Welcome, n00b.
5 gallon tank eh?
I'm Canadian... Eh?!?
Well i'd say with that kind of filter, and regular maintenace you should be ok to put in about 5 fish. The rule of thumb is 1 inch of fish per gallon. Thats 5 guppies, or 5 neons, or a betta and 3 neons, or two small gourami, there are endless possibilities. Don't let these fish buffs fool you into believing you need a huge tank with expensive stuff on it too keep a few fish. All you need is a diligent maintainance schedule.
I was hired by a veterinary clinic to set up and maintain a 54 gallon bow front corner aquarium. This tank has its own built in wet/dry filter AND bio-ball stack. All contained underneith the tank in the cabinet. This filter is adequete for the tank, and maybe even a little too powerful, because it pumps 700 gallons per hour. However, that is comparable to you running an aqua-clear mini on your 5 gallon. I must commend you on using that filter, because it is the best for the size, and best for the price. Very good
. Now the tank that I look after for the clinic has been stocked up pretty good, 4 years ago I put in:
2 moonlight gourami,
8 tiger barbs,
1 cardinal tetra,
4 bleeding heart tetra,
1 pleco
1 red-tail bala shark
6 flying fox
8 zebra danio
4 penguin tetra
Now today, four years later I have:
2 moonlight gourami
4 bleeding heart tetra
1 pleco
1 red-tail bala shark
6 flying fox
6 zebra danio
All of these fish are huge now, at their maximum size, except maybe the gourami, and you should have seen the tiger barbs, they were like ping-pong balls that had been flattened a bit.
However, to keep all these fish in this tank I had to do maintenance every week. Every week I go in, fill up 3 buckets with water, and let them sit for 48 hours. That way the chlorine evaporates and the heavy metals sink to the bottom. Then after 2 days go by I go in again and siphon the gravel, getting all the debris out of it, and change 20% of the water, replacing it with the stuff I had let sit out. Then I scrub any algae, then I look at the filter and keep tabs on how soon it will need to be changed.
For you to keep 5 fish in your tank, you will need to adopt an identical procedure.
Here is what you should do:
Everyday:
- feed the fish
- glance at the filter, notice if it's running slowly or the water is cloudy
- check the temperature (for tropical fish you want 26 C, for goldfish you want 19 C)
One a week:
- take out your gravel siphon and siphon all the gravel in the tank. Do so thouroghly and make sure no more brown stuff is coming out of the gravel once you're done.
- take your algae scrubber and scrub the glass.
- take the glass cover off the top of the tank and scrub and clean it. (Just use hot water and an algae pad, or maybe vinager, but no cleaning products, they kill the fish.)
-wipe down all the plastic trim and around the base of the tank.
Once a month:
Take the filter stack out of your Aqua-clear Mini, and run hot water over the sponge and squeeze it out. Do that until it looks clean again, mainly just get all the crap off of it. Put it back in your tank and you're ready to go! Do this during a water change though and put in a bit of dechlorinator because you don't want any extra chlorine in your tank.
Every three months:
Buy a new aqua-clear mini carbon insert, rinse it under cold running water until no more black carbon dust is coming out, and then replace the old one in your filter with it.
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And thats it!
Do that procedure and I garuntee you will have happy, healthy fish and a clean sparkling tank.
The weekly maintenance takes about 20-30 minutes, not very long and makes a HUGE difference. Really, if you want a pleasent fish experiance, just do that. You'll be surprised how well this works.
Heck, i've done it for 4 years and the tank still looks like new!
Good lucky buddy, fish can be fun if you put in the effort.
Cheers!
HooDude
