The Fish Room Blogs — aquarium

The way my hobby was formed.

January 22, 2019 • adding fish • aquarium • cichlid • fish tank • frontosa • tropical fish

Very quickly it was apparent to me that I needed to keep these animals in an appropriate sized aquarium due to their nature and overall size they got and luckily enough for me I scored my first "big" aquarium not long after I started looking.

How my aquatic journey begun

January 12, 2019 • aquarium • cycle • fish • tropical fish

From there I thought to myself it wasn't fair to have these Kribs in with a natural predator regardless if he was interested in them or not. Soon to TradeMe I went and I bought my self a second hand Aqua one 620t which had super sweet blue lights. So in the tank (uncycled, rookie mistake) went my Kribs. And this was the making of my first aquarium.

Setting up a New Aquarium Part 5

September 27, 2018 • aquarium • cycling aquarium • fish tank • tropical fish

Probably the most important part of keeping an aquarium is learning about the cycle. They joy with cycling is you can make it as complicated or basic as you wish, and for the sake of this we will make it as basic as possible for you.

The simplest way of explaining the cycle is that is makes your aquarium safe for your fish. It does that via good bacteria within your filter breaking down nasty stuff and turning it into something that is less nasty for your wet pets. This process goes from ammonia (very nasty) to nitrite (also very nasty) on to nitrate (only nasty at high levels). The idea is to not put fish into an aquarium with ammonia or nitrite but to wait until this process has gone through to nitrate. Depending on the method you use to cycle your aquarium this could take anywhere from 3 days up to 6 weeks.

Setting up a New Aquarium Part 4

September 20, 2018 • adding fish • algae • aquarium • bacteria • community aquarium fish • fish tank • glass cleaner • planted aquarium • tropical fish

Bottled bacteria is a good way of speeding up a cycle for a new aquarium (please see cycling section) using these products can shorten a cycle down from upwards of 6 weeks to as little as 3-7 days. If using a bottled bacteria to cycle a fresh aquarium, please note although your aquarium is cycled and ready for wet pets, it is still a very immature system, so slowly adding fish is still the best option.

Setting up a New Aquarium Part 2

September 06, 2018 • anubias • aquarium • crypt • echinodorus • filter • fish tank • JBL • low tech • planted aquarium • plants • seachem • seachem purigen • tropical fish

Plant selection is also very important, all too often pet shops sell non-aquatic plants as aquatic plants, this is a recipe for disaster as they will not last long submersed underwater in your aquarium. We at the fish room do not carry not aquatic plants, to give you the best possible chance of having your plants survive.