Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Fishnet

If you have a fish pond, fish tank or are seeking advice about keeping tropical fish, you can find advice on our Fish forum.

First time tropical fish keeping tips

2 replies

Cumulonimbusincus · 25/11/2023 23:01

DS would like some tropical fish for his birthday. He’ll be 6. In the past I’ve had cold water fish and pond fish but never tropicals.

The tank will be minimum 70l, hopefully around 90l on a predominantly horizontal not vertical footprint.

Do I need to treat the water for a few days before the first fish go in? We’d like a variety of small fish that won’t grow but will only introduce one type at a time. We want a peaceful tank so will be choosing fish accordingly. We’ll also be providing them with live plants, although I know this will make the water dirty more quickly. I’d like a couple of catfish to keep the glass clean - is that an option?

Any tips on any aspect of keeping tropicals gratefully received, especially initial set up. I don’t expect DS to take responsibility for caring for them, we have a variety of animals and he’s good about helping with them all but at 6 I wouldn’t expect him to be solely responsible for tropicals. Thanks!

OP posts:
SunnySomer · 25/11/2023 23:07

We had a very similar setup. I think we needed to let the water “run” for a full week before introducing any fish. The most successful were mollys, and several seemed to arrive pregnant as every so often we had babies (which was pretty cool). Neon tetras were calm and lovely, but penguin tetras were absolute bullies. The catfish lived happily alongside everyone else. They loved the live plants though these did need replacing fairly frequently.
enjoy!

bunnygeek · 06/02/2024 11:00

How did you get on with your tank? It's a shame I missed this last year as it takes faaaar longer than a week for a tank to mature, think at least 4-6 weeks if you're going through the nitrogen cycle from scratch. Loads of guides on doing the nitrogen cycle properly - most bottled stuff that claims to skip the process are snake oil and don't really do what you think they're doing.

Sometimes people get lucky introducing early, other times everything dies from ammonia or nitrite spikes :(

What size tank did you get in the end?

New posts on this thread. Refresh page