Tropical fish - are they hard work?

[hotpotmama]

Quite fancy some but not if they are a real pain to look after.

No they are fine. I love mine, could watch them for hours. They need to be in heated and filtered water but other than that they are easy.

When you first set up a tank you need to take some time to let the water filter through and build up some bacteria in it and add fish slowly at first. If you just chuck in loads of fish straight away the nitrogen cycle won't have completed and you will poision them with their own ammonia.

If you take a bit of time in the beginning making sure the tank is ready for fish then the rest is easy.

Oh thats good to hear. How often do you have to clean yours out? How long do they last?

How long do they fish last? Depends what type you get, some of the varieties live longer than others.

You don't need to do a full water change as then there will be none of the 'good' bacteria in the water that they need to keep the nitrogen cycle going.

I do a 25% water change about once a week, i don't have a huge tank so just scoop a few jugfulls of water out and replace that, the tank doesn't actually need cleaning as such as you can get algea eaters who keep the water and glass clear. I have a gravel cleaner that acts as a little underwater hoover that you swish through the gravel to keep that clean. Whole process takes about 10 minutes.

It took us a few weeks to get the water right, here. But after that it was ever so easy. Changed some of the water every now and again, when I remembered, but otherwise they more or less looked after themselves.

We have had tropical fish and I thought they were a PITA. But then again we had quite a large tank and the water changing once a week definitely took more than an hour or so. Sounds like I need a smaller tank.

Great, thanks for that. What's the best tank? Quite like the biorb

www.reef-one.com/biOrb-Aquariums

Biorb definately not the best tank, very little surface area at the top of the tank to oxygenate the water.

Very low volume of water so you wuldn't be able to put very many fish in it at all.

Small base so you couldn't have any bottom feeders to help keep tank clean.

I really really wouldn't get one of these, you can get a much better (for the fish) tank for much better prices.

Ours is like a biorb

Any recommendations truth?

We've got a big biorb, & it's fine. Probably would get a rectangular tank next time for the reasons ttiitw states.

We have got a catfish & a pleccy in there though, & they quite happily forage among the gravel - you CAN keep bottom-feeders, just not many & probably not at all in the smaller models.

No, they are not hard work as such but there is a lot to understand. There is much more to keeping healthy fish than just giving them a filter and a heater.

You need to understand the basics of the nitrogen cycle (which is very simple but very important!) and you need to be very careful about which fish you put together because there are so many different types and pet shops are notoriously rubbish at selling you the right ones- so many people end up with fish that get over a foot long and then have to rehome them.

I wouldn't recommend a biorb as truthisinthewine says- the filtration is rubbish, it's overpriced and there are so many fish you can't keep in there- the substrate is sharp so can injure bottom feeders.

I would recommend plenty of research on specialist fish sites. The more you look at, the more accurate advice you will get.

If you just want a basic tropical tank then I would go for something like a Juwel. You shouldn't consider anything less than 60 litres for your first tank, smaller tanks are actually much harder to maintain despite shops and manufacturers peddling them as beginners' tanks.

Most small tropical fish live for about 5-10 years but some can live longer.

what helped me most was joining an internet forum when I set up tropical fish

tropicalfishforums is a good one

mind you, it can get a addictive: I started with a 60 ltr tank for the kids 5 years ago, and am currently running 7 tanks (looking enviously at those of my friends who can afford to run fish houses)

but dcs lost interest after the first few months

Hi, just putting it out there again as previous posts were from yrs ago, looking to get a big fish tank, love the colours and variety of salt water fish but been getting put off as heard they are time consuming and difficult to manage?? Any thoughts welcome.

My understanding is that keeping marines is a lot more involved and they are a lot more unforgiving than freshwater, plus it's a much more expensive hobby altogether.

A set up for a basic marine system of decent size will start at around £1,000. They're very expensive and require a very good technical mind to cope with water chemistry and the extra equipment needed (like protein skimmers etc) compared to a freshwater tropical tank.

If you've got the time and the budget and have at least kept freshwater for a few years, by all means go marine, but do a good month or two of reading first!