Aquarium 101: Tips for Setting Up Your First Aquarium, Part 2

Photo: Anna

A few weeks back, I wrote Part 1 of an "Aquarium 101". This continues the series and helps you set up the equipment you bought as well as start adding fish and taking care of them.

I Bought It, Now What?

When you get your big pile of equipment home (and, since you didn't buy a kit, that's likely not going to happen on the same day, so pile it up somewhere until it's all there), first set up your stand.

Make sure it's put together correctly. Unlike a lot of furniture assembly, we'll be putting lots of weight on it and 55 gallons of water. A missed screw is going to result in a lot of water crashing into whatever room you put this thing into. So, if you aren't terribly handy, get some help putting the stand together. Make sure you put the stand nearby a supply of electricity. You're likely going to want 4-5 outlets before you're done. However, you do not want to have a powerstrip on the floor.

Electrical Safety

As with almost everything in fishkeeping, siphons can mess with safety. If water manages to get on your cords, a power strip on the floor is going to be right at the bottom of the cord for the water to siphon right down into. You ALWAYS want the actual plug to be higher than the lowest point on the cord. This is called the "drip" loop. As water runs down the cord, it will hit the bottom of the loop and drip to the floor instead of going right into the plug.

There are wall-style powerstrips that go right over the 2 socket outlets in your house that work great for setting a safe environment that will avoid any crispy fish or crispy fishkeepers.

Assemble the Tank

Next, you're going to rinse off the gravel. It's always covered in lots of dust and dirt. I use a kitchen strainer I bought for aquarium use (you don't want your pasta tasting like guppies do you?) and do a handful at a time. I use a mop bucket to put the now wet gravel in after rinsing.

Take your rinsed gravel to your aquarium site. Put the aquarium itself on the stand and the gravel on the bottom of the aquarium. Take care to place it gently as it is going to scratch and if you just dump it in, you might damage the glass.

Spread the gravel out across the bottom evenly until you have a layer a couple of inches thick. Now, don't go get water. That's right, don't.

Instead, you're going to set up your filters, etc. and read through the manuals. Trust me, the manuals for these things are worth the read because they don't necessarily work like you'll think they do. Attach all of the equipment to the aquarium. We left it empty of water because at least once in this process, you're going to need to move the tank around a bit and you won't be doing that with water in it.

As you set up the filter, heater, etc. make sure that you set it up so that in the future you won't have to move the tank to remove any piece of equipment. For maintenance purposes, etc. you will often need to remove something and if you have to drain the tank to do it, you'll put off critical maintenance.

H2O at Last

With all of the equipment attached to the tank, you can now start filling it with water. To avoid splashing gravel around, I put a small dessert plate in the bottom and pour onto that, but you can use almost anything to diffuse the stream. As you fill the tank, watch all of the seams to make sure that none leak. Better to find that out now than 6 months from now when the floor rots out underneath it and your TV room gets an instant bath. Usually, a tank is filled until the level comes up to the black border of the top. Most people don't want to see the water's surface from the outside.

Also as you fill the tank, watch to see if it's sitting level. Minor imperfections are OK, but if the water level is obviously tipping in one direction, you may need to shim the bottom of your stand to get it level. A tank that is tipping slightly forward is really dangerous, particularly if you have small children. They tend to want to stand right up to the glass and will often reach for the top, setting up a prime opportunity for tragedy. While this is still a behavior you're going to need to address with a level tank, it's not nearly as bad.

Flip the Switch

OK. So, we've got a tank full of water and equipment right? Well, start plugging stuff in and turning it on. You're going to run the equipment for a couple of days with just plain water in it. This will let you know if, for instance, your heater doesn't actually work or if your filter isn't functioning properly. It just ensures that everything is running smoothly.

Most of the equipment manuals will give you what you need as far as hooking things up. A few other settings, etc. Set your heater to about 78F. Most freshwater fish are comfortable in that range (though you may have to adjust for species). Also try to set your airstone in some place where the bubbles will break the surface entirely under the hood. Wherever they bubble up, you're going to get residue. If that's behind the light, you're going to have a mess. If it's under the hood entirely, it will just be part of the moist environment you have to clean anyway.

Water Quality

While the equipment is going through its "wet run", you're going to want to test your water using the chemistry set you bought. Everyone's water supply is slightly different and you want to understand what parameters are coming right out of your tap. Is your water acidic or alkaline? Hard or soft? Does it contain ammonia/nitrate straight from the tap? (If it does, you should contact your authorities because it's a sign of agricultural runnof and may need to be addressed). However, small amounts can be safe, but, for instance, if you have 3 ppm of nitrate in your tap water, you're never going to get to 0ppm in your aquarium because even a fresh water change is going to introduce some nitrates.

Depending on your choice of fish, you may need to stock up on water chemicals to change your parameters. If so, you'll need to make these changes to every gallon you add. No skimping allowed. If you decide you want to take on African cichlids, for instance, you'll need to make your water considerably more alkaline as that's they way they need it. Fortunately, most beginner tropical fish are OK with basic, dechlorinated water (the one chemical pretty much everyone needs to treat their water for) and that's all you need to do to it.

Choosing Fish

While the wet run is going on, you can continue to research your fish selection. I assume that you, like almost everyone else who goes down this path, will have been already trying to figure this out the whole time. That's to be expected. It seems to be the number one question people have.

The basic thing to remember in choosing fish is that they come from every freshwater location in the world. Many of the fish you are likely to put together into a tank have never been housed together in nature. Just because you think they may look neat together, doesn't mean they should be together.

Every fish that is put into your tank needs to have its natural state taken into consideration. If it's a schooling fish, it's downright cruel to put 1 or 2 in a tank by themselves. And, if your tank can't support the 6-10 that should be housed together, you need to cross that fish off of your list. Just like trying to house a Great Dane in a studio apartment, some fish just aren't going to work in your tank.

Then there's the whole, who will eat whom problem. Many of the fish kept by people in their home consider the other potential tankmates food and not roommates. Or, just enjoy picking on fish that look like them. A compatibility chart like that one can help you sort out who will get along and who won't.

From that and other books and online sites, choose a couple of species to start with. Because of the nitrogen cycle, you are NOT going to be stocking your tank with all of your potential fish at once. You need to start out with a few ideally and at the most, the minimums for a species. You can then gradually add more fish after a few weeks as your biological filter adapts.

Before you go to buy fish, you need to either order online or buy locally, a pouch of a product called BioSpira. This is a live culture of the friendly bacteria that will establish your biological filter. This product will save you tons of headaches and will spare your fish the nasty process of spewing waste products into the water waiting for the bacteria to colonize from whatever is present in your air. When the BioSpira arrives, put it in the fridge and it's time for fish.

When you go to buy the fish themselves, look for those that are exhibiting "classic" behavior for the species. A nocturnal catfish swimming around like a madman in the daytime is going to look active, but isn't healthy. I've been most happy with the fish I've bought from non-chain fishstores, but you're going to have to work with what's local to you.

Make sure your stop at the fish store is the last thing you do before going home, as sitting in a bag in your car is a stressful experience.

When you get home, don't just dump the fish into the tank. Float the sealed bags in the water for 20 minutes or so and pour in the contents of the BioSpira. Then, let them into the tank. You now enter a phase where you should be checking your chemistry at least daily. You're watching for any spikes in ammonia or nitrite. These are indicators that your tank is cycling and bacteria cultures are growing.

Your biological filter is "stable" when you reach consistent levels of 0 ppm of ammonia and nitrite and steadily climbing levels of nitrate. Once this happens, you only need to watch the ammonia and nitrite levels every once in a while or when you add fish.

Feeding

OK, you've got a tank with fish in it, an airstone running, filter running, heater running and light on. This means the fish have clean water, light, and oxygen. However, they still need food. Before you just grab the first flake food you find, check your list of species to see what they should be eating. Fish come from the whole range of dietary needs. While it's pretty likely you can feed most of your fish basic flake food, you should know that rather than guessing.

My blend of fish takes a blend of food. I've got bottom-feeding catfish that like algae wafers after the lights are off, a bunch of fish that like basic flake and a few that like dried brine shrimp.

Whatever you feed them, overfeeding is going to be your biggest challenge. Nearly everyone overfeeds fish, especially at first. It's not your fault. You're warm blooded. See, if a person consumes 2000 calories in a day, the VAST majority of that food goes to keeping the body at 98.6 degrees. This has advantages in that we can get up and run when a lion starts digging through our tent even if it's a bitterly cold morning.

Cold-blooded animals like fish rely on their environment to get their body temperature up. This gives them an advantage in that they don't need as much food. Of course it comes with the disadvantage of being nearly comotose when it's cold and being more likely to be eaten by something else, but life's full of tradeoffs. At any rate, because your fish are relying on that heater in the back of your tank to keep them warm, they don't need to eat extra to accomplish it.

So, when you feed your fish, you want to feed much less than you think. Twice a day, just a little bit is what you're after. If, when you feed them, 20 minutes later there is food on the bottom of the tank, you fed them too much. Rest assured that it's REALLY hard to starve fish if you're a rational adult.

Maintenance

While you don't need to worry so much about ammonia and nitrite levels once your bio filter is mature, the nitrAte levels, on the other hand, have just become your constant companion. While much safer than the other 2 chemicals, you do need to watch your nitrate levels and do water changes whenever your nitrate levels approach about 40 ppm. Just keep a little jar of test strips by the tank and every day or 2 when you feed them, dip a strip in the tank to check. Eventually, you'll figure out how often you need to change the water to keep it under this level.

When it's time to change the water, you're going to need to take out between a quarter and half of the water in the tank. If you've got 40ppm of nitrates and you do a 50% water change, you'll end up with 20ppm. If you only take out 10% of the water, you'll need to pretty much be constantly changing the water to keep ahead. Something right around a third of the water keeps the fish from getting shocked and still lets you go a bit between changes.

Water Change

Everyone does water changes a bit differently. I'll just tell you how I do mine. I have a big bucket/tub that I put to the side of the tank stand. I then use a gravel vacuum that has a self-starting siphon (I'm not a fan of starting a siphon with my mouth and getting a mouth full of aquarium water). As this is an opportunity to get some of the gunk off of the bottom, I use the vacuum to go through the gravel.

Keep a watch on the bucket as well as a spot on the tank that will let you know when you've taken out enough water. When you reach that point, pull out the vacuum. If you leave it in, it will keep sucking water out of the tank. I've got a mark on the side of the tank with a Sharpie that indicates my usual water change mark.

Before you dump this water down the drain, fill up any houseplants or outdoor plants/flowers you may have. This bucket of water is rich in nitrogen which is pretty much what Miracle Gro is and this stuff is free.

I take the leftover water and dump on my plants outside (the drain would be OK too). I then fill the bucket with clean water and chlorine treatment. You want to make sure the water is a degree or 2 above the water in the tank. It will cool a bit before its all in and it's better to have your new water a bit warmer than a bit colder as it causes less shock to the fish.

How to get the new water in is less often covered in these kinds of articles. I started out trying to wrangle a 5 gallon bucket. Don't try this. You'll just end up making a mess.

For a while, I moved on to bringing a full bucket in front of the tank and scooping water in using a plastic water pitcher. This worked OK, but is still tedious. It has the advantage of being free.

My current solution is to actually use a cheap pump. I drop the pump into the bucket with a hose up to the tank and just flip the switch. It then empties the bucket into the tank. This results in much less chance of mess, but will run you $25 for the pump and tubing. Make sure the pump is rated to lift the water as far as you intend to. It's listed as the "head" and is how many feet the pump will lift water against gravity. Also note that the ratings are often optimistic, so it's best to err on the side of caution.

Filter Maintenance

Every couple of water changes (or more often if you've got messy fish), you should take your filter apart and clean it. Remove any gunk with a toothbrush (get a special one in a color no one is likely to mistake) and replace any media like carbon with new as necessary (manual for filter will tell you some about this).

Conclusion

While I'll probably note some more over time on running a tank, this information should get you going. You've got fish, a regular maintenance cycle and all the gear you need to keep the fish running. Enjoy.