fishy facts (How To Set Up An Aquarium In Your Home)

Name: barbie84

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Product:	How To Set Up An Aquarium In Your Home
Date:	04/02/08 (362 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: relaxing and easy maintanance

Disadvantages: none

Right where do i start, well i suppose chosing what type of set up you want would be as good a place as any.

Choosing your tank
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I would recomend buying the largest tank you possibly have the space for as the larger the tank the easier it is to keep your water chemistry stable.

The most popular tanks are glass held together with sealent which all of these tanks need to be stripped down and have there sealent replaced every ten years, if you dont like the idea of this you may be better suited to a plastic tank as these are made with out seams so never need resealing and are actually very strong, they do scratch easier than glass but they are available in some great shapes these days, i have a perspecs (plastic) coffee table fish tank which looks great.

Setting up your tank
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A tank full of water is very heavy, sometimes impossible to move so decide on a definate place for your fish tank.

This idealy should be near to a power point and have a good space above the tank to allow for cleaning.

Choose a strong level surface if you havent chosen to buy a tank with a stand or base to put your tank on.

You shouldnt put your tank directly onto a hard surface, you should use either polystyrene, cork or sponge under your tank to stop it cracking when you add the water.

I know this is going to sound realy daft to say this but dont put a large fish tank up stairs in your house as it is likely to go through the floor due to the weight, a friend of mine made this mistake and came home from work one night to find his fish tank in his livingroom instead of his bedroom.

Try to posision your tank away from direct sunlight as the sun shine directly on you tank can increase your water temperature and will cause a lot of alga growth, you know the slimey green stuff.

You will need a heater and a filter for your tank, these are available from most pet shops, i cant tell you here which one to buy as it will depend on the size of your tank but either at the same time as buying your tank or once you know the size of your tank the assistant at the pet shop will be able to tell you what size heater and filter you will need.

I use gravel in the botoms of all my fish tanks, gravel is available in a lot of different colours so you could even colour co-ordinate this to the colour scheem in the room your tank is in.
A word of warning though if you have chosen an under gravel filter system remember to fit this before adding your gravel.

Right then, now you should be ready to put your filter and heater in your tank but remember dont switch these on untill your water is in as common sence should tell you filters will burn out without water and heaters unless you have brought a type specially designed to switch off once out of water will crack

Right then now you can fill your tank with water, switch on your filter and heater and set the thermostat on your heater to 24'c or 75'f

you will probably already have a light in the hood of your tank if brought new but if not you will need to get one from the pet shop.

Right your tank is ready, leave it for 3 days to begin maturing

plants
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After 3 days you can add plants to your tank.

Hairgrass is a nice plant which looks like a pampus grass.
Amazon sword plants look a bit like a minuture rubber plant.
twisted vallis is my favorite as it is thin but tall leaved allowing your fish to swim in and out of the leaves.


leave your tank for a further 4 days then you will need to test its ph level, you can buy a testing kit for around £5 from your pet shop to do this. all you do is use the tube provided in your kit to take a little bit of your water, add the required amount of drops of solution to the tube as stated on the box, shake the 2 together and look at the colour against your ph scale on the box, you need a ph of 7

If it shows a 7 then great you can go and get some fish, if not leave it another day and test again, dont worry you wont need to buy another test kit, each kit will test about 20 samples.

Buying your fish
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obviously if you are intending to just keep one large fish like my oscar you can just go and buy your fish but if you want a tank full of smaller fish you need to introduce these gradually, at about 8 fish per week

for a tropical tank i would recomend:
cardinal tetras
leopard catfish
glow light tetras
glass catfish
sucking loaches
neon tetras
guppys
mollys
minnows
gourami
sword tails
platy
rummy nosed tetra
zebra danio

these are all ideal community fish

Cleaning
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once your tank is up and running you will have to do a 20% water change on your tank about every 3 weeks, this isnt difficult all you do is take out 1/5 of your water and replace with fresh water, at the same time as doing this swill your filter sponges out but not in tap water use the water you have just taken out of your tank as this helps keep a good build up of bacteria which is essential in your tank.

Decorations
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You can use a plastic back drop to give you a picture at the back of your tank and ornaments to decorate your tank in any type of theme you like but remember to wash all ornaments before adding them to your tank.

Now all you have to do is sit back and enjoy relaxing wholst watching your new tank.

Summary: thanks for reading and i hope i havent bored any one to death