New Aquarium

[InbetweenDreams]

So I thought it would be neat to share some tips and things I have learned about starting a freshwater aquarium, some plans I have for the 55 gallon I am eventually going to get.

So I had an old 10 gallon (38 liter) aquarium and someone triggered the interest to start a new aquarium. I have kept fish in the past but ended in failure and there's reasons for that which I will touch on, some of them are obvious. The unfortunate thing is that in the past information wasn't as widely available and fish, like any other pets, get sick and a lot of things can kill them and quickly if you don't know what to look for. This time I have had more success in keeping things under control and being able to identify things like Ich for example has helped me not kill everything in the tank.

There are several things I think people who are interested in keeping fish should know. A smaller tank, while cheaper, does not make it easier to maintain, water in the 10 gallon tank can change rapidly and you must have a freshwater test kit, one that measures pH, GH (general hardness), KH (carbonate hardness), Nitrite, Nitrate and Ammonia at the minimum, if you're doing an aquarium with live plants (commonly referred as a planted tank) you might want to monitor other things like phosphate, iron and so forth but that's not as critical. The other thing people don't realize is that goldfish require a large tank, those fish produce a lot of waste and that waste will turn into ammonia and will kill everything in the tank in short order. So research fish that are easy to take care of and even better find fish that will tolerate the water you have coming out of the tap. So if your water has a lower ph and if really soft, find fish that already like that, that just makes the maintenance that much easier. So keeping African Cichlids might be out of the question for instance, a lot of people want them because they're a pretty fish but they're not the easiest to do. The other thing is to not push a bunch of fish in a tank all at once, this is to avoid an ammonia spike.

You may often hear about a new tank having to "cycle," this is in reference to the nitrogen cycle. While my understanding is basic, here's the basics... Fish eat food, some of the food is wasted, some of the food becomes poop. The waste turns into ammonia, which is toxic, the filters grow beneficial (nitrifing bacteria) which consume the ammonia and produce nitrite which is less toxic. Other beneficial bacteria will consume the nitrite and produce nitrate which is only toxic to fish at higher levels. A good reason to have live plants in the tank is that they can reduce nitrates and nitrites which helps reduce how often you need to do water changes.

The more common things I see and have done myself in the past is mixing fish that don't belong together, like tiger barbs, zebra danios and a pleco... The pleco ate some of the fish in the tank. Mind you this was over 10 years ago and the guy at the pet store simply didn't care and was interested in making sales. So you have to do some of your own research because the guy at the fish store might not know that much, might just want to make a sale, etc.

I decided it would be good to plants in the tank. I really like the look of carpeting plants...although it will never carpet in this tank because I bought inert substrate. One of the mistakes I made was not doing enough research on the substrate I needed, so I have to stick root tabs in if I want anything to thrive and lighting might be an issue. So if you're doing plants 3 things how much light do you need, get something like Fluval Stratum that has nutrients the plants need but also understand how different substrates can effect your water parameters. Finally you'll need fertilizer.

So when it comes to the 10 gallon tank the plants are probably a loss except for a few that I wised up and stuck root tabs under or didn't bury the rhizome. It is a learning process.

I decided that a betta and 6 neon tetras was a good number of fish for a 10 gallon. That so far has worked out but I did make one mistake. You should always treat or quarantine all new fish. Many fish have or carry diseases that can either kill them or kill your other fish. So while my plans are to start a 55 gallon tank, I do plan on keeping the 10 gallon for this reason. Some of the neons had Ich which at first I didn't recognize as Ich because of my ignorance. There are 3 things you should consider treating your fish for, one is Ich which is super common, the other is with Maracyn or a medicine with erythromycin as the active ingredient and API General Cure. Don't count on the fish store, or Petsmart to have done this ahead of time. If I had done all that I wouldn't be dealing with some of the water issues....some of the medications can kill off a lot of the beneficial bacteria which leads to elevated ammonia and that's something you don't want to deal with in a newly setup tank that is in the middle of cycling. So treat your fish or find out if your fish store quarantines fish before they sell them at the very least.

So finally here are some pics...









So this is what I'm hopefully going to use for the aquarium stand. I went ahead an painted it. Went with beach-y colors... I just didn't want something pain. So the important thing to keep in mind with making your own aquarium the surface has to be flat and level. So with plywood and 2x4's and such they're often twisted or warped, so keep that in mind as you will have to address that either by sanding, hand planing, etc. Look up DIY aquarium stands as what I have was already a table that I'm beefing up for this purpose. Also consider laying down a yoga mat or a foam pad to help with any deformities on the surface.



Right now I'm thinking of doing a school of neon tetras and a school of silvertip tetras, pygmy corydoras and possibly cherry shrimp. Not sure about snails, I need to find out what snails prefer or can live in water with lower pH, some of the problems with invertebrates is the lower pH can dissolve shells and whatnot. I'll post more, this will probably take me into 2021 before everything is all up and going.