The First Year of FishKeepingLifeCo

One children’s book, and a year I never quite planned.

On September 13, 2026, I spent the day at Aquashella New Jersey, surrounded by people who share my fascination with aquariums. I even came home with some Blue Diamond shrimp.

What made the day special, though, was the date. Exactly one year earlier, on September 13, 2025, my first children’s book, Life in Balance: The Hidden Magic of Aquariums, was officially released.

At the time, getting that book published was the whole goal. I wasn’t thinking about running an educational website, making podcast episodes, or building tools for other aquarium hobbyists. I certainly wasn’t planning to sit down a year later and write about everything that happened in between.

It Started Long Before the Book

Aquariums have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My uncle kept guppies, my parents had a goldfish aquarium, and growing up, I was fascinated by these little worlds inside glass boxes.

I also made plenty of mistakes. I kept bettas in containers that were too small and goldfish in aquariums that couldn’t properly accommodate them. Like many beginners, I didn’t always understand what the animals actually needed.

Eventually, I stepped away from the hobby.

Around 2012, while visiting my sister at college, I caught an episode of Tanked. Something about watching those aquariums being built brought my childhood curiosity right back, and before long I’d bought a 50-gallon tank.

This time, I wanted to understand the hobby rather than simply enjoy looking at the fish. The nitrogen cycle, beneficial bacteria, biological filtration, live plants: there was so much happening inside an aquarium that I’d never understood. I spent a lot of time reading, watching videos, experimenting, and occasionally learning things the hard way.

And one thing always frustrated me: advice that told me what to do without explaining why.

That frustration stayed with me. I didn’t know it then, but it would end up shaping just about everything I wanted FishKeepingLifeCo to become.

I Wasn’t Trying to Build All of This

In 2025, I was working full-time, raising my young son, and looking for ways to earn some additional income to help support my family. Like a lot of people, I started researching opportunities online, and that’s how I came across Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

I’d always liked the idea of creating an educational children’s book, something colorful and entertaining that could also teach kids something useful. Aquariums seemed like the obvious subject. That became Life in Balance: The Hidden Magic of Aquariums, a story featuring Benny the Betta that introduces children to the aquarium nitrogen cycle and the invisible biological processes that help keep fish alive.

Getting it published was an education of its own. I had to learn about page formatting, margins, bleed settings, and printing requirements: all the little technical details that stand between a manuscript and an actual book. Submissions came back rejected. I made corrections and tried again. More than once, I thought I’d finally gotten everything right, only to have another issue come up.

But eventually, the book was released. And then I had a new problem. I had written a book, but how was anyone supposed to find it?

I figured I needed a website. Nothing complicated, just somewhere people could learn about the book and maybe find some aquarium information.

That was the plan, anyway.

The trouble was that every time I worked on something, another idea came along. If someone visited the website because they were struggling with the nitrogen cycle, wouldn’t it help if they could enter their water-test results and get some guidance? That idea eventually became the Cycling Coach.

Then I started thinking about how confusing stocking advice could be. How do you know whether certain fish belong together? How many should be kept in a group? Does a larger filter actually change what an aquarium can responsibly hold? Those questions led to the Stocking Advisor.

The more I worked on it, the more I realized how much responsibility comes with giving advice that affects living animals. Something that initially sounded simple could turn into days of researching, reconsidering assumptions, and trying to understand the limits of the information available.

I started joking that I had developed multi-page syndrome. I’d be working on one article, realize it needed another article to explain something properly, and before long I’d be wondering whether it needed an interactive tool, too.

It wasn’t some carefully planned expansion strategy. I was following questions. Before I knew it, the website that was supposed to promote a book was becoming The Tank Guide.

Other projects grew out of the same habit. I made aquarium coloring books, and I made maintenance journals because I’d always struggled to keep consistent records myself and wanted something that reflected how fishkeepers actually care for their tanks.

Then there was the podcast. I hadn’t planned on becoming a podcast creator either, but I kept thinking about how many people might enjoy listening to aquarium information while driving to work, cleaning their tanks, or going about their day.

In December 2025, Tank Guide Life released its first episode. I chose AI-generated narration because my schedule and home life weren’t exactly suited to sitting in a quiet recording studio, and it gave me a practical way to share researched information in another format.

I was learning all of this as I went. And somewhere in the middle of figuring out publishing, websites, and podcasts, I realized I genuinely enjoyed the process.

Not every part of it; there were plenty of frustrations. But taking an idea, struggling through the parts I didn’t understand, and eventually seeing it work was something I kept coming back to.

Most of the First Year Happened on My Phone

When I think about what the first year actually looked like, I don’t picture an office or some elaborate workspace. I picture myself sitting on the couch in the dark, looking at my phone.

For most of the year, that’s where nearly everything happened. I’d finish my regular responsibilities, spend time with my family, and then find whatever time I could to work on FishKeepingLifeCo: researching an aquarium topic late at night, making changes to the website, reviewing an article, or trying to figure out why something wasn’t working the way I expected.

There were plenty of nights when I should have gone to sleep earlier.

I also started riding the bus more often. Part of that was about saving money, but there was another benefit I appreciated: I could work instead of drive.

A ride became a chance to think through an article, review something, or pick up an idea I’d had earlier in the day. I was constantly finding these little pockets of time.

And it’s funny, because when I first started researching ways to earn additional income, the appeal was that maybe I could create something that wouldn’t require so much of my time.

Instead, I’d found something I wanted to spend nearly every spare minute working on.

There were trade-offs. I still had my full-time job. I was learning how to be a father. There were responsibilities at home, and there were times when I had more ideas than I could realistically manage.

I wasn’t always particularly organized about it, either. In the beginning, I spent a lot of time wondering what I should work on next. Eventually, that turned into wondering whether I’d forgotten about something I’d already started.

I’m not a programmer. I didn’t start this knowing how websites worked behind the scenes or how to build an interactive tool, and a lot of the technical language that became part of my day-to-day work was completely foreign to me.

Even small problems could become frustrating. I just kept running into things I wanted to do and then trying to figure out how to do them.

In August 2026, I finally bought a laptop because working entirely from my phone had become increasingly impractical. That certainly made some things easier.

If anything, it also made it easier to get myself involved in another project.

One thing I’ve been trying to change is how I think about my own experience. Rather than telling myself I’m bad at creating media, I’ve started saying something different:

I’m early at creating media.

There’s a difference between not knowing how to do something yet and deciding you aren’t capable of learning it.

I’m still figuring a lot of this out, and I suspect I will be for quite some time.

The Mistake I Almost Didn’t Share

I feel strongly that FishKeepingLifeCo should stay connected to real fishkeeping. My own 29-gallon planted aquarium has been a source of experiments, observations, questions, and educational material.

It has also reminded me that experience doesn’t make anyone immune to mistakes.

In February 2026, I did a large water change and forgot to add water conditioner. The following day, I discovered that I’d lost my cardinal tetras, fish I’d kept for more than eight years, along with several panda loaches.

It was devastating. What made it worse was knowing it had happened because of something I’d overlooked.

When I was documenting it in our public aquarium journal, I seriously considered leaving it out. I was embarrassed, and it wasn’t something I particularly wanted people to know about.

But I decided to keep it in, and part of the reason has to do with how FishKeepingLifeCo is made.

We use AI tools throughout FishKeepingLifeCo. They help with research, organization, development, and content production. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to explore so many of these ideas in the time available to me.

But I also want people to understand that there’s an actual person behind all of it: someone who keeps fish, cares about them, experiments with equipment, asks questions, and sometimes makes mistakes, even after years in the hobby.

It would have been easy to publish only the healthy fish and the successful experiments. But that wouldn’t reflect what fishkeeping has actually been like for me.

Maybe someone reading that journal entry will remember to double-check their water conditioner before their next water change.

I hope so.

Because while AI can help us explain aquarium science, it doesn’t replace the responsibility we have toward the animals in our care, and I never want the educational side of FishKeepingLifeCo to lose sight of that.

The Little Things I Didn’t Expect

I’ve spent a lot of this past year looking at a screen: researching, writing, reviewing, fixing things, and occasionally wondering whether anyone was actually finding what I was creating.

So some of the most memorable moments have been the ones that reminded me there were people on the other side.

I remember discovering that our first international Kindle purchase had come from India. It was strange, in a good way, to think that a book I’d worked on at home had reached someone so far away.

Then there was a message from someone on Instagram who told me they enjoyed listening to Tank Guide Life on their commute.

That stuck with me, because it was exactly the kind of situation I’d imagined when I first started thinking about a podcast: someone going about their regular day, listening to something I’d helped create.

Moments like those don’t change the amount of work waiting for me the next day. But they do make the work feel different.

They remind me that these aren’t just ideas sitting in a folder or projects I’m tinkering with on my phone. They might actually be useful to somebody.

I’ve also enjoyed reconnecting with the aquarium community in person. Visiting Plant Fest at Fitz’s Fish Ponds in May and Aquashella New Jersey in September reminded me how much I enjoy simply being around other people who are interested in the hobby.

Aquarium stores and conventions have always felt like little sanctuaries to me. People come from different backgrounds and have completely different interests within fishkeeping, but you can almost always find something to talk about.

And no matter how long someone has been keeping aquariums, there’s usually something they haven’t encountered before.

I’ve always liked that about this hobby.

We’re all still asking questions. We’re just a little taller and older than we were when we started.

What This Year Changed for Me

When I started, I was thinking about creating a product and hopefully earning some additional income. I still want FishKeepingLifeCo to become financially sustainable, but it hasn’t turned into the straightforward passive-income opportunity I originally imagined.

And surprisingly, that hasn’t made me want to stop.

What I’ve discovered instead is how much I enjoy learning about unfamiliar subjects, finding ways to explain complicated information, and turning an idea into something another person might use.

I’ve also become more careful about the information we share. Early on, I was excited just to get an article published or see a website feature working. Now I spend more time questioning where information comes from, whether it’s accurate, and what its limitations might be.

There’s a difference between something supported by scientific research, something widely repeated in the aquarium community, and something I’ve personally observed in one fish tank.

I want The Tank Guide to respect those distinctions.

I don’t expect us to have every answer. If anything, working on FishKeepingLifeCo has shown me how much there still is to learn.

But I want it to be a place where people can understand why things work, question what they’re being told, and make better decisions for the animals in their care.

In a way, that’s the kind of resource I was searching for when I returned to fishkeeping all those years ago.

Still Figuring Out Where This Goes

I wish I could say I know exactly what the next few years will look like.

I don’t.

There are ideas I’d love to pursue: more books, better educational tools, improvements to The Tank Guide, and eventually real conversations on Tank Guide Life with scientists, aquarium store owners, breeders, creators, and everyday hobbyists.

I’d also like to give people more opportunities to share their own aquariums and experiences.

More than anything, I want The Tank Guide to become a resource that grows alongside the hobbyist. Somewhere a beginner can find practical guidance, understand the science behind it, and continue learning as their experience grows.

But I also know I need to get better at slowing down long enough to finish and improve the things I’ve already started.

That might be one of the harder lessons for me.

I’m pretty good at coming up with another idea. I’m still learning how to stop myself from turning every idea into five more projects.

I want FishKeepingLifeCo to grow, but not simply by adding more things. I want what we create to be useful, the information to be dependable, and the business to become sustainable without losing the enjoyment that brought me here in the first place.

There’s still a long way to go.

I don’t think of the first year as proof that I’ve figured out how to build a successful business.

I think of it as the year I discovered how much I wanted to try.

One Year Later

There’s something fitting about spending FishKeepingLifeCo’s first anniversary at an aquarium convention.

Exactly a year earlier, my children’s book about the aquarium nitrogen cycle had been released. Now I was spending its anniversary surrounded by the same hobby that inspired it.

In between were late nights on the couch, bus rides spent working on my phone, problems I didn’t know how to solve, mistakes I wish I hadn’t made, and more ideas than I probably needed.

There were also moments when I learned something new, solved a problem that had been bothering me, or heard from someone who found value in something I’d created.

I’m grateful for those experiences, and for everyone who has taken the time to read an article, listen to an episode, buy a book, ask a question, or simply follow along.

I don’t know exactly where FishKeepingLifeCo will be another year from now.

I hope we’ve kept improving what we already have. I hope we’ve helped a few more people understand their aquariums. And I hope I’m still finding things about the hobby that make me curious enough to stay up later than I probably should.

Somewhere along the way, I found something I genuinely enjoy building.

I’d like to see where it goes.

Thank you for being part of our first year.

— FishKeepingLifeCo