Nagging does work.

Hi guys , after weeks and weeks of nagging , the wife has finally agreed to let me have a fish tank inside the house. As long as its not too big. she has approved a 60L tank that she has seen in our LFS(but i'm pretty sure when she's not looking I'll buy the 100L one that was on offer) shhhhhhhhh!.I want to go for fresh water tropicals but as I have no idea what im doing im gonna need some help(some help lol)

I have done alot of studying since the whole pond incident and wont be making some of those mistake's again, but there is still a massive gap in my understanding of proper fish keeping.The tank is a starter kit and has everything I need to get set up(heater, light, filter and some big stones)My first question is in a tank that size 60-100L do i stick with the stuff they provide or get my own gear for it?and what would ye guys suggest?.

Push the boat out a little if you can, but then prices go up considerably when you deviate from the normal 2x1x1 foot 60litre tank.

If you have approval for a 2 foot tank (60 centimetres for the young people), then maybe see if you can get it 15 or 18 inches in the other directions......no one will notice, and you can easily have a 120 litre looking like a 60 litre. Trust me....I know how to do these things. and no one has divorced me yet over fish tanks.

Now you have the foot in the door, then select fish that the wife also may take a fancy to....... that may even open more doors (eg 'a fish tank of her own' even). Again, Trust me....I could be a doctor. !

On a more serious note, I would work with the wife on deciding a reasonable stock of fish that is appealing to you and to her and are tolerant of this being a first fish-tank for someone.

You don't want to have a tank that is soon depleted by deaths......not a good start for the fish or the relationship. (....I'm also after a job as a Newspaper Agony Aunt btw).

There are loads of set-ups to decide upon, but your first fish will be the deciding factor.

Little dithering cuties will be fine, but maybe you also need a character fish or 2 in the tank to not only start to nail down the interest in fish but also be something for the wife to see benefit in allowing a tank (or 2 or 40). Aaaagh...but there lies a problem: many of the common character fish have a bit too much character for comparability with other fish. So, choice is very important....but there are some good mixable fish with lots of character appeal, and you'd be surprised as to how many fish develop a 'humanistic personality'.

Maybe the best thing is to do a bit of eye-candy shopping and then start to work which ones mix and are OK in a 60 to 120 litre community and are not the most difficult to look after.

There is nothing wrong with cuties to sway the hearts of people..... ask my OH.

ian

Hey Ian how about working some magic/charm on my missus. Trying to get a bigger tank but not having any luck.
Tried the giving her a character fish bit and it back fired. She picked a red tailed black shark and that stopped me changing to Tangs when I wanted to move on from community fish

Pat wrote:

Hey Ian how about working some magic/charm on my missus. Trying to get a bigger tank but not having any luck.
Tried the giving her a character fish bit and it back fired. She picked a red tailed black shark and that stopped me changing to Tangs when I wanted to move on from community fish

I bet you didn't take her along to a shop with loads of baby Tropheus dubosi.....little cute polka dotted characters.
Or find a place selling a large butterkoferi and let her wave at the tank....then say Tangs are like that only smaller.

Cheers Ian.

Once i get one tank sorted I'm sure it wont be long before she can be convinced we need another one lol.
The stocking of the tank is not on the top of my to do list atm as the wife has no love for any animal, dogs, cats , birds, hens, ducks, bee's, fly's.So once they dont smell bad or make noise I'm ok.

The setting up of the tank is my main concern.I have a tendency to rush into things and as i have learned from this forum,thats not the way to go.I do like the look of real plants in the tank, and want to know if the tank will be big enough to have live plants in there.And what kind of substrate to use and technical stuff like that.Or should i stick too sand , gravel, rocks or some wood in there?

The main thing for me will be which ever will have less maintenance as we will have a new baby in less than a month.so i want to get it set up and cycled and after the baby come's i can think of getting stock.

Stuart.

How yeh doing pal,listen i'm a 3 month novice to this fish keeping hobby and i've had some amount of ups and downs,more downs than ups but the ups far out weigh the downs.Here's a little insight into my first 3 months at this ok......When i bought my 120L tank i thought the fish came with it,but to my disappointment i was told come back in a week with a water sample and we'll take it from there......they tested the water and said it's grand,so i then thought thats great,i'll pick out a load of fish and hoof them in....but once again to my disappointment they said no,here is 4 zebra danio's(they can survive in a sewer apparently) and if anything happens to them then your water is not fit for any other fish but if there fine in 2 weeks or so then i can gradually build my tank but in the meantime google as much on the subject as i possibly can.ok heres were it all went pear shaped,i didn't google on the subject so i sneakly went to another pet store and acted like i had tanks for years and bought loads of different fish(about 40)over a few days and thought thats it,i'll change the water in 2 weeks and everything will be fine........ok i'm gonna have to shorten this as i know i'm rambling a bit so,after many deaths from high ammonia and nitrites to fish not being compatible so one would kill the other,i thankfully found this forum......the lads here are great,luckly for me they are sympitetic to eejits like me and sorted me out!! so my advice to you is,be very patient at the start and get as much info on this subject as possible.....it may take 6 weeks for your tank to fully cycle so try and put at least fish as possible in until then.....its very important to read up about the nitrogen cycle(great thread here) trust me......anyway if you havn't falling asleep by now,i hope this helps in some small way

Best of luck

Ger

Good man Ger,
Learn from the mistakes....and fair play to the pet shop also for giving you the correct advise.
We all learn from mistakes...the thrill of getting a new fish is always there though!

Gavin

Cheers for the reply Ger,

Yeah I'm a 3-4 month fish keeper myself, I built a pond in my garden and decided ''lets put some fish in it''Thinking fish............. water............bob's your uncle, and then like you I found these fine people on this forum lol.I too made all the mistakes of not cycleing properly getting too many fish and not compatible one's and making a pigs ear of it.But now things are looking good in the pond and the guys are happy so now I'm out to reek havoc on the tropical world he he.Nah i really want to make a nice job of the tank so I'm trying to put in as much ground work as posible and try and cut down on the mistakes.

Stuart.

Fishowner wrote:

Good man Ger,
Learn from the mistakes....and fair play to the pet shop also for giving you the correct advise.
We all learn from mistakes...the thrill of getting a new fish is always there though!

Gavin

Cheers Gav,if only clowns like me would listen to there advice haha

Ger

Ah fair play Stu,your few months experience with the pond seems to have given you plenty of knowledge on fish keeping so you shouldn't have any problems going tropical even if it is a different kettle of fish,excuse the pun!! sorry i cant help yeh with plant growing,but it's a road i want to go down myself soon so i'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see if theres any suggestions.
As for starting off fish,i recommend about 6 black widow tetra's.....Beautiful looking fish,good grubbers,not shy,can look after themselves but very peaceful......But hey,we all have different opinions!!

Best of luck again dude

Ger

There are loads of ways of starting the tank.....many of which work well, and some are a road to disaster.

From a specific species of fish point of view, I don't normally recommend a 'starter set-up' as there are so many good set-ups that are suitable for starting. I think that your choice of fish is important, and not my choice. If every person starting had to listen to my list of starter fish then they would have gouramis in one tank, and a lone male siamese fighter in a smaller tank.

BUT....I wouldn't recommend a free-for-all mix.

As for getting the tank mature......this is the key.
There is a recent thread on 'Organic (Aqua)...good or bad' where various people are putting forward their opinions for and against or (like me) sitting on the fence and interrupting it now and then.
From people who swear by it, it seems to be recommended as a good way to start (and some of those people are well experienced and skilled keepers).

There are quick-start bacterial cultures in a bottle that can help kick-start a fish tank into its maturation cycle. These can work well, but need care and attention.

Then there is the classical wait for a few weeks for the tank to cycle. etc

All have their plus points and down points. My main recommendation is that whatever method is used is to take it easy at the start.....take it easy with stocking levels, take it easy with feeding.

In essence, if you treat your tank pretending that it has NO technology at work in the first while then you'll tend to be more careful with stocks and feed. A danger exists in assuming the hi-tech filters etc will do all the life-support stuff (they don't, and it takes time for them to even start to offer any help).

If you are thinking of plants, then that starts to seal your future road (ie you won't be getting Malawi cichlids etc...although there are plants that do OK with them even).

Check out the fish you like the look of and have some idea if they are compatible or not with each other and your tank. Find out the size they grow to.
Find out if the fish is a fussy eater or not....eg you don't really want a species that will only take frozen or live food.

Buy good quality stock. Now....that is not all that easy to say if one isn't sure what is good quality stock or not (but part of that is the learning process).
Some things are easy to spot.....don't buy from a tank full of dead fish or fish gasping at the top etc, and don't buy a fish that is obviously ill and hope you'll give it a better chance (some people starting have been known to go on an instant mission).

Letting the first fish out the bag.....gently and slowly, but not too slow as to shock the fish (I won't go into details.....but it needs highlighting).

Another common problem is keeness to start feeding the first fish in the tank as soon as the fish are out of the bag......resist that temptation. If the fish can't go a day without food then the fish is not healthy fish in the first place: let it settle in else you could find rotten food lurking in your tank after the first days feed.....not good at all.
Some fish, however, don't get as stressed when first bought and will start feeding straight out of the bag (and I've had some new fish that not only did they settle in instantly out of the bag but decided to instantly take over the tank !!). But even with these 'hard-nut' fish, a first day without food won't hurt them (and....yes.....I know the temptation to feed the new buys).

Once you have a few fish in the tank, though, new ones after that could be feed as the other fish will gobble up food anyway and not leave it to go rotten.

As for women who can't be swayed into liking fish.......they are the easiest to sway if done right.

ian

There is a huge range of fish to choose from i found barbs and tetras to be quite resilient. Don't go mad buying all sorts of ornaments keep it as realistic as possible. If you don't go the real plant route there are some great silk plants very realistic. There is nothin like a fish tank for puttin a baby to sleep......another selling point. Best of luck and enjoy ur new tank and baby

LOL thats alot to take in Ian,I will trawl through the other posts on the forum relevent to me now and see if i can make sence of it.

Money is an issue atm so this starter kit will have to do for now, I'm hoping that i can get as big a tank as posible and just tell her self "yeah it did look alot smaller in the shop, must be the size of the room " lol.

When i hear things like quick start bacterial cultures, it sets alarm bells of in my head of me running before i can walk. So i think i'll go down the old fashion route of feeding the tank and waiting a few weeks for it to cycle. But i'm gonna do some more reading up on the method to make sure i konw what i'm doing before i start.My uncle has tropicals for the past 5 years would filter media from his filter be a help to me?

@louis: I do like the look of barbs and tetras,If i were to have 120L tank how many of each would suit that tank?And are those to type's of fish compatible with each other? for instance would they eat the same type of foods? like same water conditions?do they interact well together?Also it was metioned about a character fish in the tank, any suggetsions on this would be very welcome.

Cheers stuart.

One way to 'jump start' the cycling process is to aquire some media from a mature filter an use it to 'seed' your filter. It doesnt use cultures or chemicals and has worked for me.

wylam wrote:

Hi guys , after weeks and weeks of nagging , the wife has finally agreed to let me have a fish tank inside the house. As long as its not too big. she has approved a 60L tank that she has seen in our LFS(but i'm pretty sure when she's not looking I'll buy the 100L one that was on offer) shhhhhhhhh!.)

Consider divorce. An absent wife frees up a whole lotta room in the castle . Turn that 100L into a 100G .

Jay

Do you have a test kit...vital piece of equipment for a start up tank.

Gavin

Yeah gavin i got a test kit from testing my pond water, nitrate/nitrite/PH.

But i think i'll have to put my dreams of a tropical tank on hold for a bit, as the baby might be here sooner than we think.So this topic will have to be shelved for a few months i think until the baby gets settled.At least it will give me more time to read up and study the subject a bit more. (and pick yer brains also)

Cheers Stuart.