Some Questions

[littlen]

hello everyone,
I have decided i really want a betta since looking at all of your lovely fish, and have decided against putting a betta in with my comminity tank since they nip eachother alot never mind anything with nice fins and am concidering buying a small tank to house a betta but since im new to this i have afew questions.

From reading the FAQ thread etc i have gathered the ideal tank size is around 5-7 gallons. I am going to pets at home tomorrow so can anybody recomend a nice small fish tank with a heater? Im in the UK, or can anyone tell me what to look out for, i know many were plastic can these still be heated safely? How much did you all pay for your tanks and did they come with heater/filter?

I understand the betta will need a filter, so the tank will need to be cycled right? Am i able to speed up this process using water/filter from my existing tank? If so how do i go about doing this?


Any other advice about starting a betta tank would be greatly appreciated, and thanks for any advice

 

[JoshH]

Hi Littlen!
If you're going out to P@H then take a look for the ClearSeal tanks they sell, last week I picked one up for £15.99 it was 18 x 10 x 10 inch and holds about 25l of water if I remember rightly! They just come with a plastic hood, you could pick up a 50Watt heater for £15 or so and look for maybe a fluval 1+ filter...what you could do is use some media from your other tank (no more than 1/3) and put it into the new filter, this will transfer beneficial bacteria straight off and if you're housing just the one betta it'll be fine! Water you dont need to transfer, clean dechlorinated water of the right temp will be fine!

Just thought aswell, my P@H sell arcadia 35ltr cubes for £55 this includes light and filter..dont think it comes with a heater which you'd have to pick up seperately...take a look around

Hope that helps,
Josh

 

[littlen]

Thanks josh for the help!

I will certainly look out for the tanks you mentioned, might be cheaper to buy the tank, heater and filter sepearatley if the tank is only £16! I looked online and the only tanks i could see were bio-orbs and tiny goldfish tanks with mermaid stickers on which were no good lol.

I will let you know what i manage to find tomorrow!

 

[JoshH]

No problem, glad I did

Yeah their website is a bit pants, they got a lot more than that! Weigh up the options, the price between one of their kits like the arcadia may be similar to all seperate in the end, depends if you have say a spare filter lying around which you wouldnt then need to buy etc..

My girlfriend actually tried to get me to buy some of those mermaid stickers the other day...apparantly 'the fish would love them' I wasn't best impressed!!