Need Help With 3 Foot Fish Tank

[Tyronk]

Wats up people I was wondering if someone could help me.... I have a 3ft fish tank that I just restarted and I'm kinda a beginner and I want to know if you guys could help me decide what is decent fish and a theme that I can use in my tank thanks

 

[nurglespuss]

Hi there 36" is a good starter setup!

First off, what are you interested in? Have you popped into the library and grabbed a couple of fish books?

Take a look and see if you like specific types/shapes/species etc. of fish, and if your tank is big enough/the species are compatible etc.

How do you want your tank to look? A bright colourful setup with decorations and coloured gravel? Or a natural planted tank, with wood and sand? etc.

What type of equipment do you have? Is there a light, heater, filter (internal or external), thermometer etc.?

As you can see there are loads of questions!

Grab a couple of books, go on google and image search aquariums etc.

Then come back with an idea of what interests you!

Welcome to the hobby!!

 

[Tyronk]

Hi man thanks for the reply. Yea I've got the pump, filter,heater and light I kinda want to go natural with plants I'm looking in to angels but my gravel is red,black,white?

 

[nurglespuss]

Good to know you've got the equipment

Is the filter for sitting inside the tank or outside?

Your tank is going to be too shallow for angels (I'm guessing its 36x12x12") and, tey are Cichlids so can get quite aggressive as they get bigger.

I have limited experience with Cichlids, but if you want some for your aquarium, Apistogramas & Kribensis etc. are good starter ones, that 'should' get on with most community fish.

OK, planted is good, you'll need to decide what type of planting you want to do, as a 'starter' setup, the hardier plants are probably better, Java fern/Java moss tied to wood is very hardy! and things like Elodea (or other simple stem plants) inserted into the gravel can do well in good light.

Perhaps see if you can get hold of some bogwood (or mopani wood) - I believe pets at home have a '3 for 2' offer on at the moment.

Do you have a stand for the tank as well?

 

[ParadiseGuerrero]

you could look into setting up a biotype sort of thing- in my 3ft (small tank in sig) The Paradise fish and white clouds look really good together, I think this is probably because they live together naturally- so looking into fish that naturally live together can help make a tank 'match'. The Rosy Barbs on the other hand look a bit out of place ;p It's also nice having a center piece fish that is noticably bigger than the other fish but not big enough or aggressive as to do harm to the others- in the 'big tank' all the fish are roughly the same size so none particularly stand out (excluding the bright orange platy which stand out an awful lot)

If you find a center piece type fish you like you could then look into the shoaling species it lives with and you should end up with a nicly match tank... even if the plants don't come from the same region this doesn't seem quite so important. If I could set up another tank then this is how I'd probably do it... just make sure you don't pick the preditor and it's prey (obviously there would be compatability issues)