Beginners Guide To Fish-Keeping

Getting started in fish-keeping can be daunting. This blog post will give you more information on different types of equipment to help get you started.

Welcome to my very first blog post! My name is Gretchen and I have been in the fish-keeping hobby since I was in middle school. When I was researching what I needed to buy to start my first fish tank, I was quickly overwhelmed by the amount of information that I was met with. I hope to be able to deliver important information about getting started in a manner that is easy to understand.

Tank

Any aquarium setup needs to start with a tank. The size of tank you need will depend upon your budget as well as what kind of fish you are planning to keep. Generally, the rule of thumb is to have 1 gallon of water per inch of fish. If you are first starting out in the hobby, looking for used tanks can be the best option because people often sell them in kits with everything you need to start. If you are looking to buy a new tank, Petco has an annual dollar per gallon sale where you can get a tank for far cheaper than the original price.

Substrate

Substrate is the substance that sits at the bottom of the tank. This can include things like gravel, sand, or gems. There is a lot of wiggle room when it comes to picking a substrate for your fish. If you are planning to have a tank with live plants, it is best to get a substrate with added nutrients to help the plants grow. If you are not going to have live plants in your tank, it gives you a lot more flexibility. The two important things to think about when buying substrate for a non-planted tank is to make sure it is aquarium safe, and also to make sure that your fish won’t get the substrate stuck in their mouth. Bottom feeder fish prefer to scavenge for food at the bottom of the tank because if they were to eat food off of the surface of the water, it could cause them to swallow air which will in turn cause buoyancy issues. One popular beginner bottom-feeder is goldfish. For goldfish, you want to choose a substrate that is either bigger or smaller than the size of a pea. Substrate is not absolutely necessary, some people prefer to have bare bottomed tanks and that is totally fine too!

Filter

Having a filter is one of the most important aspects of starting up a new fish tank and it can quickly become very overwhelming. I will be making another post in the future dedicated solely to filters, however, I will give a quick overview on some different types of affordable filters and what they are useful for. In the future, I will be making another blog post solely dedicated to filters where I will dive into some other filter options.

Under Gravel Filters

These filters are exactly what they sound like. They sit underneath the substrate and filter the debris that falls to the bottom of the tank. These filters are hard to find nowadays because they are very hard to clean. In order to perform maintenance on your filter, you will need to take out the gravel that sits on top of it which can be a hassle. Under gravel filters also limit what kind of substrate you can use because finer substrates like sand can get sucked up which clogs the filter. Under gravel filters tend to run on the cheaper side, however, there are better filter options out there that still remain affordable.

Internal Power Filters

I have found that these are the most common type of filter that I have seen in beginner tank kits. For most beginner fish, this type of filter works perfectly fine while still being affordable. This filter hangs on the inside of the tank and sucks up the water, pushes it through a filter, and spits it back out into the tank. I have one of these in my 5 gallon betta tank and I don’t see a need for a stronger method of filtration because there is only one fish in the tank. One big downside to these filters is that since they occupy space inside of the tank, they can only be so big which means for tanks with many fish, it may not provide enough filtration.

Hang on Back Filters

I love these types of filters for many of my tanks because they are similar to the Internal Power Filters, except they sit on the outside of the tank so they can contain more filter media. I have one of these on my 20 gallon goldfish tank. They are pretty easy to clean and are a great option for a beginner tank that is more than 10 gallons. One thing you have to be careful of is if the water level gets too low it can quickly burn out the motor and cause it to no longer work.

Once you have all of these elements, some fish safe decorations, water conditioner, and water, you'll be ready for next week's blog on how to cycle your tank!