Home aquarium keeping can be a wonderful hobby. There is nothing better than to see a beautiful thriving aquarium full of healthy, lively, colourful fish accompanied by thriving live plants. Aquariums are well known to have a calming effect on people, it is not surprising that they are a common sight in doctors and dentists waiting rooms.

On the other side of the coin, cloudy water, diseased and dying fish and straggly plants are the consequence of not starting out right. By making certain that you take note of the items listed below this will not happen to you.

Do Not Buy A So Called ‘Beginners Tank’

Small tanks, generally 12 to 18 inches across, are often sold as so called ‘beginners tanks’ presumably because they are easy to carry out of the shop! However you need to understand that a home fish tank that is well looked after is a delicately balanced ecological system and it can easily destabilise. It is a well established fact that a small aquarium is much more diffcult to keep in balance and it can go out of balance very rapidly. An ideal aqaurium size for a beginner should be in the region of 36″ x 12″ x 18″.

Do not buy your tank and your fish on the same day

This is the worst mistake that beginners make. Before any fish enter your aquarium it needs to have been established for at least a few days, preferable a week to achieve some kind of equilibrium. You should set up your tank with everything in it except for the fish. Leave it like that for a week. You must check the temperature, clarity and condition of the water using test strips for the duration of that week. Introduce a few cheap fish after everything has stabilised and monitor them for a few days. Having checked that they appear to be fine you can then introduce more fish.

Choose Your Fish Carefully

Do not assume that all of the fish you buy for your community tank will live happily together. You should not just take a chance on this. Sad to say that generally speaking if a fish is small enough to enter the mouth of another fish then that is what will happen i.e. it will be eaten! Males of some species fight to the death. Males of certain species hound the females endlessly so it is a good idea to have 2 or 3 females to each male. Some fish are surface swimmers while others prefer to stay near the gravel. Something to think about, although probably not of great concern, is that different fish require different water conditions such as temperature and pH. Buy fish that are full of life, do not accept any fish that look sickly or have split fins. The best approach is to find a really knowledgeable fish supplier who can advise you about these things.

Do not Overfill your Tank with Fish

Various ‘rules of thumb’ exist for working out the capacity of your tank:

• 3 cm of adult fish length per 4 litres of water (i.e., a 6 cm-long fish would need about 8 litres of water).
• 1 cm of adult fish length per 30 square centimetres of surface area.
• 1 inch of adult fish length per gallon of water.
• 1 inch of adult fish length per 12 square inches of surface area.

Do not apply any of these rules too rigorously. You must realise that the fish you buy are youngsters and likely to grow to many times their size so they will eventually need more room. You must take this into account. Decide on your tank’s maximum fish capacity by slowly adding fish over a period of several months and keeping a watch on water quality.

Monitor the Water and Change it Regularly

As I said before, your aquarium is delicately balanced so it is important to check the water condition regularly. You have possibly heard of aquarium ‘cycling’. This is what the transistion of fish waste to ammonia then nitrite by bacteria then nitrate by other bacteria is called. In the much larger natural environment this ‘cycle’ does not need any outside intervention. Every week you need to change at least 25% of the aquarium water to help it along. High levels of nitrate and nitrite, particularly nitrite, will kill your fish so it is very important that you monitor these levels.

So there you have it. If you follow this advice you will start off on the right foot and own an aquarium that will be a stunning addition to your home and that you can be proud of.

John Thomson is an aquarium expert. For more great freshwater aquarium information, visit http://www.freshwateraquariumsecretsonline.com.

New! We've just starting a message board and discussion forum over on the Toxic Byte Pets Forum. It's a bit lonely over there at the moment, but feel free to join in and participate!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 13th, 2010 at 5:35 am and is filed under Fish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.