Fish

[Rico1304]

Liverpool lad, I didn't know you had a parrot, but heard you'd had a cock or two

 

(apologies mate, it's my favourite joke and it doesn't get out much. You'd be surprised how few people start conversations about parrots)

[Charles Penrose]

Right, this is my domain, I've kept fish for twelve years and currently have a seven foot long, 800 litre tank full of wild caught fish from Lake Malawi. I've made every mistake there is to make.

 

Firstly, do your research and be prepared to do the work. You're going to effectively be building a delicately balanced eco system in your house that'll fall apart if you don't do the right maintenance on it. The main issue is that with a fish tank being self contained, there are none of natures many ways of ridding the environment of harmful waste. Read up a little bit on the nitrogen cycle. I've summarised its stages here.

 

- Fish waste releases Ammonia into the water. This is very harmful.

- A colony of bacteria develop over time, who feed on and convert the ammonia into Nitrite. This is even more harmful.

- A second colony of bacteria develop to feet on the Nitrite. This converts the NitrIte into NitrAte. This is a much less harmful substance and tolerable at relatively low levels. You will always have some NitrAte present in even the most well established, well run tank.

 

Now here is the important bit. In nature Nitrates are diluted by fresh water, used to feed plants etc. In your tank, you'll be removing them by making regular water changes. As your own tap water will contain some Nitrate (check your water board for a breakdown of your tap water to find the level) you need to be doing this regularly. I'm talking 25% a week here to keep that at a minimum, perhaps much more during the early stages.

 

The sticking point with the whole Nitrogen cycle, particularly amongst new fishkeepers, is that is takes a while to establish. You can't simply dunk a tanks worth of fish in and let them get on with it. Within about twelve hours you'll get a huge spike in ammonia, your fish will become stressed and die. You'll see great outbreaks of diseases you thought were Science fiction and it becomes a shitty, horrible, extremely difficult to reverse cycle. Once your tank gets struck down by one disease/affliction, then another invariably follows. There are countless pathogens just waiting for their chance, many already on your fish waiting to strike. It will take weeks to develop properly. Many people seem to think letting your tank sit and run on its own for a week will do it. It does nothing as there is no ammonia source being added to the water. So you have two options.

 

1) The easter one. Stock your tank, extremely lightly (one or two fish probably) that can introduce an ammonia source to the water. Bare in mind you are putting them into a harmful, stressful environment not initially equipped to deal with their waste. This is the traditional route and the one I would advise you take. Now for this you ideally need to be adding what are known as 'Hardy' Fish, or those who are able to tolerate a little ammonia/stress better than some of the more sensitive types. The normal choices are the likes of Goldfish or, if you go down the Tropical fish route, Platys (which are nice and colourful) or Danios. Even here, you need to keep the fish to a minimum. Slowly these fish will produce the ammonia which the first stage of bacteria need to develop, and then in turn the second stage of bacteria will develop. It's important here to get a liquid test kit (Get the one by API) to test your water. You need to know what is going on in your tank. If you test daily, you can ultimately find out what chemistry is going on on your tank and where in the cycle you are.

 

2) Add a separate source of ammonia to your tank. This is what I did. I added pure ammonia to my tank and let the cycle develop without fish. This is quite complicated with you calculating 'parts per million' of ammonia in the water, and also takes a few weeks. The upside is that, at the end of it, you can fully stock your whole tank into a pre-established tank. I won't go into detail here, but PM me if you want to do down that route.

 

I may have already put you off here, but I'd estimate that 75% or more of new fishkeepers give up after a few weeks. There is a wealth of information out there, but sadly most shops just want to make money. If you find a place that wants to sell you your tank and fish on the same day, then run a fucking mile and go elsewhere. They just want to sell as much as you can and are happy enough to see you come back daily buying disease treatments and new fish. It is difficult to rid of tank of even the most common diseases (white spot, etc) so do things right to begin with and you'll end up enjoying it. It's all about patience.

 

It is true that larger tanks are easier to keep going that smaller tanks. Whilst you'll be changing more water, the effects of sudden changes in water chemistry and less severe, less enclosed and as such easier to manage. I'm not advocating you getting a large tank but a traditional size of 24"x12" isn't a bad place to start.

 

Feel free to ask me questions on here. I'm more than happy to give a few pointers.

[VladimirIlyich]

 

Stick dead goldfish down the bog' date=' she'd see the funny side in that.[/quote']

 

We did this when a goldfish died when our kids were young and told them we'd released it in the local canal.

[Lee909]

Get a Norwegian Blue parrot.

[TheBitch]

Great point by Charles there about quality of shop you're buying from, you want someone who you can talk to and is knowledgeable on the subject, not some spotty, pubeless meff who's selling you shit he has no idea about.

[Plev]

Right, this is my domain, I've kept fish for twelve years and currently have a seven foot long, 800 litre tank full of wild caught fish from Lake Malawi. I've made every mistake there is to make.

 

Firstly, do your research and be prepared to do the work. You're going to effectively be building a delicately balanced eco system in your house that'll fall apart if you don't do the right maintenance on it. The main issue is that with a fish tank being self contained, there are none of natures many ways of ridding the environment of harmful waste. Read up a little bit on the nitrogen cycle. I've summarised its stages here.

 

- Fish waste releases Ammonia into the water. This is very harmful.

- A colony of bacteria develop over time, who feed on and convert the ammonia into Nitrite. This is even more harmful.

- A second colony of bacteria develop to feet on the Nitrite. This converts the NitrIte into NitrAte. This is a much less harmful substance and tolerable at relatively low levels. You will always have some NitrAte present in even the most well established, well run tank.

 

Now here is the important bit. In nature Nitrates are diluted by fresh water, used to feed plants etc. In your tank, you'll be removing them by making regular water changes. As your own tap water will contain some Nitrate (check your water board for a breakdown of your tap water to find the level) you need to be doing this regularly. I'm talking 25% a week here to keep that at a minimum, perhaps much more during the early stages.

 

The sticking point with the whole Nitrogen cycle, particularly amongst new fishkeepers, is that is takes a while to establish. You can't simply dunk a tanks worth of fish in and let them get on with it. Within about twelve hours you'll get a huge spike in ammonia, your fish will become stressed and die. You'll see great outbreaks of diseases you thought were Science fiction and it becomes a shitty, horrible, extremely difficult to reverse cycle. Once your tank gets struck down by one disease/affliction, then another invariably follows. There are countless pathogens just waiting for their chance, many already on your fish waiting to strike. It will take weeks to develop properly. Many people seem to think letting your tank sit and run on its own for a week will do it. It does nothing as there is no ammonia source being added to the water. So you have two options.

 

1) The easter one. Stock your tank, extremely lightly (one or two fish probably) that can introduce an ammonia source to the water. Bare in mind you are putting them into a harmful, stressful environment not initially equipped to deal with their waste. This is the traditional route and the one I would advise you take. Now for this you ideally need to be adding what are known as 'Hardy' Fish, or those who are able to tolerate a little ammonia/stress better than some of the more sensitive types. The normal choices are the likes of Goldfish or, if you go down the Tropical fish route, Platys (which are nice and colourful) or Danios. Even here, you need to keep the fish to a minimum. Slowly these fish will produce the ammonia which the first stage of bacteria need to develop, and then in turn the second stage of bacteria will develop. It's important here to get a liquid test kit (Get the one by API) to test your water. You need to know what is going on in your tank. If you test daily, you can ultimately find out what chemistry is going on on your tank and where in the cycle you are.

 

2) Add a separate source of ammonia to your tank. This is what I did. I added pure ammonia to my tank and let the cycle develop without fish. This is quite complicated with you calculating 'parts per million' of ammonia in the water, and also takes a few weeks. The upside is that, at the end of it, you can fully stock your whole tank into a pre-established tank. I won't go into detail here, but PM me if you want to do down that route.

 

I may have already put you off here, but I'd estimate that 75% or more of new fishkeepers give up after a few weeks. There is a wealth of information out there, but sadly most shops just want to make money. If you find a place that wants to sell you your tank and fish on the same day, then run a fucking mile and go elsewhere. They just want to sell as much as you can and are happy enough to see you come back daily buying disease treatments and new fish. It is difficult to rid of tank of even the most common diseases (white spot, etc) so do things right to begin with and you'll end up enjoying it. It's all about patience.

 

It is true that larger tanks are easier to keep going that smaller tanks. Whilst you'll be changing more water, the effects of sudden changes in water chemistry and less severe, less enclosed and as such easier to manage. I'm not advocating you getting a large tank but a traditional size of 24"x12" isn't a bad place to start.

 

Feel free to ask me questions on here. I'm more than happy to give a few pointers.

 

Good advice this ^. The other way of sorting your bacteria out, is if you know someone that already has an established tank, ask for one of their old filter sponges out of the tank, then put it in your own and let it run for a week sans fish. This is what I generally do for family/friends that are starting up a new tank.

[Uncle_Meat]

Marine tanks kick arse, like a giant chemistry set, what with your water test kits, skimmers, phozzy reactors and whatnot.

 

Just to add to all the groovy advice above, one thing well worth getting, IMHO, is your own RO (Reverse Osmosis) water filter. Makes water changes nice and cheap once you've spunked out the intial outlay and trust me, some of the pre-filtered water you get at some aquariums is not as pure as you would think.

 

You will end up on fish forums chatting to a bunch of locals about all this, so you can even make some pocket money back, or at least get yourself into the good books by whacking out RO'ed water amongst them all,.

 

With one of these and a decent testing kit you can get your water absolutely bob on which makes for happy critters.

 

Second top tip, in my book, is a tank with a weir and a sump. You can then keep your skimmer/reactor/filters and all manner of gubbins hidden away leaving a nice uncluttered tank above.

 

 

Or just get a nanocube and a goldfish. It'll save you fucking thousands...

[TheHowieLama]

Could have sworn this was gonna be a boss recipe thread.

[Lee909]

 

[KMD7]

I have 1 goldfish for about 5 years now. It's partner died a few months ago and havent yet bothered to get another. I was told in the pet store that pretty much the same type of goldfish have to be in the tank or they end up poisoning each other. I dont know how true that is but it's what i was told. Maybe Mr Penrose could confirm this

 

Coldwater fish are probably best to start off with.

[Pony Princess]

Good advice from Charles although I'd just say with hardy cold water fish, the main thing I've stuck by for long-living fishes is just don't overfeed.

 

Takes three weeks plus for fish to starve to death but only a day or two of overfeeding to wipe out the whole tank. The more you feed them, the more they shit and ammonia and nitrites build up as Charles says. I've found with my setup, a decent feed once a week is easily enough. Two of the

 

As for tank cost, a nice setup shouldn't cost more than £100. Don't start off with a huge tank. Maybe just a 10-15 gallon tank. Acrylic is nice rather than glass but will scratch.

 

I like the Betta acrylic tanks, look very nice with curved edges.

 

Charles - what kind of filters do you use? My current tank has a gravity filter - are there any pro's / con's to using these?

 

Also, I am having bad problems with green algae at the moment. My room is reasonably bright, the tank doesn't have direct sunlight though. I have the lights set to come on between 7pm and midnight. The local aquarium have just said 'move it to a darker room'. Any ideas apart from moving it? I like it as a focal point in my living room.

 

Also, pics of my favourite cold water fish - the weather loach.

 

 

[Charles Penrose]

Good advice this ^. The other way of sorting your bacteria out, is if you know someone that already has an established tank, ask for one of their old filter sponges out of the tank, then put it in your own and let it run for a week sans fish. This is what I generally do for family/friends that are starting up a new tank.

 

Just a quick note on that. Whilst it's not a bad idea to steal a little bit of filter media, leaving it in a tank without fish for a week does nothing bull kill the colonies of bacteria who have nothing to feed on in the cycle. If you're going to add filter media, then do it as an addition to the with fish idea. If someone would let you, you can also buy a small, cheap, Fluval filter and ask a friend if you can run it in their existing tank for a week. The only bad point about using such methods is that you need to be making sure the tank is clean, settled and almost totally disease free. You don't want to introduce an illness on account of someone else's poor setup.

 

Whilst we are on the filter media point, and I'll say this in bold, NEVER wash your filter media under the tap when cleaning your tank. Part of your weekly clean routine will be to rinse your filter sponges (or similar). You destroy whole colonies of good bacteria when subjecting them to chlorine. Scoop some water out of your tank and just squeeze and swill it around in there.

[Paulie Dangerously]

KidD is desperate for a pet so we agreed she could have some fish.  Our house is tiny so we have bought a 19l tank, it's just set up and we're letting it settle and all that. It has a filter and all that. 

 

I know it's too small for a goldfish but the spakkers at Pet Smart just vaguely pointed me in the direction of the "purple section" and couldn't give me any information on how many fish. 

 

The internet seems to suggest a few guppy types and a snail, or some shrimp.  I'm going to a proper aquatics shop to get the fish but can someone give me some ideas so I can walk in and not look like a fish n00b?