Hey,

I have never owned fish but I fancy giving it a go, any advice?

I was looking at http://www.swelluk.com/aquarium/fish...ow-333212.html as it was quite cheap, what do you think?

Thanks

Gormond.

Quite a small tank. You will need small fish!
Much better than a bowl however.

Nothing worse than people putting a fish inside a bowl. No oxygen, filtration and too cramped- should be banned!.


Having had huge tanks in the past the basic advice would be:

Shubunkins and goldfish are good starter fish. Tropical are harder!
Personally a single fish like above needs 9-10gallons of water minimum each. Which gives you a Idea of tank size and number. This will give them enough room to swim around freely and live happy lives. Bigger is always better however! Larger tanks with more space encourage them to move around more for interest.
Never use chlorinated tap water - leave a large basin of water overnight to get rid of chlorine and when you first fill or leave a full tank for the first day or so before adding fish.
Dont use cold water- water closer to the tank/room temp is better.
Have a good deep gravel bed and decent filtration system and oxygen pump.
Use real oxygen plants and provide places for fish to hide/sleep.
Clean out every 3-4 weeks or so by removing half the water with a tank/gravel cleaning pump/syphon.

Keep them away from direct sunlight and loud environments like near banging doors, TV, Hifi etc. as this will stress the fish.


Go to a local fish centre (not pet shop) for advice on keeping fish properly in tanks if you can too. But its quite easy. I always say - imagine your a fish - what environment would you like? whats natural to them? That way they will have no problems- live years on end stress and illness free.

Shubunkins and goldfish belong in ponds - not tanks. Even fancy goldfish need huge tanks with plenty of filtration.

Tropical are way easier to keep indoors than goldfish.

So in a 45 lItre tank you can only keep one fish?

Depends on the fish. You couldn't keep a goldfish in there at all.

But, you could keep a few guppies if heated. Or a solo Betta. A few white cloud mountain minnows if cold. WCMM are brill - especially if they have room to schoal.

If you can, get a bigger tank - 100lt would really be the smallest for a community tank - get a heater, themometer and a good filter. Then you could go for a few guppies, maybe a few platties and a couple of loaches or Cory. The only trouble there would be Cory's need a salt free tank, guppies and platies like a bit of salt.

Try ebay or freecycle for the tank.

Its a great hobby and great that you are doing your research first. Bit addictive though - you'll end up buying a bigger tank anyway so might as well buy it now

This is very true. We ended up with three huge tanks in our living room. Then we scaled down and now have a koi pond in the garden instead. But I would love a tropical tank in the house again.

Agreed. Tropicals aren't harder at all. People hear the words "tropical fish" and think they must be hard to keep but they're not. You can keep more too as they don't use as much oxygen as goldfish and most aren't as messy either.

Thanks for the tips, my plan was to get an inexpensive small tank (im going to sit it on my dvd storage cabinet that is 60cm wide and 35cm deep) and maybe a few little fish to see how I get on and then get a bigger (better) tank if I get the hang of it.

Does the one I linked come with everything I need to get going?

Seem to do, yes. Make sure your CD cabinet is strong enough to support it as they're heavy when you get water in and you can't move them once they're full.

Looking at dimensions I could do the Aquael Classic 60 which is 54l.

I know it's still very small but I don't want to spend much cash In case I'm really shit at it lol

The blurb says

I think it should be strong enough to support it, if not i could buy a specialised stand for it.

Is there a book you would recommend about what fish to get and how to look after them?

I wouldn't recommend a book necessarily, I doubt they'd discuss fishless cycling (for example), but there are some great forums online with people who are more than happy to help a starter Try practical fish keeping, the forum there is very active and some of the people there have been keeping fish for years.

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/

Thanks for that, I will have a look!