. 
Well, what shall I say? One week later the aquarium was standing
in my room anyway and I never got into serious trouble. It was nice to
look at and always properly kept. After the small aquarium I got a bigger
one. By that time I had my parents on my side so that I never got to hear
any protest from them.When it came to decorating my new aquarium my snake-
keeper-carreer began: Hidden in a newly bought plant I found a small fish mask that I carefully
nursed since I wanted to know what kind of fish it was. It turned out to
be a gorgeous female cichlid. Ok, a cichlid. Till then, I didn't know anything about cichlid but I thought that it would be a good idea to find a suitable male for it. Well, some time later the two of them swam side by side and protected their territory. Too bad that their territory included the whole aquarium and that there was no space for the other fish. The situation became especially bad when all of the sudden there was a family of 60 cichlids swimming around. Therefore I bought another aquarium and the cichlids had to move. Everything seemed great for a while.  However there were those hungry baby cichlid that started to eat
up their parents! They attacked the fins of the adult cichlid and in the
end the poor parents could only swim upwards... As a consequence aquarium
no. 3 had to be set up to separate the little ones from their parents. This
turned out to be a big mistake: The parents seemed to feel so lonely that
- as soon as they had recovered - they started reproduction again. Soon after
that I housed more than 100 cichlid babies and did not know what to do with
them. As we all know, tamnophis like to eat fresh fish and so they where
the perfect solution to my cichlid problem. Besides, I had always been interested
in reptiles and the idea of owning a vivarium seemed very attractive
to me. In May 1998 I finally decided to buy a used vivarium including one
inhabitant - awild-caught snake 0.1 Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis. (The indication of the number stands for the sex: 1.0 means male and 0.1 female while 0.0.1 means juvenile. The number points out how many of the animals are kept.) A few months later I got a wild-caught snake 0.1. My cichlid problem had successfully been solved and my live enriched by a new hobby. Unfortunately I soon had to deal with some problems that resulted from my insufficient knowledge. |