First Tank

[clutterydrawer]

oh, i never did water changes either, cos i was told not to had my tank getting on three years and only started doing regular water changes recently

 

[Pointy_kitty]

i THOUGHT i was doing research by learnign from good ol' petcetera
they sent me home with a 20 gallon and in the same week, a plecostomus, 2 platy, 2 white cloud minnows, 2 Angelfish,2 guppies, 1 albino tiger barb and one catfish
they told me nothing of cycling, told me i could have 20 fish in a 20 gallon (regardless of size) and told me i only had to clean it once every couple of months, if even that much

i called it (the tank) my "cube of death"
i lost everything but one of my angels and a white cloud
those that didn't die of nitrate/ ammonia poisoning, were torn apart by the albino barb (which i was told was community and not a barb at all)

pretty tramatic for someone who is use to the longer much less flimsier lifespan of animals, birds and reptiles

especially when you would find them crammed in a bush or stuck to the filter

 

[Tempestuousfury]

Heck no! 14 of 17 fish died. It was horrible.

 

[dannykerbles]

Bless this forum......with all the different info provided here i was very prepared and my answers were just a click away.......

Thanks

 

[amazingbioloboydp]

actually i did a lot of research before hand and found this site so i could prove to my parents that i was resposible enough for one.That is how i found the site.Then the site had the hack thing and i had to come back as a diff name.

 

[Bol]

Yep, did lots of research.

After a great internal debate, I decided to try Bio-Spira, and it worked just fine.

 

[nightlife20]

yes and no...

i brought the tank.. researched a bit... but still made huge mistakes.... check out some of my old posts lmao...

 

[Henry_VCG_]

nah I knew nothing, I would completely clean my little buble filter out. So that not even a spec would remain on it. I thought it was a great thing to do...

 

[ChriX]

I didn't, I read a couple of books to decide what fish I wanted, but they never mentioned anything about the nitrogen cycle.

 

[SConrad]

WOW! i didnt!
i didnt lose ONE fish through the whole thing though!
i overstocked..added fish i didnt know how big they got..i didnt lose any fish untill i didnt a 100% water change(dont even remember why!)..i lost 2 i think

it was a ten gallon tank with...4 guppy's, a redtail shark, two swordtails, 2 mollies, a common pleco...and 2 tiger barbs

this was august of 2003 and i still have the common pleco, the shark and the tiger barbs........................i guess i lost more than i knew

 

[sumer_kay]

nope I didn't, and they lived suprisingly well without dechlorinator, ect. ect. until I practically boiled them when we left for a weekend. Poor guys.

 

[CFC]

We fell into the trap of believing the people in the lfs and done the standard leaving the tank to settle for a week before adding any fish, of course all we had been doing was running the filter to push our dechlorinated water around. We added our fish slowly but still added too many too soon and ended up killing a lot of fish before the tank was finally cycled and stable, we didnt have the internet then and the books we had were years out of date as we'd bought them from second hand shops.