So my fiancee comes home carrying an aquarium with her a few days ago. I don't know if you have any knowledge of aquaria and fish, but we don't. But from the information she received from the store, we started the process of filling the aquarium with (washed out) gravel, water and the fish.
The fish she got are called Cardinal tetra and look nice, but having just them is a bit boring. Besides, we didn't have any plants or other decoration. So we decided to go to the store and buy more fish and decoration. When at the store, I fell in love with Iridescent sharks and got two of them and three guppies. Other than that we got two plants and a ceramic fake branch.
When home, we placed the animals for half an hour inside their bags in the aquarium water to let them adjust to the temperature. Then I took the fish out of their water and into the aquarium.
The next day, while the guppies where still happily swimming around, my Iridescent sharks where looking like they'd prefer to breath air over water... Something must be wrong.
Determined to find the cause we went to an aquarium specialist store and ask for information. It turns out we did a lot of things wrong. So instead of telling what happened, I'd prefer to give some tips and explanations in the shape of a tutorial, on how to start an aquarium. This is based on the explanations that the aquarium specialist gave us.
First off, what do you need?
- Aquarium
* Filter
* Heater
* Light
- Gravel
- (optional) Decoration
- (optional) Plants
- Fishnet
- 1 or 2 Buckets
- Fish food
- Fish
Our aquarium is a reasonably small aquarium of 25 liters. If you want to start a bigger aquarium, this tutorial might not be suitable for you.
1. Wash and place gravel
Pick your gravel carefully. we started of with white gravel, which according to the store contains a lot of calcium. This is important because it influences one of a few properties of water. From the three important properties: pH-, nitrate- and ammonia levels, calcium increases pH levels.
So let's start.
Make sure you wash the gravel so that it's as clear as tap water.
You can do this by placing it in a bucket in your sink (or bath tub). Open the tap until the bucket is filled with water twice as high as the gravel reaches and start stirring the gravel. Once the water lost its transparency, carefully tip the bucket to drain the water. Refill the bucket and repeat cleaning until the water doesn't get dirty anymore. Make sure you raise the bottom layer to the top every once in a while so that all gravel is cleaned.
Once you finished washing it, you can place the gravel. Dependent on the size of your aquarium and if you want to place plants, you have to first place a nutrition layer on the bottom. If you do want to have plants, make sure you have enough gravel so that they have a solid foundation.
2. Decoration
Now that the gravel is on the ground, you can start decorating your aquarium. A word of advice: don't add water like we did in this step, because it will make it difficult to place plants. Once you are satisfied with the layout, you can place your plants, statues, etc. in the aquarium.
3. Adding water
What water to add is dependent on your location and which fish you want to place in your aquarium. If you live in the Netherlands and want to have freshwater fish, you can add tap water. But some countries have poisonous material inside the water like for instance chlorine. The best is to get more information on what to do with your water at the specialist store.
Make sure that you add water at a location in your aquarium as far away from plants as possible, since the gravel will float around when adding water.
Make sure that you add water at a location in your aquarium as far away from plants as possible, since the gravel will float around when adding water.
4. Wait...
Wait, what? Don't put the fish inside? Nope... Fish are fragile creatures and require the water to be of a certain quality. For instance it should contain bacteria that break down the excrement of the fish. If these bacteria didn't get enough time to grow in amount, the ammonia levels will go sky high and your fish poison themselves. It is best to wait 7 to 10 days before adding fish. However, you should let the store check the quality of your water and let them advice you on getting your aquarium to a fish-friendly home.
5. Fish!
Congratulations, you have made yourself the happy owner of an aquarium fit for fish. However, don't just place them in. Ask the store from which you purchased them, how to do this. It will most likely be something like this:
1. Decrease the amount of water in the bag of the fish to a minimum.
2. Slowly add aquarium water to the bag, so that the fish can start getting used to the water of your aquarium.
3. take the fish out of the bag (without the mixed water) and add it to the aquarium.
There we go, our resulting aquarium is below. I hope this was useful and enjoyable to read. It sure was fun to write! See you guys next post! If you got comments, remarks or something else you want to share, I'd like to read/see them in the comments!
