Tropical Fish

I used to keep tropical fish. Get tempted to start again but current impositions of real life mean it is not currently practical.

A little advice if I may...

1) Don't rush to get the fish, set up the tank, plug everything in and let it run for a while to ensure all is ok before adding live stock.

2) You may get a problem with excess algae in the early days but once the fish are added and settle in it should ease off a bit.

3) Get proper plants, even if the fish eat them. Ensure you treat the plants for parasites etc before adding to the tank. Especially watch out for unwanted snails and their jelly like egg clusters.

4) Don't ad too many fish - its tempting but you want healthy uncrowded happy fishies :) Don't rely on aeration to increase the amount of livestock your tank can handle. Remember the amount of livestock in the tank is controlled by the water/air interface surface area, not the volume of the tank. Think about this if you go for an oddly shaped tank.

5) Add a few new fish to the tank at a time. best not to add a load all t once.

6) If at all possible keep new fish in a separate quarantine tank before adding to the main aquarium. You might want to add a few basic treatments while they are there.

7) don't let neighbours strangers etc feed the fish or look after them while you are away. Better left unattended for short periods.

8) Finally - and this is a golden rule someone once told me - you don't really look after the fish. You look after their water!
 
[SKR]Phoenix;12309074 said:
Depends what size tank, what filtration, fish, plants (real/fake?), food, substrate, decoration you want.

Also, do you want tropical or marine.

For a Tropical 125L/29G tank, fully set up you gotta be looking at £500 if you do it properly.

Here's mine:

tank2.jpg


Boesmani Rainbows, Yoyo Loach, Bristle Nose Pleco, Cory Julli's and Amano Shrimp.
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Really like the look of this tank...
Ive got a Jewel Rio 125L tropical tank but it looks abit rubbish at the moment!

I want to start again , totally clear out the gravel and use sand like yours, then I want lots of plants in there as i currently have none :( How would I go about doing this?

My light system is currently broke and my filter doesn't seem to be doing a great job. How often do you change your water?
 
Marine tank for the win :D

Here is a pic of my clowns and BTA to try and convince you.

CRW_4280.jpg


Although they are expensive to set up and maintainance is slightly more demanding than a Tropical tank, you will be blown away by the colour and the variety of life you get in a marine tank in comparison to a tropical tank.

Loving the Malawi tank down the thread here, used to keep them myself! for the guy that said you cant keep anything with them, you can keep them with Clown Loach, and Coolie Loach both of wich seem to live happily with Chiclids.
 
Be wary of buying a pleco "catfish" or plecostomus to give it its full name. Certain types can grow to well over a foot long. Unless your fish stockist knows exactly which type it is I would steer clear, unless you want your tank dominated by a single leviathan. The trouble is they start very small obviously and they pretty much all look alike. My gf got one about 5 years ago and it is currently about 11 inches long and is not far off outgrowing the tank again.
 
Tropical fish are a pain in the ass to look after, i know people on here will probably say otherwise but u have to put a lot of effort in from experience in order for the fish to live longer than a few months. Water changes every week and filter cleaning are not fun IMO, the guy in the fish place told me to worry about PH levels n all sorts but couldnt be bothered. Start of with easy fish to look after like tetras or something.
At the moment all i got left is 1 of those sucker fish(cant remember the real name lol) and they're not exciting to look at.

A friend of mine told me I should just get marine fish cos they're actually easier to look after but a lot more expensive to buy. Not sure how true that is but she knows her fish lol:D

Nice setup Toker, maybe I should go for something like that:)
 
Bubo said:
Be wary of buying a pleco "catfish" or plecostomus to give it its full name. Certain types can grow to well over a foot long. Unless your fish stockist knows exactly which type it is I would steer clear, unless you want your tank dominated by a single leviathan. The trouble is they start very small obviously and they pretty much all look alike. My gf got one about 5 years ago and it is currently about 11 inches long and is not far off outgrowing the tank again.
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Yup , my pleco is just over a ft long now :)
 
Loving the Malawi tank down the thread here, used to keep them myself! for the guy that said you cant keep anything with them, you can keep them with Clown Loach, and Coolie Loach both of wich seem to live happily with Chiclids.
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Never tried coolie's, assumed they would become food.

As for clowns, yeah I know it can be done, but clowns only thrive in groups of at least 3 or more and will grow far larger then the cichlids. In fact, given the right conditions, the clowns get massive!

They also lose colour with age and look quite ill and pale later in life. Although, one of the most interesting fish you can get.

You could strike a balance I supposed and get loaches that don't get too big, but big enough to not fit in the cichleds mouths.
 
mr tommo said:
Really like the look of this tank...
Ive got a Jewel Rio 125L tropical tank but it looks abit rubbish at the moment!

I want to start again , totally clear out the gravel and use sand like yours, then I want lots of plants in there as i currently have none :( How would I go about doing this?

My light system is currently broke and my filter doesn't seem to be doing a great job. How often do you change your water?
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If the lights are broken (the older ones used to get water in them) then it may be the perfect time to upgrade to T5 lighting. Juwel do an exact replacement that supports two T5 tubes.

If you want real plants, I would recommend going T5.

If you are going with lots of plants, I recommend ditching the Juwel Filter and get an external Cannister Filter. The Juwel filter is easy enough to remove as it's just got a few blobs of silicone holding it on.

If you don't want to cycle the whole tank again, maybe change some of the gravel for sand and leave it a couple weeks before doing the rest.

If you get a new filter, run both filters for 1 month before ditching the Juwel.

As for water changes, I change 30% once a week.
 
uknowist said:
A friend of mine told me I should just get marine fish cos they're actually easier to look after but a lot more expensive to buy. Not sure how true that is but she knows her fish lol:D
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Not true at all. If you don't want to do everything necessary for a basic tropical freshwater tank, there is no way you (or your fish) would enjoy marine!
 
skeeny said:
looks like it will cost a shed load of cash, for a decent one!
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You may be surprised at how little you can do it for. As you are a beginner i take it you are just looking at tropicals and not marines? Marines are expensive to setup due to all the extra equipment you need. If it's just tropicals then all you need to start off with is:-

Tank.
Stand (unless you have a very strong sideboard to put it on).
Heater.
Filter.
Lighting.
Substrate (black sand is nice and really makes the fish stand out).
Plant's (either real or artificial).
Water conditioner (removes the chlorine/chloramine and other nasties from the water).

A good idea would be to buy a package of tank/stand/heater/filter etc. It can save you quite a bit of money. A few months ago i got a nice little Tetra Aquart 60 from Pet's at Home as a deal with the cabinet, heater, filter etc included for just over £100. It is a cracking little tank and i have it planted with live plants in fine black gravel. It is home to some X-Ray Tetra's, Redeye Tetras and a Otocinclus Catfish. More will be added soon. It is simple to maintain and looks really nice. It is dwarfed by my other tanks though, a Juwel Trigon 190 (very very nice) and a Hagon Duo 1200 (soon to be shut down).

I let all my tanks mature for 6-8 weeks before any fish go in them. I use Hagen Cycle to fishless cycle the tank and Hagen Haloex as a water conditioner as it removes Chloramine (which they now add to our water). Some water conditioners such as Tetra's offerings do not remove chloramine and i found Hagens Aqua-Plus to be very uneconomical.

If you have one locally, Pet's at Home is a good place to find some bargain fish. Every now and then they have some "available for a limited time only" fish. Nine times out of ten the people who work there do not have a clue what they are selling and cannot identify even some basic fish. The first time i had a good deal was when they had some "special" Corydoras catfish. Well they were'nt Corydoras at all but A species of Synodontis (upside down) catfish. Synodontis Eupterus to be exact. I could'nt see them listed so asked the chap how much for the Synodontis? He insisted that they were Corydoras and that they were £4.99 each. Who am i to argue? I had a pair of 1" beautiful striped cat's like these. Unfortunately they lose these colourings as they mature and are now 8" long and look like this but with huge flowing dorsal fins.

Another time, a couple of months ago actually, they had a tank of fish listed as Otocinclus catfish. Now these are tiny little suckermouth cats that grow to around a inch or so in length. In amongst them were a couple of different fish that i saw to be Spotted Talking Catfish. So, i asked how much they were and agin was told that i was wrong and that they were just another species of Otto and were £3.99. Well i know that the other fish shop loacally sells these for around a tenner each so i snapped up the pair of these too. Beautiful fish they are and recently the pair of them wiped out an annoying snail problem in one of my tanks. You may have guessed that i like catfish. In fact i have several scattered between the 3 tanks. :D I think that they are fascinating fish and mine are out and about during the day.

Anyway, keep your eyes open for that bargain and know your fish. There are several good books available. Read all you can.

Here's some good online shops:-

Fish and Fins.

Aquatics Online.

Aquatics Warehouse.

Maidenhead Aquatics.

Aquaessentials.

Animal House.

Some good reference sites:-

Planet Catfish.

Tropica.

The Planted Tank.

Indiapets/fish.

Fishbase.
 
I'd recommend Aqua one and Fluval as good starter kits, Juwel are quite good too but their filtration isn't that great on the lower models
 
are there any tips you guys have on keeping the algae out? i always found with my tank (and my dads) it always seemed to get over run with algae, even after cleaning it out. I know you can get algae tabs to kill it off but they didnt seem too effective. :/ and the scraper/magnet cleaner was a pain to use.
 
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