Specialising in Wordpress Content Management Systems – Robert Fyffe

New addition to my apartment

Me and my girlfriend decided that we would set up our own Tropical Fish Aquarium. Our initial thoughts were, how hard could it be? A tank, some pebbles and a few fish, easy!

So we got on the internet, did some research and realised that it was not quite as simple as we first imagined. Along with the tank you need quite a bit of equipment such as a filter, heater and lighting. Even then you have to do quite a bit to the tank to create a suitable living environment for the fish.

So after some research, as every man does to find the best value, I bought a tropical fish tank with all the equipment included. For anyone that is interested here is the specification of the tank:

The Juwel Korall 60 Aquarium
Volume: approx. 63 litres
Light System with 1 x 15 W T8 tube
Aquarium Size: 60 x 30 x 30cm external measurements
BioFlow Mini Filter

While waiting on our tank to arrive we had a think about what type of fish we would like to have. At this point we decided the best way to make up our minds was to visit our local pet shop so that we could physical see the fish. Expensive trip this turned out to be!

Our plan at the beginning was to have two or three bigger fish along with several smaller shoaling fish and straight away Emma decided that she wanted a Siamese Fighting fish.

Siamese Fighting Fish

When choosing fish for our aquarium it was essential to choose the right inhabitants as not all may be suitable. Aquariam fish are divided into 3 main categories and these are community, semi-aggressive, and aggressive. As we were wanting several different fish in our aquarium the only obvious choice was community fish. Community fish get along with each other, as well as any other fish placed in the aquarium.

Something that we did not realise at the beginning was that, when setting up a new aquarium it has to go through a cycling process. “Cycling the tank” means that you are establishing a bacteria bed in your biological filter to remove the toxins that the fish’s metabolism creates.  There are two steps to cycling, but you don’t have to do anything special for either of them. First, your filter will grow a culture of bacteria that digest ammonia and turn it into Nitrate, then your filter produces bacteria that digest Nitrate and turn it into relatively harmless Nitrate.

We were advised that to cycle our tank it would be best to use smaller fish so that the filter can cope with the levels of nitrate. This wasn’t a problem for us, as stated above we were planning on having several small shoaling fish anyway. Depending on the environment this cycling process should take between 4 and 8 weeks.

For our shoaling fish we decided to go with Neon Tetras and Glowlight Tetras. These type of fish look exceptionally well in shoals of 10 or more and are pretty easy to look after.

Glowlight Tetra Tropical Fish

Neon Tetra Tropical Fish

Our visit to the pet shop did not end with just looking at the fish as we also needed many other items for our aquarium. A complete list of items we bought is shown below:

gravel
decorations (pot, drift wood, stones, wood tunnel)
fish food (flakes, frozen, blood worms)
algae scraper
net
bucket
gravel cleaner
water treatment products (chlorine remover, bacteria)
water test kits
thermometer
backdrop

So all that we have to do now is wait for our new aquarium to arrive. Stay tuned for my next post which will be on setting up my new aquarium.