A BALANCED AQUARIUM - GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

Good morning, this is Father Fish. I'm looking today to talk to those of you who have either never set up a fish tank and don't know how to do it, or to those who have set up fish tanks and failed, or at least are not satisfied with what you've been able to achieve. It's really a very simple thing to set up a basic aquarium that will last easily for a year or two or even more with an absolute minimum of maintenance and upkeep there are however a few things you need to understand before you embark on this wonderful journey of maintaining an aquarium in your home with living animals in it. Think of an aquarium the way you think of a garden because it is a garden. It is an enclosed space with all of the material and nutrition that are needed in order to be able to maintain life. You would not sprinkle your seed in a garden that was nothing but rocks. You would not do it. And why not? Because you know the seeds would not thrive. They might sprout, but they would never be able to grow. Now, an aquarium is a little more complicated than a garden because it maintains both plants and animals. So you need to be aware of both and you need to be sensitive to both. I believe if you can create an aquarium that grows plants, including fish, will be a very simple matter and will not require any additional actions at all. So again, think of your aquarium the way you think of a garden. Now what's the first thing you do in order to create a garden? Well, you find a place for it, a place that has soil. You don't put a garden on a sidewalk. You would not put your seed on concrete, nor would you throw your seed in a pile of rocks. Why would you not do that? Well, very simply, because there is no nutrition there. So the first thing to consider is nutrition. Now there are lots of ways to do nutrition. You can dose for it. You can pour bottles of plant additive in your tank every day. But the simplest way to do nutrition is to start your tank with a layer of mud. The mud can come from your backyard. It can come from a bag of potting soil. It could even be include the supplements that Father Fish sells that will extend the life of your nutrient base for years to come. But let's start very simple. Start with some loamy dirt from your backyard, perhaps from your garden, or start with potting soil to which you add water. Now, how much and what you want one inch of mud in the bottom of your tank so if you're starting with a 10 gallon tank it's going to be about a gallon of soil with probably a quart of water that will give you about an inch of soil mud put the water in it let it soak for at least an hour to make sure everything is thoroughly soaked and then pour the mud into the tank now make sure it's not watery you don't want soup you want concrete slurry you want mud like mud pies if it's soupy use a fish net and dip it out and squeeze it off and then put that in the tank about an inch now the next step is really critical you want to keep the dirt separate from the water because if you don't it's going to make the water dirty it'll be a mess plus you'll have all of your nutrients in the water rather than down in the substrate where they are most needed so we're going to put a layer of sand two inches deep on top of the mud this is before you put any water in the tank at all a layer of sand on top of the mud two inches deep dry sand is fine and it doesn't matter what kind of sand or where you get it you want inert sand quartz or some other kind of rock sand you don't want sand that's going to dissolve so you don't want crushed coral unless you have very very soft water where you are then you can use crushed coral the problem with crushed coral is that it does dissolve and it can form a crust on the surface that will prevent water from flowing through it and your waste from going down into it so sand plain sand play sand from a big box store is not particularly desirable. It has a lot of clay in it. It's very difficult to keep it clean. Swimming pool filter sand is perfect. Concrete sand is pretty good. You can use sand blasting sand, sand from a beach, sand from a sand yard. Anywhere you find sand, sift the cigarette butts out of it and pour it in your tank on top of the mud now you're almost there the next step is to put a plate or a towel or some such thing on top of the sand so that when you put the water in you don't stir it all up it's very important not to stir it all up so do that, put a plate in, put a towel in and then slowly and carefully add water until you come to within about two inches from the top of your tank and then stop at that point you can add rocks or driftwood whatever it is you like, hook up whatever filter you have, i like sponge filters because they're very effective they're inexpensive and they do not require maintenance, get your filter turned on and running at this point you can begin to plant your tank, you can use plants that you find in the wild growing in water you want aquatic plants, not terrestrial plants not even bog plants necessarily, you want plants that are growing in the water. You can buy those plants. You can collect them. I sell lots of plants on my website. There are lots of ways to get plants. Bury the plant one inch into the sand. In other words, don't push the roots all the way down in the soil. Bury them halfway down in the sand. There's a reason for this. The reason is that your soil is very, very rich when you first set it up in minerals and nutrients Rich enough that it can burn the roots. So let the roots find it at their pace. Don't force them down into it. Roots grow very quickly. they'll reach down, they'll begin finding the nutrients that they want and that they need and the plants will begin to grow and thrive so the next question is when do you add fish well let me suggest to you that you do not need to break this tank in, you do not need to let it sit for a month, you do not even need to let it sit for more than one day, you already have a cycled tank by virtue of the dirt that's in the bottom of your substrate so you may put fish in it immediately, now be reasonable here, don't put 50 fish in a 10 gallon tank and expect them to live they won't. Put five fish, little ones maybe ten little tiny fish in a 10 gallon tank Bigger fish, even fewer, three or four. If you're going to do African cichlids, never start with less than three. Five is a better number. And never start them in less than a 29 gallon tank you can do it in a 20, a 29 is so much better add fish day two, now when do you feed your fish well you have plants in the tank you have dirt in the bottom of the tank you have fish in the tank if they are very tiny fish feed two or three flakes of food once a day two or three flakes not a pinch not a handful not 15 or 20 two or three tiny little flakes of food once a day continue that for at least a week then you can double it the second week now if you have bigger fish get a pellet food for them and feed two or three pellets these are the tiny little pellets not the big pellets the little tiny pellets, two or three pellets for each fish once a day. If one fish eats all of it, not to worry. Within an hour to two hours at the most, he's going to poop it out and he will have digested about 10% of the nutritional value of the food. So guess what? The other fish are going to eat it and they will dissolve they will digest another 10 percent of the food value of that food you put in the tank and that'll go on over and over and over until the nutritional value of the food is used up so two or three tiny little pellets per fish per day for the first week to two weeks. Do this, you can double it the third week. What happens when the fifth week comes around? By the fifth week, if all is going well, you can stop feeding all together. That is especially true with very small fish because the tank will have begun to cycle and it will be creating food for the fish. You're going to have a light on this tank. The light is going to create algae. The algae provides food. It will also help in the development of more and more infusoria, that's microscopic little animals in the tank that you can't see but are nevertheless there. They're eating the waste that your fish have finally produced. They're also eating the waste from the plants and the fish are feeding on them. When they go around nibbling as they do all the time, they're finding tiny little bits of algae and they're finding tiny little animals, little shrimp, worms, other kinds of things that they eat that nourish them. By the third month, you should not have to feed your fish at all, or if you do so, try to find live food. Daphnia, little fairy shrimp, black worms, brine shrimp, even micro worms, white worm culture. There's so many different kinds of live food you can feed your fish. You can even buy a shrimp from the supermarket and carefully shave it and feed the tiny pieces of that shrimp to your fish. Don't do it five times a day. Don't even do it every day. Do it every other day, maybe twice a week. Your fish don't need you throwing a lot of food in the tank. If you do that, they will become sick. The rule of thumb is this. A hungry fish is a healthy fish. If your fish is hungry and looking for food and poking around on the bottom, then it's healthy. If it's coming to the top every time you walk in the room, you're overfeeding it. You're giving it too much. Do not feed your fish every time you walk in the room. Feed them once every 10 times you walk in the room. That way, they will not come to the top begging for food every time they see you. Okay, those are some basics. Now I want to cover one more area, and that is the local fish store. We are plagued in our economic culture these days with big box stores, big pet shops that carry a huge variety of dry goods and a little bit of fish and some other small animals. Typically, typically they do not hire people who know anything at all about maintaining particularly tropical fish. If you want to know how to tell whether the person you're talking to knows anything about fish, Ask them three questions. You might take notes on this. Number one, what temperature should I keep my fish? If they say 75, then you're not talking to someone who knows how to keep fish. Fish should be kept at a minimum of 80 degrees. 82 is better. If someone says 79, that's acceptable. 80 degrees, 82, anything above that or anything below that is bad advice. That's number one. Number two, ask them what pH you should keep your fish at. If they tell you anything that includes adding chemicals to your water, they're more interested in selling you something than they are and the health of the fish. Whatever your water is, is what your fish will live in. If you're shopping nearby, the pH of the water in the store where you're buying fish is identical to the pH of the water you have available to you in your home or office. There is no difference. They do not need you to be adjusting the pH. You'll never get it right. Don't try to do it. Depend on the pH of the water that you have and the ability of the fish to maintain themselves in that pH. That's number two number three ask them what to do if you get ick now ick is a parasite it is a cold water parasite that infects fish the way a vampire does it sucks the juices right out of them And it multiplies very, very quickly. So that in a matter of two, three days, it will multiply by hundreds. In a matter of a week, it will multiply to such an extent that your fish will die. I have a video on ick. Watch it and learn. Ick is a parasite. site, you can tell if your fish have it by whether or not they have tiny white spots. If they have tiny white spots, I'm going to tell you in a minute how to treat it. But we're talking to a clerk and asking them how to treat for ick. They will probably give you a complex of advice. If the advice does not include raising the temperature of the water to 85 degrees or a little higher, they don't know what they're talking about and you will kill your fish if you pay attention to them. Do not allow that person's advice to influence you. The solution to ick is very simple. Raise the temperature of your tank to 86 degrees for two days. That will kill all of the ick. All of it. By the third day, you can begin bringing it back down and your fish will be completely cured of the ick. If it comes up again, do the same thing again, 86 degrees. is not too warm to harm any fish they will be fine they will be happy they will be healthy and the ick will be killed all right so there's a basic lesson on how to set up a brand new tank how to keep fish in it and what to look for when you're talking to someone at a fish store I hope you enjoyed the video. Please remember to subscribe, to click the bell so that you will get more of my videos as they come out. Keep an eye out for our daily streams where you can come and ask any question at all about your fish. And please click the like button. We're trying to affect the algorithm here and get more people involved in fish keeping. Bless you all. Wonderful to be with you. I hope you enjoyed the video. Come back again soon. Bye for now. This is Father Fish signing off.