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Well, I was thinking of reposting my articles about setting up new aquariums, but then I saw the sticky. Then I figured that since my article goes from set up to maintanance, I would go ahead an post it anyway. So here they are!! All 4 parts, now in one post.

May 24, 2004:

Part 1: The Equipment

So you finally did it! You’ve decided to join one of the most popular hobbies in the world! Don’t you want to start out on the right foot? Of course! Everyone does.

For clarity, I will refer to the five pieces of glass siliconed together OR acrylic box as the TANK and the tank plus filter, water, decorations, etc. as the AQUARIUM

The tank is the most important part of an aquarium, DUH! Without it, you don’t have an aquarium. There is much controversy over the best aquarium size, but for this article, I will be using a 29 US gallon aquarium. It has room for a good number of fish, plus gives a little lee-way for beginner mistakes.

First thing you want to do is buy all the necessary equipment. You need to get a tank, hood, light, stand, gravel, decorations, filter, heater, and thermometer.

When buying your equipment, you have to consider sizes for the tank you have. For a 29 gallon aquarium, that sets some good boundaries for many different items. As for the tank, stand, hood, and light, those are all pretty straight forward. Most of the differences in those will be preferences. For best looks and results, the only thing I suggest for those would to get a fluorescent light instead of an incandescent. Incandescent lights are not as bright and heat the water.

For gravel, this again is a preference but you will want between 25 and 35 pounds of gravel. Decorations are another preference choice but the more natural looking decorations are best. Brightly colored and obviously fake décor will, obviously, make the tank look unnatural, but this is purely preference.

Filtration is a big key in aquarium success. The best filter for a tank this size and a beginner is a power filter that hangs on the back of the tank. These are usually quiet and provide VERY good results. These filters have a GPH rating. This is Gallons Per Hour, or how many gallons of water pass through the filter every hour. A good rule of thumb is to filter the aquariums at least 5 times an hour, so for a 29 gallon, that is 145 GPH, the closest will be 150 GPH. You may want to jump up to about 200 GPH though.

Heating your aquarium is very important. Tropical fish do best in heated aquariums. There are a couple types of heaters, but the two most common are hang-ons and submersibles. They are pretty self explanatory to their differences. However, submersibles tend to be of higher quality than hang-on type heaters. Another rule of thumb is to have 5 watts per gallon of water for heaters, meaning a 29 gallon would need a 145 watt heater, and 150 watt heaters are very common. Thermometers are cheap and very much needed as heaters may sometimes fail and heat the water too much, and thermometers will show this.

Below is a shopping list you may want to print out and take to the store to shop with:

29 Gallon Tank
Proper Sized Stand (usually 30x12 inch footprint)
Proper Hood and Light
25 to 35 Pounds of Gravel
Decorations
100 to 150 GPH Filter
150 Watt Heater
Thermometer

Talk to a sales associate to make sure you are getting the best quality equipment. Make sure to be careful with all equipment.

Part 2: Setting it All Up

So now you have all this equipment and nothing to do with it. You really want it set-up and some fish inside of it swimming all around. Well, that is soon to come, but not just yet.

First, you want to make sure your equipment is not broken. As of right now you can only look for visual signs that it is broken, because testing them usually cannot be done.

The exception here is the tank. This is the most important item to test. To do so, in an area than can be wet, lay some paper-towels or newspaper down so that the tank may be laid down onto them, with the paper towels sticking out around the base. Then fill the tank, careful not to spill any water on to the paper towels. Then let the tank, filled with water, sit for about 30 minutes. Then check the paper to see if there are any wet spots. If so, make sure that it either came from the tank or leaked out. If it leaked out of the tank, you must take it back to the store for a replacement. There is no need to buy silicone to repair it when you can get a perfectly fine tank for free (at least the store SHOULD replace a defective tank).

Cleaning the gravel is a must. Most gravel will only require about 1 to 3 rinsings, as you want to get as much dust out as possible. Giving all decorations a quick rinse will be good for them also.

Now you are ready to start the set-up process. First, find the location where you wish to put the tank. An area that is not by any ventilation ducts and does not receive direct sunlight is best. You must also consider if the house can hold the tank in that spot. Aquariums, on average, weight about 10 pounds per gallon, making an aquarium weight about 290 pounds. Newer homes will not have a problem with this, where older homes may want to be checked prior to set up.

First step is to position the stand in the spot that you want the aquarium to be. Then place the aquarium on the stand and double check that it is in the spot that you want it to be. Moving a full aquarium is hard, and can result in many problems!

Now putting the gravel in the aquarium can be done in many ways. One way is to put it in one handful/cupful at a time. Another is placing the bucket in which the gravel was rinsed into the tank and then pushing the gravel out on to the bottom. You do not want to pour the gravel in as it may break the bottom of the tank. It must be PLACED into the tank, not dropped.

Now fill the tank to about 3/4 full. You can now start to plant decorations into the tank and see how they will look under water. Now is also a good time to put the heater and thermometer into the tank. DO NOT PLUG THE HEATER IN! You must wait for at least 15 minutes of the heater being the water for it to be plugged in. Once all the decorations and the heater are placed into the tank, and the gravel straightened up, you can continue to fill the tank. Now place the filter on the back of the tank and fill the well with water. You can now plug the filter in. After the heater has been in the aquarium for about 15 minutes, you can plug it in.

Now simply place the hood on top of the tank and turn on the light. If your heater does not have a thermostat, you can adjust the temperature by turning it up slightly until the pilot light goes out. Keep doing this and raising the temperature until it reaches the desired temperature, which would be about 78*F.

Leave the tank sitting for about a day before adding any fish, which is part 3!

Part 3: Time for Fish

So you now have that beauty set up in the room. You can’t wait to get some fish in there! You’re already dreaming of what it will look like when you have lots and LOTS of fish in there. You were looking at the fish the last time you were at the fish store, and you have already planned for 10 of those, 5 of those, a couple of these, about 15 or so of that, and….

WOAH there killer! Assuming you have started out with a 29 gallon tank, you cannot add that many fish! Fish need their space. A rule of thumb is to have 1 inch of fish per gallon of water. For example, your 29 gallon aquarium can hold 29 inches of fish. Now in this calculation, the fish is measured by the tip of its mouth to the base of the tail, you do not count the tail.

One problem with this calculation is that a 10 inch long fish can be put into a 10 gallon aquarium. This is, obviously, not true. The calculation is only for small fish, mainly those smaller than 5 inches.

Now even under the inch-per-gallon rule, there are still many fish that you can choose from to put into your aquarium. Now I’m going to narrow your selection of fish down even more. This is because many fish are not hardy enough to live in a new aquarium.

This doesn’t mean you are now limited to only the ugliest fish there are. There are still a lot of fish available that are very colorful. Possibly the best beginner’s fish, Zebra Danios are great for new aquariums. They are extremely hardy, active, and VERY cheap.

Angelfish are one of the most beautiful aquarium fish, and yet they are also cheap and hardy. These are also good beginner’s fish. Kribensis or Kribs are also good beginner’s fish. They are small, colorful, and pretty hardy.

However BEFORE you buy any fish, you should plan out what you want. Use the forums here on FP to get some suggestions or go to the profile section to see some fish you might like. Talk to workers at fish stores and get suggestions from them. You always want a plan when starting a tank.

When you go to buy fish, you need to also buy test kits. You will want ones that test pH, GH, Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate. The last three are key since they are used to see where an aquarium is in the nitrogen cycle. The most common reason for fish death is the nitrogen cycle killing the fish. The nitrogen cycle is one of most important things to understand when keeping fish.

When fish breathe and consume food, they put ammonia into the aquarium. Many people know that ammonia kills a lot of things, and fish are one of those things. Thus, ammonia must be removed from the aquarium. When you purchased your filter, you may have noticed it came with filter media already in it. If it did, it most like had black charcoal in it, also know as activated carbon. This removes a lot of contaminations from the water. This is known as chemical filtration. However, it does not remove ammonia, which is removed by biological filtration.

This is done by colonies of bacteria. These colonies are beneficial bacteria, since they remove ammonia from the aquarium. They live off of the ammonia as a food source. However, they do not complete the nitrogen cycle. While they are living off of the ammonia, they are producing nitrite. Nitrite is not as deadly as ammonia, yet it is still harmful to your fish.

Nitrite is removed by another bacterium, similar to the kind that removes ammonia. As the bacteria converts ammonia into nitrite, these bacteria convert nitrite into nitrate. These two things need to be carefully read as they are only one letter different, however very different in the aquarium. Nitrate is not very harmful to freshwater fish, and nitrate tends to build up in the aquarium. Removal of nitrates will be discussed in Part 4.

When you buy fish, you cannot buy them all at once. You must buy them slowly and introduce them at certain times. When you purchase your first fish, only purchase 5 or 6 small fish, or 2 or 3 bigger fish. When you are looking at fish in the store, you want ones that are active, brightly colored (if they can be&#8230, and are not being picked on by the other fish.

When you get your fish, they will be placed into a bag with some air in the top of the bag. You want just enough water in the bag that the fish stays completely wet, and then the rest of the bag should be air. When fish are in the bag, they do not need to swim around with a lot of room (yet they shouldn’t only have a little bit of water and not be able to move).

When you get home, float the bag in the aquarium for about 15 minutes. This will let the temperature of the bag change to the temperature of the aquarium. You then want to open the bag, and let a little of the aquarium water into the bag. This will let the water conditions of the bag be similar to the water conditions in the aquarium.

When introducing fish into a new aquarium, you do not want to simply pour the bag into the aquarium. You want take another container. Pour the bag slowly into a fish net so the fish drops into the net. Then put the fish into the aquarium. This prevents any free-floating contaminants in the store water from getting into your aquarium.

Now over the course of a few days, ammonia will start to rise in the aquarium. Use the ammonia test kit to find how much ammonia is in the aquarium. You will want to change about 10 to 20 percent of the water everyday while there is ammonia. Once the ammonia starts to drop, you should start to test nitrite. It will also rise and fall. Once the nitrite falls, you can now add more fish! YAY!!

Repeat this for the next batch of fish. Do this until your aquarium is full. Good luck!

Part 4: Maintenance

So now you have this beautiful aquarium, completely set up with fish swimming around. But here comes the fun part! Brown water, algae-covered glass, horrid smells, and best of all, dead fish! OH, I JUST CAN’T WAIT!!!

These aren’t what you expected when you first bought that tank did ya? Nobody wants this from their aquarium! Good news is it can be prevented! How? Being a good fish keeper!

Being a good fish keeper doesn’t mean feeding your fish all they want, when they want. In fact, this will result in more bad than good. Let’s start with taking care of the aquarium before having to fix it.

First off, feeding your fish is a good thing to do. Your fish will agree. So how often should you feed your fish? If you look around the Fish Profiles boards, you will find many different suggestions as how to feed them. Some say twice a day with what they can eat for 5 minutes. Some say 3 minutes. Others say 7 minutes. Some don’t say time, but instead, a pinch of food twice a day. Well how big is a pinch? In chemistry, I can’t recall a pinch being a set measurement of volume. Most people will agree that to feeding them twice a day, so this is a good rule to follow. I just try to make sure all my fish get a good amount of food, without too much being left over.

You want to make sure ALL your fish are getting food. If you have bottom feeders, you need to make sure that they get their share of the food also. Make sure that they are eating, because some fish will pick food off the bottom, even if they are not bottom feeders. Algae eaters of all kinds cannot just live off the algae growing in the tank. They need to be feed also. Sinking algae wafers usually get the job done, but remember, other fish may also want to eat the wafers too. If you have nocturnal fish, make sure you feed them at night. A trick is to feed them about 30 minutes before turning on the lights. The other fish will still be “asleep” while the nocturnal fish can get their food easily.

Changing the water is VERY important to aquarium success. This does not mean topping off the evaporated water. Only water evaporates, not anything else in the water. You must take out old water and put new water in. For best results, you will want to have the new water to be as similar to the aquarium water as possible. Most tap water has chlorine in it, so it must be taken out. This can be done by tap water conditioners for aquariums, or by aerating the water.

You should change your aquarium water every two or three weeks for best results. Also, while doing so, you may want to “vacuum” your aquarium. This involves a tube and hose that sucks up the nasty stuff on the bottom of your aquarium. This is a quick and simple way to kill two birds with one stone.

Your filter media must also be changed. The mechanical filtration will get clogged up and must be cleaned, while the activated carbon will eventually run out of “cleaning power.” Changing the filter floss/foam/sponge/or whatever you have and removing the old carbon and putting new in is simple. The container in which the media comes in will tell you how to do this.

Another important thing to do is check water parameters often. If anything suddenly changes, something may be wrong with your fish. This is a great way to prevent disease in aquariums as the parameters will shows signs of problems before the problems arise.

Remember, these articles are only a guide to how you should take care of your aquariums. The rules and suggestions I put forth are not set in stone and the only way to take care of an aquarium. I hope that these helped you to start in one of the most popular hobbies today, and that you will continue to keep fish for many years to come.

Fin.

Good read Racso!

Racso

All that info is just a little bit late for me. When I started getting interested I dont think the word home computer was widely used if at all and certainly not the WWW. All I had was some books full of technical jargon and very confusing.

In short an extremly helpful article well done.

Keith

Last edited by keithgh at 09-Feb-2005 02:03

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Keith, when you started getting interested computers were the size of ware houses.

*runs*

Geez keith, you should know that you need to use your time machine to go into the future, read this article, THEN go back into the past!!! The I would have been helpful before I was even born!!!