Complete Beginner Needs Basic Advice

[Miriax]

Hi Guys,

I have always found fish fascinating and have always wanted a home aquarium, however, due to lack of money and time, I have decided to go for a smaller scale tank. I have no fish keeping experience and have no friend who do, I am trying to learn what I can from experience and the Internet, however, I do not want to make any incorrect tangents and end up endangering fish's wellfare or myself.

Any hints, tips, advice and guidance would have absolutely fantastic on setting me off on keeping my own small aquarium successfully.

Sitting to my right, I now have a 45L Biorb Life fish tank, filled with water, ceramic media, feng shui stones and plastic plants along with its fitted filter and heater. I would like a few cleaner shrimp (the reason I originally brought the tank), a shoal of small fish and perhaps a clown fish. I really am in the dark about how to go about this and where to go from what I have now.... so perhaps I am being too over ambitious with my choice of fish, however I would really love cleaner shrimp.

I have collated as much information from the tank instruction booklet as I can... knowing to change the filter every 6 weeks, 30% of the water every 4 weeks, I know a little about keeping water safe and bacteria free (conditioned) and on pay day, will buy a pH tester kit to assure that the levels are reliable.

If any, more experienced fish keepers could tell me anything I may be missing, tips on keeping my Biorb life tank running smoothly, as much information on cleaner shrimp as you know (Internet information is scarce) and what it will live with along with feeding, illness, anything.

I really am starting from scratch here, the biorb tank seems easy to maintain seeing as I have such lack of time and money but as much expert advice as you guys have would be really helpful!

Thanks!
Jacob

EDIT: I also only just realised that cleaner shrimp require salt water... Am I right in thinking that this is noth harder to maintain and gives me less choice on choosing other fish?

 

[Colin_T]

Hi Jacob and welcome to the forum

If you only just got the biorb/ bio-orb, I would suggest you take it back and get a normal rectangular aquarium. Unfortunately bio-orbs aren't the easiest things to maintain and aren't suitable for marine fish and shrimp. They just don't do as well and are much harder to look after due to their iregular shape.
Having said that, if you have had the tank for a while then you are probably stuck with it.
You can have fresh, brackish (part fresh & part salt) and salt water/ marine fish tanks. Small tanks are more suited to fresh water fishes but you can keep salt water fish in small tanks if you know what you're doing. As a beginner tho, you will do better keeping fresh water fish in a bio-orb.

The clownfish and cleaner shrimp are salt water and do best in tanks that hold at least 100litres (25gallons) of water.

 

[Miriax]

Cheers Colin,

Ok, what do you guys recommend I do?

I currently have a 45L Bio-orb Life tank, heated and decked out. Would you convert to saltwater and see what I can get or stick to fresh... secondly, in either case, what fish and how many would you recommend I stock?

- Jacob

 

[Colin_T]

if you convert to saltwater, you could have a small cleaner shrimp and a small goby (coral goby or similar), but you won't be able to have clownfish or anything bigger than an inch or so long. A lot of people that have small marine tanks have corals in them but the Bio-orbs don't have very good lighting so that won't work.
I would probably stay with fresh water and keep some small fresh water shrimp like Cherry Shrimp, and maybe some pencilfish or a group (6-10 fish) of small tetras like neons or glo-light tetras. You could probably put a couple of pygmy corydoras in there too once the filters have established and settled down, (after about a month).

 

[Miss Wiggle]

what i'd suggest if this is your first go at fishkeeping and time and money is limited that you start out with the small freshwater tank and if you enjoy that then move on to a more practical saltwater tank in time.

there's no reason why you can't have a saltwater tank for your first tank if you are utterly convinced that this is what you want, however it is much more complicated than freshwater so you will have a lot fo research to do before you even start to think about fish, doing it all in a small bi-orb is also going to add more complexity and require more time. the larger the body of water is the more stable it is, this is even more important in a saltwater environment so for your first saltwater tank i would recommend at least a 30 gallon (110ish litres) tank. Then you factor in the cost, running a marine tank is much mroe expensive than a freshwater one, you need more hardwarer, more testing equipment, more additives for the water, the fish are more expensive etc etc. You can't expect to recoup any serious amount of thias cost if you didn't like it after 6 months and wanted to sell the tank, stuff like this loses value as soon as it's out of the box and has been run.

What I'd suggest is a small freshwater tank in your bi orb with a shoal of small fish like harlequin rasbora's, some amano shrimp to get your shrimp fix in would be a nice easyish and cheapish set up to start out with, then if you want to progress onto saltwater you'll do it with a bit more experience under your belt and a bit more certainty that it is worth the investment of time and money.