Fish Types

Fish Types - Pick Your Fish

So you’ve decided to get yourself an aquarium. You have a friend or a family member with fish, or you’ve seen some pictures in a book or on the internet, and you’ve decided to get involved in this beautiful and relaxing hobby.

Well congratulate yourself right now! You are already several steps ahead of most new hobbyists in that you are doing some research before running down to the pet store and buying the first thing that catches your eye. In this series of articles, we will try to give you a good head start on the art of keeping fish successfully. If you follow a few simple steps, you will give your fish a much better chance to live and thrive, and you will save yourself a lot of money and aggravation in the process.

First off, let’s start with something fun, fish-keeping is supposed to be a joy, right? The very first thing you should do is decide what kind of fish that you’d like to keep. You can begin right here on the internet. Put your feet up and enjoy the descriptions, stories, and pictures taken by your fellow hobbyists. Chances are good that you can get a lot more help here than you’ll ever get from the poorly paid staff down at the local big box store. On the ‘net, you will find people with years, or even decades of experience, and there’s a good chance that they enjoy helping a new aquarist like yourself.

Set your search engine for aquariums, fish keeping, marine fish, cichlids, or even gold fish, and spend some time looking at all of the glorious fish. You can keep salt water or fresh water fish; predators or community fish; tiny guppies or monster cichlids; and/or anything and everything in-between. When you have narrowed down your choices to only your favorite few, use your Google for an image search so you can see exactly what the adult fish will look like. You will find dozens of images of your chosen fish; aquarium photography is another hobby that is widely available on the internet.

It is vitally important for you to remember that many fish are not compatible with one another. You may love the idea of keeping a school of small brightly colored fish with a couple of large cichlids, but large fish view small fish as snacks, so make sure that the fish you’ve chosen have similar needs and dispositions. Believe me; you will be quite annoyed when you spend thirty to forty dollars on a brightly colored school of fish, only to find that it completely disappeared the first night that you put them in your tank.

Make absolutely sure that you discover how large will your chosen fish is going to get, as well as discovering how its behavior will change as it grows. Remember that most pet stores only sell young fish, and that those cute one and a half inch fish that you found swimming there in the pet store’s tank may well grow into eighteen inch monster fish with the disposition of a pack of rabid wolves. Fish are fairly predictable really; if the book says that this fish is extremely aggressive, assume that the fish will be extremely aggressive, and then plan accordingly!

Whatever fish that you decide to keep, always remember that you are not in this alone. If your chosen fish is available within the aquarium hobby, then thousands of them have been sold over the years, and you will be able to get lots of help and advice in keeping them healthy and happy for their entire lifespan.
…Read more >>

Fish Tank Water

Fish Tank Water - Chemicals in your Aquarium

You’ve seen all those chemicals at the Pet Store, and you’ve wondered if you’ll need one bottle of each of them. And then you wondered if you still want to get into this aquarium hobby after all. Well, here’s the good news, most of that stuff is unnecessary, even worthless. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll occasionally need some of these products, but there is only one of these chemicals that you’ll always use, so let’s start there.

The tap water that you are using to fill your tank, it contains chlorine. It’s harmless to people, deadly to fish, so you’ll need to remove it. Now, don’t panic, you won’t need one of those kits that Grissom uses on CSI. Indeed, a single bottle of dechlorinating liquid is cheap and lasts for months. Just make sure that you read the label because some of the products are concentrated differently, so some of them require fewer drops per gallon of water.

The chlorine in your tap water actually dissipates fairly quickly, completely breaking down in about 24 hours. So in a pinch, you could just fill your bucket and let it stand for a day before using the water, but with the cost of dechlorinating products so low, it hardly seems worthwhile. Just remember, if you chose to use the “let stand” method, make sure you place your water in a location where it will not be contaminated.

You should also invest in a bottle of test strips. These strips, after being dipped into water, will show you a variety of information about your water. Your Ph level, water hardness, ammonia level, nitrates, and nitrites can all be tested using the most common dip strips. That’s a lot of information; in fact, it is more than you’ll actually need.

The truth is that most commonly sold aquarium fish will do just fine in any normal Ph range or water hardness level. Don’t worry if your fish type comes from Peru where it lives in soft acidic water because the fish you bought was probably born and raised in a fish farm in Florida. Then it was packaged up in a big bag of water and sent to your pet store where it was dumped into the local tap water. Most fish are NOT that picky, but they do need clean water, and that’s where the test strips come in handy.

When your fish eats, it produces waste. This waste then breaks down into ammonia, which in turn changes to nitrites, and then into nitrates. Like chlorine, these chemicals can damage and even kill your fish. So you need to remove them if they rise to a high level. The test strips will tell you if your levels are too high, and if they are, your answer is fairly simple—it’s time for a water change.

Once your tank has been established for a few months, you will not have to test it as often because your tank will develop beneficial bacteria that help break down these chemicals more quickly. For the first few months though, you should probably check your tank once per week or so, making sure you have time to do a water change if it should prove necessary.

And that’s basically it. Oh, there are chemicals that will lower your Ph, or raise it, medications for sick or injured fish, chemicals to destroy algae, expensive aquarium salts, and all manner of other niche products that you really do not need. These products are available to keep the fish store in business. Most people and their fish NEVER need these products, so unless you have a sick fish, just stick to the basics. You’ll save some money and avoid driving yourself crazy.
…Read more >>

Fish Aquariums

Fish Aquariums - Fish and Aggression

Your tank has turned into a war zone. Fish with missing scales and tattered fins are hiding in the top corner of your tank, and there are three others that you have not seen in several days. What happened? My friend, you have an aggression problem. Never fear, you have come to the right place for information on how to solve this problem. You can win the battle; just follow these few easy steps.

First things first, sit down in front of your tank and watch what is going on very closely. Get yourself a cold beverage and have a seat. Spend some time with your fish, I mean isn’t this is why you bought them?

Do not get in too big of a hurry to “rescue” your abused fishes. The most important thing you can do right now is to determine which fish(s) are the aggressors, and which are the victims. Before you can fix the problem, you have to understand it. Is there one fish destroying everything else in the tank? Is it the reverse; is there one fish that every other fish in the tank is attacking? Is there a pair of cichlids… guarding a specific rock… covered with eggs? You’ve got to figure it out.

If you have one fish that is getting slaughtered by everything else, then the solution is a simple one; move that fish to another tank, preferably a hospital tank, and treat him for his injuries. You do have a hospital tank don’t you? Every fish owner should have a spare tank set aside to treat and/or quarantine fish. It doesn’t have to be large, and you don’t even have to keep water in it most of the time, but have a hospital tank ready for emergencies, not to mention the fact that you should isolate all new fish for a couple of weeks before adding them to your established tank.

Spawning fish are another challenge. When cichlids spawn, they’ll claim a vast percentage of your tank for their own use, and they’ll tag-team the other fish when they try to enter “their” now personal mating area. A mated pair of cichlids is a fearsome thing to behold, since they now fight as a team and a pair of cichlids is perfectly capable of driving off a fish twice their own size and killing anything smaller. If this is what is going on in your tank, you’ve got a couple of options. You can remove the other fish; remove the eggs; or install a divider within your tank. Doing nothing and hoping for the best rarely works, spawning cichlids have no pity.

If your problem is specific to one aggressive fish, you have a few options that might work. First off, include more “stuff” in your tank. Piles of rocks, sunken ships, plants, almost anything will work. The idea is to create sight-line breaks for the fish, because with fish, “out of sight” really does mean “out of mind”. One aggressive fish terrorizing the others (in the absence of eggs) almost always means that the fish has claimed the entire tank as his own, and the best way to stop this is to box the fish in a bit. Oh sure, he’ll still swim around and boss the others around, but not as often, and not as violently if the others have a place to hide.

Another possibility is to actually add more fish to your tank. Now, you have to be careful to not overstock your tank, but more fish in your tank actually means more targets for the aggressive fish, and this means that each fish will take less damage as the bully won’t be able to focus on just one target.

The solution that is obviously the most fun is getting yourself a bigger tank, maybe that 225 gallon monster that you’ve had your eye on, but that’s kind of a long term solution as we don’t generally advise running down and buying a new tank on the spur of the moment. So if all else fails, it’s time to remove fish. Most people try to remove the smallest and weakest fish, but this is probably the worst way to go about it. Your best bet is to remove the dominant fish to another tank. Yes, you might have to get rid of it. If it’s your prize fish, well, then you might have to get rid of everything else. Then again, maybe it’s just time to buy that second tank. You have room for two tanks… right?
…Read more >>

Fish Tanks

Fish Tanks - Substrate in your Fish tank

What the heck is “Substrate”, you ask? Well, basically your substrate is the material that you have on the bottom of your aquarium. You can have sand, gravel, small stones, or almost anything really. Half of the fun of owning fish is doing the interior decoration of your tank. Let your imagination run wild, but make sure that you use materials that are safe for your fish.

The most common substrate is gravel. You’ve seen those bags in your local pet store; they come in every color of the rainbow. You can also go to any hardware store and buy natural gravel if you are going for a less artificial look. Just make sure that you rinse whatever you use before you put it into your tank and remove any bits that are unusually sharp.

Gravel gives your tank a nice aesthetic appeal while also anchoring your plants and helping you develop the biological filter within your tank. It’s also the easiest substrate to clean when you are using your gravel vac during your water changes. Gravel is heavy enough to resist being siphoned out of the tank, but light enough to swirl around and release all waste that has become sediment. It is also fairly cheap, especially if you purchased a large bag from the hardware store.

Many hobbyists, especially cichlid owners, prefer to use sand. If you are keeping fish that sift sand looking for food, going with something finer than gravel is the ONLY way to go. Like gravel, you can find it in many different colors, although it is harder to find than gravel; most pet stores carry only white and black, and the black is quite expensive. Here too, you can find a cheaper alternative down at your local hardware store.

Most stores carry bags of sand marketed as “play-sand”. These sands are generally used to fill children’s sandboxes and as such, are safe and ready to go. They’ll require a great deal of pre-washing before you put them into your tank though, because of the dust that they contain, but they are attractive to use and quite cheap. Some larger stores may actually carry some colored sands, but they are harder to find and will probably require a special order. Avoid “silica” sands as they have sharp edges that can cut your fish.

Sand is more difficult to clean however, because of its light weight. You can’t plunge your gravel vac into the sand without sucking it up with your waste water. You have to be a lot more careful while siphoning, and periodically make time to stir the sand by hand to release trapped pockets of waste and biological matter. If you want easy to maintain, sand is not for you.

You can also buy bags of crushed shell or limestone. These are useful if you are putting together a marine tank or an African cichlid tank as they are made up of calcium carbonate and this tends to raise the water hardness and pH, which both of these types of fish will enjoy. This is obviously a poor choice for fish from soft water, low pH environments like many river fish from South and Central America.

Whatever substrate you chose, it will require occasional maintenance. Generally not much more than doing a quick stir and a little redecorating when your fish move it around, but your substrate will last just about forever, so pick one that you can live with.
…Read more >>