Anyone keep tropical fish ?

My daughter has just set up her old 70L juwel tank in my office at work. Obviously no fish added yet. Just added the additives and turned on the heater.

She seems to know her stuff and has a nice large (120L) tank at her home but it's always interesting to get others opinions.

Hoping to add some fish and plants this weekend. Anyone have any tips for a beginner like me ?

 

At the moment I've got Malawi Chiclids there great fun. Wouldn't mind going back to marines though.

Stock a few at a time to allow time for the filter to mature. work out what fish you want first, too many a time I've been to the LFS and thought you look nice I'll have you to get it home to find out it's a terrorist.

 

I don't want any fighters in my tank just chilled out lovers.

Can't be doing with fighting at my age.

 

Mango - may I suggest you stick to a gold fish or two?

 

Might be for the best

 

I have a 60l boi orb.
Just take it easy with adding fish, I just added a few neons at first about 6 and slow added more.
Also ask when buying if they are okay to go with other fish Ect.
They are really helpful, I have found.

 

Hiya

We got into tropical fish about a year ago and have a 120 litre tank with lots of nice community fish that get on. Finding a good aquarium shop near you is well worth the effort as the advice is free and well useful. Firstly you need to set up the tank. Substrate and gravel plus some plants. You need a heater and filter system, and you need to get it filled and let it run for a bit to settle in. Add fish a few at a time and use a water test kit to check the chemistry before you add any more. Basically the filter is a miniature sewage works and the biological cultures need to develop over time otherwise the fish poison themselves. The bloke at our local store describes it that you aren't actually keeping fish, you are keeping water. Get that right and the fish will survive and be happy.

Straightforward tropical fish are easy to keep and offer loads of variety. We did well with Corys (little catfish) golden barbs, rainbow fish, neon tetras and the like. Other point is to start with cheap dis. You may well lose a few and also look out of how big they are going to end up as they are generally juvenile when you buy them.

I don't know she you are but if you travel anywhere near Derby/Mansfield / Nottingham there is absolutely stunning aquarium shop called Wharf Aquatics that is near J28 of the M1. It has an amazing and vast selection of fish, tanks you name it and shames most zoo's for range of stock. It's virtually a sea life centre.

Hope the above helps.

Cheers

Phil

 

Just spotted you are in Essex so Wharf is a bit far which is a shame. By the way you can get additives that seed the biological cultures and speed things up but even then I reckon you fill the tank and run it without fish for a couple of weeks, add a few hardy ones and leave it a couple more weeks before you add any more. Test kits are cheap and give you confidence that the water quality is ok and that you havent got nitrite, ammonia, migrate building up.

You will need to do a partial water change every week, maybe 20% of the tank volume. Again you can get water conditioners that take out chlorine etc and are claimed to de stress the fish. Again, doesn't cost much but means the little buggers are more likely to survive.

 

Before adding any fish read this:-
http://www.tropicalfishcentre.co.uk/Cycle.htm

 

In my experience the cycle takes about 1 month with 5 or 6 small fish, once they have established add another 5 or 6 & wait a month again. This way they won't all poison the others

 

Thanks

So add a few little hardy souls and then what Chris?

Sorry I really don't have a clue

So do I add something to reduce the ammonia ? And then simply monitor and test ?

Talk me through it in layman terms please.

 

If you clean out the tank & change the water it all starts again, so what you need to do is remove 1/3 of the water, put it in a bucket use this water to clean all the algae & green off any decorations, throw this away & add more water with tap safe not to harm the fish.
Always keep at least 2/3 of the old water during a tank change.

 

Spot on. I still think test kits are good as you can see the nitrogen cycle getting going if you test every few days so it does give peace of mind that the little blighted are going to be OK. It's all pretty easy once it gets going and patience is definitely a virtue. I think it took 4 or 5 months or so to stock our tank from a start and it's not that full of fish now. We did lose one or two along the way but our current fish have all been in maybe 9 months and seem happy as you like.

 

I haven't got one yet but I fancy a Biorb 60 to keep some small tropical sea fish in. Not really sure where to start. There seems to be so many add-on bits, you seem to need this that and the other. It all gets a bit confusing for me. I just want to buy the whole kit, plug in, add fish and away you go.

 

A tank takes around 5-6 weeks to cycle. It's best to do this with a couple of small fish. I have Danios at the mo, so I can either keep with coldwater or switch to tropical as they are hardy little things.

 

I've had mine about 10 or 12 years & just sold it on eBay:-
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290625023445#ht_1374wt_1185

 

Chris and Bertie thanks

Added the tap safe when we filled the tank on Monday. It's heated up nicely and filter is purring away.

Hoping to add a few hardy fish on Sunday or Monday. Not too soon is it ? My daughter reckons it will be fine. All her fish are healthy but she's young and eager to get the fish in for me.

 

slightly off thread - but I was in a pet shop the other day looking at tropical fish. They had a soft shell turtle in a tank with a sign on saying 'free to a good home'.

Ugly little thing but I kind of liked it so went home and read up what they need care wise and decided that there was more to it than I wanted to do, but you don't see that sort of thing that often.

Guy who runs the shop has a Splitty too!

Shop is in Timperley, Cheshire if anyone is interested.

http://theukpetshop.co.uk/

 

I'm going to get an Apple Snail.