Home aquarium keeping can be a very satisfying pastime. There is nothing better than to see a beautiful thriving aquarium full of healthy, lively, colourful fish accompanied by thriving live plants. Aquariums are well known to have a calming effect on people, it is not surprising that they are a common sight in doctors and dentists waiting rooms.

On the other hand, if you don’t start out right then you could have the nightmare scenario of dead and dying fish, straggly plants, cloudy water and anything but a joy to behold. Make sure you do what’s described below and this will not happen to you.

So Called ‘Beginners Tanks’ Are Not For You

Small tanks, generally 12 to 18 inches across, are often sold as so called ‘beginners tanks’ presumably because they are easy to carry out of the shop! However you need to understand that a home fish tank that is well looked after is a delicately balanced ecological system and it can easily destabilise. The smaller the aquarium the more difficult it is to maintain balance because they are more unstable than larger aquariums and when they go out of balance the deterioration is very swift. I won’t go into the details here, sufficient to say that your first tank should be somewhere around 36″ x 12″ x 18″.

Do Not Buy Tank And Fish On the Same Day

This is probably the biggest mistake that you can make. Before any fish enter your aquarium it needs to have been established for at least a few days, preferable a week to achieve some kind of equilibrium. You should set up your tank with everything in it except for the fish. Leave it like that for a week. During that week you should monitor the temperature and the clarity and condition of the water using test strips. Provided everything has stabilised then introduce a couple of cheap fish and keep an eye on them for a few days. Only after they look fine should you go out and buy any more fish.

Select You Fish With Care

It is a mistake to assume that all varieties of fish will live in harmony together in your community tank. You should not leave this to chance. Sad to say that generally speaking if a fish is small enough to enter the mouth of another fish then that is what will happen i.e. it will be eaten! Some species of fish have males that will fight to the death. Males of certain species hound the females endlessly so it is a good idea to have 2 or 3 females to each male. Some fish prefer to stay near the gravel while others prefer to swim near the surface. Although not normally a major issue, you should remember that fish require different conditions in terms of temperature and pH etc. You should buy lively fish that can dart around the tank, avoid any that look sickly or have split fins. Getting advice form a really experienced aquarium supplier is probably the best approach.

Do not overstock your tank

There are various ‘rules of thumb’ for calculating the fish capacity of your tank. Here are some of them:

• 3 cm of adult fish length per 4 litres of water (i.e., a 6 cm-long fish would need about 8 litres of water).
• 1 cm of adult fish length per 30 square centimetres of surface area.
• 1 inch of adult fish length per gallon of water.
• 1 inch of adult fish length per 12 square inches of surface area.

Don’t take any of these rules too seriously. The young fish that you buy now are going to be much bigger in just a few months and will need more room. It is very important to take this into account. Decide on your tank’s maximum fish capacity by slowly adding fish over a period of several months and keeping a watch on water quality.

Monitor the Water and Change it Regularly

As I said before, your aquarium is delicately balanced so it is important to check the water condition regularly. You may not have heard of aquarium ‘cycling’. This is the name given to the process whereby fish waste turns to ammonia, bacteria turn the ammonia into nitrite and other bacteria turn the nitrite into nitrate. In the lakes and streams of the natural world ‘cycling’ works without any need for intervention from outside. In your aquarium however you need to help it along by changing at least 25% of the tank water every week. It is also important that you monitor nitrite and nitrate levels because high levels, particularly of nitrites will kill your fish.

So that’s it. If you follow this advice you will start off on the right foot and own an aquarium that will be a stunning addition to your home and that you can be proud of.

John Thomson is an aquarium expert. For more great freshwater aquarium information, visit http://www.freshwateraquariumsecretsonline.com.