Hi Guy's

I have been pondering for a month or two now to get a tropical fish tank....i have finally taken the plunge and got my self a 190 litre corner tropical fish tank...With the following equipment,

Aquarium Dimensions (approx.)

98 cm Width
70 cm Depth (radius)
60 cm Height
Cabinet Dimensions are as above but stands 70cm tall

Useful Volume: 161 Litres (approx.)

Equipment Included

Fluval 205 External Filter
"Easy-Connect" system and attachments
2 x 25 watt T5 Canopy lights with timer
200 watt heater
100ml Nutrafin Aquaplus
100ml Nutrafin Cycle
26g Nutrafin complete flake food

Im completely new to this and was wondering if anyone could add to the list of equipment i should get myself to start things off as smoothly as possible.

I'm also a little concerned about the water to use for my tank, do i just fill up from the tap and treat the water or do i purchase water from somewhere else? when replacing water in the tank do i also just use treated tap water? Also i don't really want to use live plants will this hinder me in anyway? and for the size of the tank what ratio of fish would be recommended...im going for a community tank. What type of gravel would you use for the base of the tank?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thank you in advance

Rob

This post has been edited by Stonefish: Feb 19 2008, 03:53 PM

Hi and to the forum

Hi Stonefish, welcome to TFF and to fishkeeping

that's a nice sized tank to start off with, bigger tanks are more stable so you should find it easier to manage than with a really small tank.

you're right to be concerned about your water, wise saying in fishkeeping number 1 - 'we are not fish keepers, we are water keepers, look after you're water and the fish will look after themselves'

not completely 100% accurate but not far off. for that reason you need to prepare the tank before adding fish, you'll need to stabilise the water parameters.

you do this by 'cycling' the filter, how a filter works can be summed up quite basically like this

here is a an explanation of cycling http://www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...eady-have-fish/

the post is aimed at people who have added fish to the new tank without cycling it first, so you don't need to worry about the advice, but it explains the process and basic science behind it.

what you should do is a fishless cycle, this sets everything up so you can add fish safely

details on how to do this can be found here

http://www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-t...shless-Cycling/

That's plenty of reading to get your head around to start off with, so read ask questions... and then we'll move on to some other aspects to understand before adding fish.

Thank you for the info Miss Wiggle

Thank you Foxy