# Help! Thinking of getting fish and clueless



## Sarah1983 (Nov 2, 2011)

My son wants fish. He absolutely loves the fish tank at school, going to the aquarium, will spend hours in Pets at Home just watching the fish etc. And he keeps asking for some, he very rarely asks for anything never mind asks repeatedly for months. I like fish (would love a massive aquarium at home but for various reasons I haven't had fish since my childhood goldfish in a way too small bowl) so I have nothing against setting up a smallish tank with easy to care for fish (if they exist??) and am fully prepared to take on the responsibility of looking after them if we do get some. He's certainly not old enough to be responsible for them at the moment. Hubby and I have talked about it and we're both happy to get some but we have no idea where to start. Obviously we'd need a tank, we don't want huge which is obviously going to limit what fish we could get. Realistically, what size tank am I going to be looking at for keeping a few small fish in? Are there any recommendations for a good species to start out with? How much work/how time consuming are fish to keep? While I'm prepared to put time and effort in I do need to be realistic, I have one small child already and am due another in April. So yeah, any advice welcome  Thanks.


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## kittih (Jan 19, 2014)

Hi just a really quick reply as past bedtime but will try and make it longer tomorrow.

Fish keeping is a great hobby. The important thing to.remember about keeping fish is thats is all about keeping good water quality and a healthy population of filter bacteria. If those two things are in place you will have happy fish.

I recommend you get at least a 60 litre aquarium. Thats approximately 24Wx15Dx18H. The larger the water volume the more stable it will be and the easier to keep. I also recommend you get a heater. In a centrally heqted home it will be rarely on but it does give you a much wider choice of fish.

Second hand tanks are generally fine as long as they arent cracked and seals are good. Lots of bargains on facebook fish groups and ebay etc.

Before you start you will need to do.some reading. Get familiar with the following:

The aquarium nitrogen cycle
Fishless cycling
Why cycling with fish is a bad thing
New tank syndrome

Heres one to start you going.

https://www.fishkeeping.co.uk/articles_51/fishless-cycling-article.htm

Please ignore any advice you may get from shops abouy just add water leave a week and then add fish (even if that includes a bottle of "bacteria" as this is a guarunteed way to harm those fish.

Fishless cycling is the kindest way to build up enough bacteria to deal with the fish waste and toxins produced. It does take 4-6weeks so you will need to be patient but use the time as a family to research your fish.

For balanced tank you wany some bottom swimmers, some middle swimmers and some top swimmers though often the middle swimmers swim at the top too.

Please ignore and Pets at home fish points stocking sysyem as it is wildly inaccurate.

Have a look at the thinkfish stocking and compatability calculator for ideas.
https://www.thinkfish.co.uk/article/community-creator

If you get a 24inch tank try to keep your fish to a max of 2.5inches maximum adult size. Also remember guppies, platies and endlers are livebearers and breed like rabbits so if you get females you will be overun.

Have a look through the stickies and also have a read through some of the previous posts NaomiM, Magpie and I have responded to previously to get an idea of things to avoid with new tanks.

This has turned out longer than planned. Get back to us when you have done some initial research and feel free to ask lots of questions.


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## bunnygeek (Jul 24, 2018)

@kittih has some great advice!

Just wanted to add, when looking for a tank, avoid the fad fancy ones. Many are style over substance and I agree over 60 litres would be best. A nice plain rectangular one to maximise surface area is best. And also a solid lid is good, not open top, especially with children in the house


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## kittih (Jan 19, 2014)

Bunnygeek has some good points. The more horizontal swimming room you can provide your fish the better so rectangle is a good shape.

Also think about substrate and layout. Do you want sand or gravel. Both have plusses and minuses. Will you want real plants or not. Are you going for the natural look or do you want ornanaments?

It is recommended to change 25% of water weekly. This is fairly easy and not time consuming. Depending on your filter design, number and messiness of fish and capactiy of the filter, the filter will also need a rinse in tank water (never tap water as the chloramines will kill the bacteria) either weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

Things you will need to buy
Tank with good fitting lid
Tank stand though for a 60l tank a solid piece of furniture is fine.
Tank dechlorinator. I recommend seachem prime. Whilst it appears more expensive you only need a very tiny amount per dose. The advantage with prime is that is can turn ammonia one of the toxins to fish (see nitrogen cycle) into a non toxic form so if you have any emergency ammonia spikes it can be a quick way of detoxifying things.
Water test kit. You will need this for the fishless cycle. The liquid API master test kit is the best, most accurate good value one in my opinion. Paper test strips can be inaccurate.
A fish net though two are better.
A heater.
A good quality filter. The bigger the better within reason. You want the biggest area for the filter bacteria to live as possible. Dont get one that has stuff that you are meant to throw away and replace each time as you will be throwing out good bacteria and wasting money. Good makes that I have had are Eheim, fluval, tetratec. Others on PF will tell you their preferred brands too.
Light. Only needed to make tank more attractive if you dont have plants. If you do have plants you will need the right wattage and colour spectrum. We can help.with this.
Fish food. This depends on the fish you decide to keep. We can tell you whats good and bad.


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## kittih (Jan 19, 2014)

Just a comment on the time thing. Fish dont take long to look after. I have a 4 foot (200L) heavily planted aquarium with two oversized external filters. I do a weekly 25% water change which takes me about 20 minutes and wipe down tje front glass to remove algae takes about 5 minutes. Hacking back the plants every month and general tidying takes about 20 minutes.

Cleaning the filter I do monthly to six weekly and alternate the filters. This I di with a larger water change and it generally takes about an hour for the filter clean and water change as I faff about with the tank.

A 60l tank in tank cartridge filter would be very quick and easy to clean so maybe 10 minutes. It is easy to di as part of the who tank cleaning process. So for a 60l tank I would say about 30 minutes weekly.

If you want one of those amazing tanks like George Farmer or Takashi Amano's aquascapes then add on a few hours


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## NaomiM (Sep 22, 2012)

Great posts by @kittih 

Yeah, 60-80L is an ideal size for a first tank. There's plenty of small species you can keep in there once you've done a fishless cycle. Alternatively, if you really don't have space for 60L+ and don't mind just having one fish, a 30-35L tank could house a single betta.

Re work and time commitments, once the tank is cycled (see the link kittih gave and/or the sticky thread on fishless cycling), you're looking at changing around 25% of the water volume once per week. In my experience this takes around half an hour to do - make sure you get someone else to do the heavy lifting for you while you're pregnant! Then daily maintenance is just feeding once per day and visually checking for any potential health problems - unless you have live plants, which can need a little more upkeep depending on the species (for the easier plant species, it's just a case of adding fertilisers and liquid carbon once per day and trimming occasionally).

It's been said before, but just to reiterate that you should do a fishless cycle with an ammonia source before getting fish, not only for the fish's sake but also in terms of time, effort and stress for you! Many shops will give out-of-date advice and tell you to do a fish-in cycle with some 'hardy' fish, but not only does this cause long-term harm to the fish, it also means you're likely to need to do daily water changes for several months to keep the toxin levels down!


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## ForestWomble (May 2, 2013)

Hiya,

I am no expert, had fish for a few years and loved them. 
Just wanted to mention, I started off with a small tank, think it was 60 or 80L and while it was fine, I had a small shoal of winter whites - grey and golden and some tiger barbs - both great fish and fun to watch, when I decided to get a bigger tank the change in those fish was amazing, they were clearly a lot happier and you could see their delight in having a bigger space, also the small tank was much harder to look after, the big one was much easier and water quality was better. Just my long winded way of adding on to the brilliant advice already given.


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## Sarah1983 (Nov 2, 2011)

kittih said:


> If you want one of those amazing tanks like George Farmer or Takashi Amano's aquascapes then add on a few hours


Haha, would love one of those but that's not going to be at all practical.

Thanks for all the advice  Definitely going to look into a bit more, see what we can do. Sounds like the initial set up is the most time consuming part of it so after Christmas would probably be a good time to look at getting it set up, that way it's done well before baby arrives. He's now asked Santa for fish for Christmas so I think there's going to have to be a letter from Santa saying that he isn't able to bring live animals! Trying to explain to family now why a goldfish in a bowl isn't a good idea


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## MissFluffy (Nov 27, 2019)

Just my two cents: it helps to think of your tank not as a water container with fish in, but as an ecosystem. Get real plants, preferably easy, fast-growing ones, and not just one or two. You'll have to trim and tidy them once in a while, but they'll eat up the nitrogen and ammonia produced by the fish waste and make your life SO much easier.
If you want to stick with 60 liter you should be very careful in your choice of fish to avoid overstocking. A couple of killifish or a single betta would be your safest bet, but potentially you could go with a group of 6-8 very small fish like galaxy rasbora (most very small fish need to be kept in a group, some also need a lot of swimming space in spite of their small size). I'd really advise against mixing several species of fish in a tank that size.
You could, however, throw in a couple of fancy snails which will eat plant debris and some algae as well. If your tank has enough plants there is no risk of them destroying the healthy ones. If possible and compatible with your fish, there's also the option of neocaridinia shrimps, great at keeping the place clean and fun to look at. I've had them in a 54 liter tank that I'd set up as an experiment, with a single betta (and multiple snails) and a lot of hiding places and it worked fine, they even reproduced quite well (although I wouldn't swear none of the babies got eaten). With bits of wood, branches and dry leaves for decoration, it looked like a little underwater jungle and was really interesting because it had not just fish but a variety of animals… and the best part was, the whole setup needed practically no upkeep, because it was well-balanced.
Hope this helps, and good luck with it


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