Central Florida Farms

Aquarium Set up Guide

Tropical Fish, native fish, aquarium fish, pygmy sunfish, sun fish, pan fish, invasive plants, aquatic plants, aqua, american flag fish, flag fish, florida flag fish, ebay, fish, freshwater fish, fresh water fish, fresh water plants, freshwater plants, live plants, american, north, fish farm, fish for sale, aquarium forum,

There is a lot more going on in there than meets the eye!

A well lit and well organized aquarium will not only add character to your home or office but can be stress relieving to look at and will add a bit of ambiance when the lights are off. An aquarium in your office has been proven to increase sales, serenity and a less stressful environment for you and your client. It also creates an icebreaker and conversational piece. When I worked at a television station a few years ago, I had one set up within a week of getting into my new office. Every one commented on it and deals that were made by personal visits from the clients, always liked it. My boss even liked it and never even questioned me about it.

Set up check list:

• Tank Size you prefer - For an office, i would recommend a 10-20 gallon depending on your office size.
• Tank stand to support the weight of your desired tank
• Light and hood / timer if for light (for convenience)
• A Good filter system
• Thermometer
• Heater
• Fish Food

If you are familiar with owning and keeping aquariums, this information may be common knowledge to you.

Tank Set up:  Just for the sake of simplicity, I will use a 10 gallon for the information in the "Set Up' section. A 10 gallon tank takes up very little space in your home but surprisingly adds a lot of life to any room. It is better to buy a brand new tank if you're new to aquariums or even if have one that has been sitting in storage for a few years. They're very inexpensive for the tank and the glass will be free of scratches and will sparkle when you're finished setting it up. It will also guarantee that no previous disease will be lurking in the crevices of the sealant and it will not leak! Wash your new tank out with the hottest water you can stand and NEVER use ANY soaps, bleach or cleaning solvents of any kind unless it is specifically designed for aquariums. The smallest amount of soap residue can kill your fish and as far as I know, there is no remedy for soap residue water and its is extremely difficult to get it all out of a tank. I would just stay away from it altogether.

1st Choose a site for your aquarium. I always prefer a spot near an outlet or directly in front of the outlet to conceal the wires from the lights, heater and filter. 2nd, make sure you have a sturdy stand for your aquarium that can support 50-80 lbs or more with no stress. I prefer the standard angle iron stands. A good carpenter can build a cabinet system around the frame that matches the decor of the room which also can be used to hold the fish food and other supplies needed for the set up. 3rd, Choose a light and hood that matches your tank. Fluorescent lights are the best for bringing out the color in your fish and plants but will promote algae growth if not set on a timer. The light should not be left on 24 hours a day. keep in mind that the fish will eat more, the more hours a day that the light is left on. If algae growth does get out of control, see our fish disorder page for different remedies. 4th, choose a sand/gravel that is pleasing to your eyes, after all its your creation and you will the one primarily enjoying it. I prefer more sand than gravel simply because liveplants grow better and faster in sand than in gravel and less decaying matter can be trapped in the sand. Make sure to thoroughly rinse any and all gravel and sand. I use a 5 gallon bucket and run the hose until the water is clear using my hands to vigorously swirl it around making certain to get to every grain or pebble. Even store bought gravel in bags contains enough dust to cloud your tank up for weeks, clog your filter and choke fish. A clogged filter is useless and a cloudy tank is useless in that you can't enjoy the fish that are hidden in the cloudiness. 5th, add the water up to about 3 inches from the top of the rim of tank. Allow space for the water levels to rise and not overflow onto the floor as you place in any rocks or plants you may have in mind. Next, add the filter and get it started. There are many different types of filters to choose from.

Main Filter types: All filters are good and each has it sown place in the aquarium world. The most popular is the hang on the back of the tank that siphons water from near the bottom of tank to flow through the carbon and filter floss and flow out back into tank creating a flow inside the tank to circulate the water and give fish a feel of their natural environment. The bad thing is that some of the fish sold in pet stores are from calm waters and the fish are not used to the sometimes fast moving waters.

     Another type of filter is easy to use (probably the easiest), is the sponge filter. It's one of the least expensive as well. The sponge is connected to an upright air tube that when connected to the air pump, sucks the water from the outside of the sponge through the center and back out the air stack. Even a small air pump will suffice the filter and create a perfect small current in the tank that fish can tolerate and also aerates the water giving it added oxygen. Some people are under the impression that an aquarium needs an air device such as an air stone or horizontal air tube to allow the fish to live but this is not the case. It does help mind you but the more surface area of your tank, the less aeration your tank will need to oxygenate the water. I have had many tanks set up with no filter at all. I used an abundant supply of floating plants and fluorescent grow lights and had success with various fish. The fish I had in the those tanks were known to tolerate low oxygen levels and therefore it should not be practiced to run an aquarium without a filter. The sponge type filter is recommended for smaller 10 gallons but is not recommended for larger tanks.

     The Under gavel filter (or bottom) is yet another type but I am not to fond of it for a community tank. The reason is that it is difficult to grow live plants with the continual strong suction of the under gravel filter. They do keep the tank very clean and the gravel shouldn't need to be vacuumed ever since the filter takes care of all of that. But it does create an unnatural pull to the bottom and fish that are used to slow moving or still waters have a hard time with these. They are great in certain situations and for larger fish but I don't recommend them for the community tank with smaller fish.

     Then there is the canister filter. These are for large tanks 40, 55 gallons and up and are excellent and worth the price in keeping the tank crystal clear! Using the same theory as the hang on the back type with the intake tube and the return of clean water through carbon and filter floss as the filtering medium, they hold more beneficial bacteria and move much more water per hour than any other consumer filter. They are quiet and are durable to last for many years. You get what you pay for in any venture. But for the large tank above 55 gallons, I recommend the canister filter. Just don't put it together wrong or you will have one very wet mess on your hands!

Make sure that when working in your tank for set up or any other reason, that you have NO soapy residue or oily residue on your skin to contaminate the water. Oil should only stay on the top of water and can be skimmed off but soap as noted above will kill your fish.

Once you have the filter in place and your finished creating the look you want with plants, rocks, gravel etc, fill the tank to just under where the plastic molding is so you cant see the water line. This will complete the look and be like another world inside your world. If you have teh room in your home, my opinion is... the bigger the better!

Water Cycling : also known as nitrification: What is seasoned water what does it mean to 'cycle' a tank?

Seasoned water is simply water that has stable levels of beneficial bacteria for the fish to live in. A cycled tank means that the levels of ammonia produced by fish waste and plant decay have risen and fallen dramatically within the aquarium and are back to a safe, stable level for your fish. This biological process is called nitrification. This is easy to do (nature does this for you) as long as you have patience. Not too many types of fish, whether store bought or caught in the wild will survive very long in its new environment unless the water is seasoned. There are beneficial bacteria that change ammonia into nitrogen and these 'good' bacteria settle into your filter floss, gravel or bio wheel (if you use that).  The bio wheel is one of the best things to hit the market for aquarists because you can feel safe about changing your filter with no new nitrification threat. The needed bacteria remain present in there and are not discarded with the dirty filter. Some of the bacteria species convert ammonia (NH₃) to nitrite (N02-), while others convert nitrite to nitrate (NO3-). So cycling the tank is the process of establishing bacterial colony levels in the filter bed and/or Bio-Wheel that convert ammonia to nitrite to nitrate. In nature, the ratio of fish per volume of water is so high that fish waste is diluted to low and non-concentrated levels and the nitrite levels are rarely a problem unless it is a stagnant pond or small body of water that is evaporating rapidly. Since aquariums are very small compared to a fish's natural habitat, it can only a few short hours for ammonia levels to be toxic to your fish. The best way to remedy this in a new tank is to set up your tank about a month prior to placing in your favorite or newly purchased fish. Add some very inexpensive fish, about 5-10 depending on the size of the aquarium right away. You can even use the common mosquito fish or buy a dozen feeder goldfish for $1.00 as pawns for this task. There are several water conditioners out there that will take the chlorine out of the water immediately and make the water safe for your fish but these should be used when changing or adding water when needed. There is even a few 'cycling' products for very impatient people, but it's always better to do it the natural way. If you're like me and are impatient, you can check the levels of ammonia with a test kit every few hours and if they get within the dangerous levels, change the water taking out 1/3rd at time and replacing it with new water. Maybe you have an R/O filter (some people have these in their kitchen and don't even know it). It would be the faucet apart from the center faucet that disperses the cleanest (purified) water where the unit is under the sink. If you do have this drinking water filter, it is recommended to use it for filling your tanks with. Yes, larger tanks will require extra time in filling but its worth the wait. The water stays clear and normally does not go through a cloudy stage. another way to reduce the cloudy stage is to wash all plants, gravel and rocks that are going into the tank.

Another way to speed up the cycling process is to use a used filter from another tank that has been set up with fish for a few months or use a used Bio-Wheel. The bacteria (even when left dried for long periods of time) will come back to life when inserted into your filtering system. If using an under gravel filter (not recommended at all if you're planning on having live plants in the tank), you can use a measuring cup full of it and hang it in a  mesh bag where the water intake is. the best way to speed things up is to use safe 'seasoned' water from already established tank. As long as you know that there are no dangerous pathogens in the ecosystem. This will speed up the cycling and make it habitable in a week's time. If using an air sponge type filter and can find a used one, use the old one. the bio-wheel type filters that hang on the back of your aquarium are the best way to o in my opinion and are very simple to use. you shouldn't have any problems with ammonia levels in a few weeks if using the bio-wheel type filter.

Test kits are readily available from just about any decent aquarium shop and are inexpensive and easy to use. Your tanks should be checked at least once per day ( I always check twice) for newly establishing set-ups for the first 3 months. you want to make sure you don't wake up one morning to a tank full of dead pets. if you're going to use a test kit you might as well spend the extra couple dollars and get one that tests for everything from Ph to nitrite levels. Some fish are very sensitive to Ph levels and you will NEED a test kit while others are not so temperamental about their environment and can tolerate major water changes and unstable Ph levels. Even if you're a beginner, you can purchase so called "difficult" fish if you have the right type of information and are diligent in taking care of them. This website should only be used as a guide and is not a complete digest of all you need to know about keeping fish healthy. there are many excellent books that can go more in-depth in all the different subject matter that should be known about keeping 'difficult fish'.

Keeping Fish Healthy:

It is not difficult to keep your aquarium looking fresh and exotic. Keep the hood covering the aquarium and I recommend setting a timer up for the light. Leaving the light on 24 hours a day promotes more algae growth than even algae eaters can keep up with. Also fish will be more active being tricked into thinking that it is daytime and will eat or be hungry continually. Fish, like the rest of us need a few hours of sleep. This will keep them more healthy and live longer lives. Also check the temperature with a thermometer. They are inexpensive and there are several different types top choose from. I prefer the free floating bobbing type and usually keep it at the opposite end of the tank from where the heater is set up to give a more accurate reading of the tank. Mine has a section on it that is colored green to let me know when the temperature is getting to cold or too hot. You should read up in the specific fish that you're keeping to determine what the best temperature is for them and try to get fish that all like the same water temp for each community tank. Most fish like temps between 72-85. Some fish will live shorter lives in warmer water but will grow faster and be more vigorous.

If you're setting up for a community tank, ask the store owner (or source of purchase) which fish out of the ones that you're interested in can live together. Some fish will kill other fish and some fish will hide from all others and you won't enjoy seeing them very much. Always ask before buying or read up on new fish introductions to your community tank first.

Keep the water temperature at a constant as possible temperature. When the temperature changes drastically, this can cause the fish to go into shock and sometimes die or cause other disorders. Just like people, a consistent environment is the best for their health.

Make sure not to overfeed your fish. Only give enough that they will eat in a few minutes time. always buy the food that says "does not cause cloudiness". If it says it, it usually means it. You get what you pay for in anything, even fish food. Also find out what type of food is right for your fish. You should always have a couple bottom feeding fish that will come along and clean any mess that is left over by the other fish. Corydoras and loaches are good at this as well as crayfish.

Live plants are the best for aquariums and require very little maintenance. They will provide oxygen for the fish as well as micronutrients that use the plants as a host. Fish feel at home and safe with live plants and it sure does seem like they know the difference between live and plastic or silk plants. Silk plants can also absorb fish waste and hold it there which is undesirable. Fish will breed easier in a tank with liveplants as opposed to a tank with no plants or plastic plants.

It is not difficult to keep healthy fish once the environment is set in motion. It is a mini ecosystem and should remain as balanced as possible.