How to Set Up a 10 Gallon Aquarium by Alex Jansen

College students are well known for having terrible mental health. Pets are great for that! According to UW-Platteville rules, one is allowed to have an aquarium up to 10 gallons in their dorm. This means you can have pets! It only takes two shopping trips: one to get the fishy supplies and one to get the fishies. You cannot do these both at once! Your aquarium needs to be set up and chilling with some water conditioner in it for a bit first. 

When I say chilling, I do not mean this literally. Most aquarium fish are tropical fish, which means your tank needs a heater. If you’re on a budget, you can buy a kit from Walmart, PetSmart, or Petco that comes with a heater, filter, and sometimes a light. These are pretty cheap, but I would recommend buying everything separately to get better quality items if you can afford it. While you’re out shopping, you should also grab some water conditioner, gravel, a dark background for the tank, and some sort of decorations or plants that your fish can hide in. One thing you absolutely should not buy is a fishbowl. These are not large enough for fish to live in, and it would be hard to find a filter or heater that would fit without taking up most of the space. 

Now, how do you set this up? You bring home all your fun fishy items, throw the gravel in the tank, fill it with water, and start putting your decorations in. One important thing to remember is that until you put water in, you shouldn’t plug in your filter (it’s not great for it to run without water going through it), and you CAN NOT plug in your heater. It will explode if there is no water to cool it. 

So now you have a fish tank. Once you have the filter running for a bit and have the tank warmed up to around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, you’re ready to buy fish! In my opinion, the best beginner fish for a small tank would be guppies. They’re small, they’re pretty cheap as far as fish go, you can have a bunch of them, and most importantly… they’re livebearers! Your guppies can get pregnant and have babies! As long as you have good hiding spots, these babies should do pretty well. Another popular fish that can live in a tank of this size is the betta. I do love bettas, but they can be pretty expensive and aren’t typically the healthiest fish in the store. The best way to go is to get a school of small fish and maybe a snail to take care of things when you overfeed them.  

One popular fish that you shouldn’t keep in anything smaller than a pond is a goldfish. People think they’re small and cute and don’t live very long, but the truth is that they can live for decades and grow up to 18 inches long. Most people don’t know that goldfish are carp, and they’re also closely related to koi. I’m sure everyone has seen a picture of a huge koi fish, goldfish will grow to the same massive sizes if you take care of them. This means they’re not great pets for people with indoor fish. 

There are lots of other small fish that you can keep in a 10-gallon tank, so take a few days to do some research between setting up the tank and going to pick out your new little guys.  

Rod, Reel, and Record Book: Writing for Fur-Fish-Game Magazine by Kevin Dunse

My interest in writing really piqued when I was in middle school, and it arose because a good friend of mine began to write about his experiences in our shared outdoor hobbies—hunting, fishing, and trapping —and submit them to magazines for publication. Admittedly, I was surprised when he found success, and he encouraged me to write and try to do the same. Ultimately, I decided to try my hand at writing my first magazine article on a fishing method I’d developed for catching state-record fish. To explain the method, the Wisconsin DNR will accept records of any legally caught species, so by targeting species of fish that are not generally targeted by sport fishermen, I could catch and submit record specimens far more easily than I would’ve been able to by targeting popular sportfish for which the records are well-known and sought after. 

Writing the article came about pretty easily. It was just a simple, though stylized, description of the method and how I’d executed it, centered around one day where I’d gotten lucky and managed three record fish in one outing. Writing out a query letter was where the process became daunting for me. It’s quite simple, but the process was foreign to anything I’d done before. Though with a little help from my friend, I prepared and sent the email to the editor of Fur-Fish-Game magazine. He was quick to respond with questions regarding the article, which I answered, and he finally agreed to look at it. When it was sent, he told me I’d hear back within four weeks. 

The wait was grueling. My anticipation welled each day, and with every email notification on my phone, I felt my heart well in my chest. Finally, an afternoon weeks later, the editor’s email came, and my article had been declined. Initially, I was crushed. Anyone who has submitted anything for publication anywhere knows that declination is simply part of the process, but I had yet to come to that realization. Fortunately for me, the editor offered suggestions on some revisions that could be made that may better suit Fur-Fish-Game. Chiefly, a shift in focus towards storytelling rather than methodology. That nightI feverishly made the changes and sent the revised article back to the editor. 

The response to this email came in just a few days, and I was elated to find that, though the editor didn’t feel that the piece held up as a feature-length article, it was suitable for publication as a shorter piece. Months later, when the piece ran, I was able to walk into Walmart and take up a piece of my own writing off the shelf. Though I didn’t pursue professional writing in college, this experience instilled within me a profound respect for the discipline, and I have since published two more articles with Fur-Fish-Game, as well as having one currently pending publication. 

My Love for the Horror Genre by Gretta Droessler

At the start of 2025, I began to take interest in something that I never thought I would enjoy, the horror genre. At surface level, the horror genre can be seen as mindlessly scary or just as movies filled with blood and guts. I used to look at horror as just being scary with no substance. That’s why I stayed away from the genre for so long. However, I used a certain thought process for myself to get into the horror genre.  

At the end of 2024, a video game called Piglet’s Big Game was becoming more popular. It was a Winnie the Pooh licensed game for the GameCube. However, many people who played the game noticed how strangely scary and eerie it truly is. The game builds up the atmosphere and makes a genuine attempt to be creepy. Even if it is just for kids, it is still considered fairly scary. Noticing the game, I began to think of why the creators decided to make a children's horror game. I’ve come to a conclusion; this game could be a kid-friendly alternative for other horror media. It would be a way for them to get into the genre without being subject to horrors only meant for an adult’s eyes.  

Then, I remember my childhood and my experience with horror media. I used to love experiencing horror as a kid. Of course, the horror media I had engaged with wasn’t actually that scary, such as Luigi’s Mansion for the GameCube, but it gave me a good idea of what I like and how I enjoy the horror genre. After realizing this, I decided to play a horror game I was too afraid to play for a long time, Silent Hill. Silent Hill is about finding your daughter in an abandoned town that’s covered in fog; it’s a psychological horror that makes you second guess all your decisions and questions the human mind. This game single-handedly got me into the horror genre to this day. I have experienced more horror games such as Signalis and Late Homework. I have also expanded my horizons to movies like Alien and The Thing.  

Horror can be a wonderful genre to experience. I find comfort in the genre myself, since it can be viewed as escapism. The horror genre can be experienced in a safe controlled environment, a way to focus on the horrors we can control rather than the horrors we cannot control in our own lives. Horror can also be viewed like a roller coaster ride, where there are excitement and twists and turns whenever you ride. A nice change of pace from our average lives without any kind of thrill.  

I’d like to finish off this blog by saying how much the horror genre has changed me. What once was something I feared, now I actively seek in pieces of art. It gives me comfort to be within the rusty metal hell that is Silent Hill killing abstract monsters I could barely even comprehend.