New To This

[TEDFISH]

HI, WHERE DO I START, MY PARTNER HAS SHOWN A KEEN INTEREST IN STARTING HIS OWN TROPICAL TANK, I HAVE BEEN READING ALOT OF INFO ON HERE AND FIND IT BRILLIANT, I WANT TO START HIM OFF AS (A BIRTHDAY GIFT) AND WOULD LOVE SOMEONE TO GIVE ME A,.. WELL SHOPPING LIST REALLY, I WANT IT TO BE HIS PROJECT, AS HE WOULD NOT BE IMPRESSED BY IT SUDDELY APPEARING THERE ALL DONE FOR HIM AND WELL THAT WOULD BE HARD ANY WAY AS I KNOW IT TAKES A WHILE TO SET UP I.E CYCLE PH TESTS ETC..... BUT JUST LITERALLY THE BASICS TO START HIM OFF, I HAVE THE TANK WHICH IS 18" TALL, 12" DEEP AND 24" WIDE. APART FROM THAT THATS IT. SO WOULD SOMEONE TO GIVE ME A STRAIGHT FORWARD ACCOUNT OF WHAT I NEED TO SART HIM OFF, HE WILL BE THE BRAINS BEHIND THE OPERATION AND THE RESEARCHER AS TO WHAT HE DOES TO START, JUST WANTED THE BARE ESSENTIALS TO GET HIM TO THE FISHLESS CYCLE ETC...... ALSO CAN YOU TELL ME IF YOU CAN TAKE MEDUM?,,,,,,,,, FROM A COLD WATER TANK OFF THE FILTER IS THIS THE ALGAE STUFF? MANY THANKS IF ANY ONE CAN HELP ME PLEASE, THANK YOU ..........

 

[TEDFISH]

ALSO WHATS BEST SAND OR GRAVEL?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well hello and welcome to the forum,

congratulations because you have just made the first step to sucessful fishkeeping, researching before you dive straight in and get fish!!!

If you hop over to the new to the hobby forum you'll see a load of pinned topics and one called the 'beginners resource centre' read as much as you can from there and you'll find answers top most of your questions, remmeber the only silly question is the one not asked so just fire away once you've deon some background reading.

I think the place to start is the 'step by step guide to setting up an aquarium' this is also linked in my signature. It gives a shopping list of the different bits of equipment and some of the other things that you'll need and directs you to some of the other pertinent topics for beginners like cycling.

If you want him to do the research what I would suggest is instead of buying actual bits of equipment for him what you should do is either get vouchers for your local aquarium store or write him up an IOU for however much you want to spend, that way when he's worked out what he wants he can choose things himself to match the set up he wants.

I would then set him up a user account on here and direct him to the new to the hobby forum particularly the link above and the fishless cycling link which contain the basic info and we'll help him out all we can from there.

Yes you can take media from the coldwater tank, what you'd do is once you've got the tank and filled it with water take one third of the media from the coldwater tanks filter (media is the sponges or ceramic shapes which live inside the filter) and transfer it to the filter on the new tank, you'd then do a fishless cycle as per the instructions in that thread, but it would be a lot quicker than starting from scratch.

Hope that helps!

 

[chesterscot]

sand or gravel is really a personall choice i think it just depends on the look of the tank your after
you will need gravel a filter thermometer and heater as basics but then you could put plastic or real plants in rocks and or bogwood just depends on your tanks theme water testing kits and dechlorinator are also advisable someone will tell you other things you need but this is just off the top of my head hope it helps
scot