Advice for the aquarium newbie
Jan 07 '04
The Bottom Line Get the largest tank you can, do not overpopulate, test the water, and enjoy the exotic world of fish!
It's been 2 or 3 years since I gave up my last fishtank with its occupants to a good home, but I still want to share some knowledge I acquired over the years of keeping fish - rather simple to keep, such as livebearers, barbs, gouramis but also angel fish. Most of my advice is aimed at beginners.
Why get an aquarium?
Aquaria are certainly less popular in North America compared to Europe, due in part to the latter's more dense and urban lifestyle that precludes many people from keeping dogs and cats. However, an aquarium can be a pleasant addition to both a small condo and a large house - fish are far more distant from humans on the evolutionary scale than dogs, cats or even hamsters and parrakeets; they are often multi-coloured and lively, have interesting play and mating habits. Fish require considerably less care and maintenance than warm-blooded pets - I have no problem setting up a fishtank to teach a two- or three-year old about caring for pets, but would think twice about getting a puppy for a child that young.
On the flip side, you cannot "pet" a fish, and most fish, being less advanced than even turtles and snakes, do not recognize their caretaker.
Background
Fish live in a little ecosystem of their own, and it is the owner's responsibility to maintain its livability. When the air you breathe is too hot or too cold, or the water you drink tastes wrong, you will notice it and take measures that will also help your air-breathing pet - not so with fish. The temperature can drop overnight, killing the fishtank inhabitants, while you are comfortable under a thick blanket. Adding tap water, perfectly fit for drinking, to the fishtank can do bad things to the ecosystem. You have to rely on indirect information such as thermometer readings, water analysis results, to keep your aquarium inhabitants happy. This should not, however, scare away beginners - this is much simpler than it may sound.
Freshwater vs. Saltwater
No question there - freshwater only for beginners. I have not kept a saltwater tank, but read in a few books that it is quite challenging to maintain a stable saltwater ecosystem.
What size aquarium?
The bigger the better. I would suggest a 10-gallon an absolute minimum, and a 20-gallon (just under 80 litres) a good size for a beginner - as long as you don't overpopulate these. The reason to get the largest aquarium possible financially and logistically is that the larger ecosystem is more stable to chemical, temperature and biological fluctuations. Moreover, by getting a larger aquarium than is recommended for your planned number of fish, you can save money by not getting a filter or even the aerator - which, as I write below, are nice but not required.
So, how many fish can you put in a 20-gallon tank? It depends greatly on the type and size of fish you will be purchasing. I have not checked a book on aquaria lately, but remember their guidelines looked reasonable. My rule of thumb is to put no more than 6 small-to-medium friendly fish in a 10-gallon tank, and no more than 10 or 12 in a 20-gallon one.
It goes without saying that tiny half-gallon jugs with colourful betas sold at your local Walmart should be avoided as torture chambers. A human equivalent is living in a non-walk-in closet. More information on where to buy fish is below.
Aquarium equipment
The three basic types of equipment are the heater, the aerator, and the filter.
If you have tropical fish and the temperature in your house drops below 70F in any season, you probably need a heater for your tank. One of the Epinions reviews recommends a fully submersible type as more reliable, but I had no problem over the years with the cheaper partially-submerged type - never overheated a tank. The heater should definitely be equipped with a thermostat, so that an (approximately) constant temperature is maintained.
While an aerator is nice to have, it is not, strictly speaking, required. If you don't have a lot of fish in a larger tank, enough oxygen will get in the water through the surface. Since aerators are inexpensive and ensure constant water currents through the tank, I do recommend them.
I have yet to use a filter, and I kept the same tanks and fish for years. A combination of snails, bottom-eating fish, and bacteria may ensure that you have little solid waste to filter or get rid of.
Water they breathe...
This is one of the most important aspects of your aquatic pets ecosystem. As I wrote before, what is fine for drinking by humans may be lethal for fishes.
Two harmful chemicals you should try to minimize in the water are chlorine and ammonia. If the tap water is highly chlorinated (more likely in the summer), it is sufficient to let it stand for a few days in an open container (such as a bucket) for most of the chlorine to escape. This is not the case with ammonia - you should test your water for its concentration (buy a kit, or, some pet stores offer free or inexpensive analysis on-site). If there is too much ammonia, there are chemicals that can bind it into insoluble salts and thus make it harmless.
Two other parameters of water are its hardness and acidity. Hardness reflects the amount of calcium salts that form the residue on a tea-kettle; if you live in the area where the water is very hard, you are likely to have already installed a water softener.
Most tap water is neutral or close to neutral. As you fill a tank and populate it with fish, it will become very slightly acidic and may have a slight brown or yellow colour, but no smell. This is normal. Some fish such as cichlids do require harder, more alkaline water but I would not recommend these for a beginner.
Setting Up
After you buy your tank and equipment and connect all the tubes and cords, do not rush to buy the fish. Put the gravel in the tank, fill it with water (after making sure ammonia and chlorine levels are ok, see above), and let it sit for 2-3 days. This is now good time to add a few live plants - while live plants are not required for a successful tank biosystem, they are highly beneficial. A few small snails (buy or ask to get them for free at a pet store) are good.
After a few more days, it is ok to add the fish. After you bring the plastic bag with the fish home, do not open it yet - put it in the tank and let if float for an hour pr so, so that the water temperature becomes the same as in the tank. I would then open the bag and let some tank water into it, to lessen the shock from chemical differences in the water. If the fish do not panic (or die), it is ok to dump them gently into the tank after an hour or two.
Now, what fish should a beginner, or a person not ready yet to have "difficult" species, buy?
Fish for the beginner
Various types of goldfish are a popular buy by a beginner. This is my personal preference, but I don't care much for these. About the only good thing that can be said about them is that one may not to heat a goldfish tank during the cold season. While goldfish varieties certainly look exotic, they have been bred for hundreds or thousands of years exclusively for shape and appearance. There is nothing natural about them - they are freshwater equivalents of bichons and French bulldogs. Goldfish eat and excrete a lot, they are not playful, and I have yet to observe any kind of group behaviour in them.
For a beginner, I would suggest three types of tropical fish I am most familiar with: livebearers, barbs and gouramis. Livebearers include guppies, swordtails, platys and mollies. The last three varieties are larger, less fragile, less inbred and may actually bear the young in the simplest conditions. One warning, though - they will also eat their young occasionally, where a large aquarium with lots of floating greens and other hiding places comes in handy. Special birthing tanks with a double bottom through which the young can slide down but the adult fish cannot, can be bought or constructed.
Black mollies are beautiful, but I read they can benefit from slightly salty water rich in calcium, so they are not ideal companions for pure freshwater fish. None of the livebearers are aggressive (except to their own or related young), unless the aquarium is seriously overcrowded.
Barbs are pretty, lively, and have interesting school behaviours. The striped ones are the most common, but the cherry, green and black ones are also popular. They require warmer water than the livebearers (I would suggest 75F), and can occasionally nib on other fish's fins - do not put barbs in the same tank with slow fish with long fins, such as angelfish. Barbs, as puppies, should be bought small and allowed to grow to their natural sizes. This is a rather slow process that can take many months.
Gouramis and their ilk (betas are related) are tropical fishes adapted to life in muddy shallow water poor in oxygen. They developed a backup system that allows them to use air for breathing - this is the "reason" betas are sold in tiny bowls I mentioned above. Gouramis can tolerate a higher density of fish in a tank, but they prefer when there is no film on the surface of the water, so that they can breathe air occasionally. In good conditions, some gouramis grow quite large, a good reason to avoid initial overpopulation.
Where to buy
In my experience, an established independent pet shop, particularly specializing in fish, is a much better choice than a chain pet store - for the same reason a neighborhood deli is likely to have better food, for somewhat higher price, that a McDonalds. Of the two chain petstores in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, PetCo seems to have a somewhat better reputation than PetSmart. And if you look at the number of dead fish in Walmart's fish tanks and observe how promptly (not!) they are removed, you will be able to make your own decisions on whether to shop there.
Final words
I did not cover many aspect of fish-keeping - feeding, breeding, choosing gravel, plants, etc. I hope my review will benefit a newbie as well as solicit feedback from a more advanced hobbyist.
This review was inspired by Nice to watch, a lot of work epinion written by opinionated3 - I disagree it's lots of work, but a good review worth reading.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
asafono
|
|
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota
Reviews written: 39
Trusted by: 21 members
About Me:
I have no principles; all I've got is nerves - Akutagawa Ryunosuke.
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.