Thinking Of Getting Aquarium

[OM09]

Hi

I'm thinking of buying an aquarium....maybe 4ft length (300 - 400 litres capacity) and need to know a few things beforehand.

What would be the monthly expense with regard to filtration/heating etc?

Is it necessary to do water changes weekly?......I'd prefer to have a low maintainance aquariium (Would having lots of plants and few fish achieve this?)

There's much more I'd like to know about the hobby but these are the main questions (for now anyway!)

Thanks in advance

Steve

 

[Meds081603]

Well it is going to be tough if you don't like doing maintenance. Especially when you first set up your tank. The cycling process takes a good bit of time and effort. Once your tank is established then yes you are correct. Lots of live plants and understocking will significantly cut down on maintenance. That being said, you MUST still do maintenance and pay attention to your tank, it just wont kill things as quickly if you don't.

 

[pauly]

My advice would be to read, read, and READ up on the subject as much as possible. Maybe get a good book, and read through as many of these threads as possible.

I think any aquarium will take time and effort to get it set up (up to about 2 months), then its pretty much just a weekly routine of small water changes, filter maintenance and general checks on water stats etc.

If you're buying a new aquarium, the filter and heater generally come part of the package.

It makes a change for someone to find this place BEFORE they buy a tank

Paul.

[edit] I just noticed you asked about MONTHLY expense of heating and filtration. Do you mean the cost of running those? From my experience, the extra electricity bill isn't noticable.

 

[Scotty001]

Hi

I'm thinking of buying an aquarium....maybe 4ft length (300 - 400 litres capacity) and need to know a few things beforehand.

What would be the monthly expense with regard to filtration/heating etc?

Is it necessary to do water changes weekly?......I'd prefer to have a low maintainance aquariium (Would having lots of plants and few fish achieve this?)

There's much more I'd like to know about the hobby but these are the main questions (for now anyway!)

Thanks in advance

Steve

Its difficult to say how much the running cost would be as it all depend on how many watts of electric per hour the filter / lighting / air pump would use.
Different makes and manufacturers have different consumption rates. you would need to see what makes and manufacturers your looking to buy, most have consumption rating on them (consumption rating is X amount of watts per hour).

You would need to times consumption figure by 24 (hrs) for the filter, X amount of hours you want to have the lights on and 24 (hrs) for the air stone.
when you know how many watts per hour they will consume in total (EG 25w for filter, 75w per hr for lighting & 3w for air stone = 103 watts in total.

I have left out the consumption for the heater as it is too variable, unless you want to spend a week solidly looking at the heater to work out for how many hours a day & night it actually comes on for as this will fluctuate with ambient temp in the room your tank is in.

Now you need to times the 25w x 24hrs = 600w per day 75w x 10hrs = 750w per day 3w x 24hr = 72w this totals 1422w per day.

Depending on how much you pay for your electricity per Kwh (1 unit = 1kwh) you will need to times the 1422w by the kwh to give you a daily cost For simplicity i have rounded up the 1422w to 1500w (1.5Kwh / 1.5 units) 1.5kwh of electric consumption per day if for example you 8pence per kwn / Unit your calculation would be 0.08 Pence per kwh x 1.5 = 12p per day x 30 days = £3.60 per month in running cost.

The above means of calculation is if you have a single flat rate electricity supply at 8pence per kwh. (you need to change the 8ppkwh to your actual unit rate and of course the consumption usage) It harder to work out consumption price if you have Economy 7 (2 rate electricity supply that had a day time unit rate much much higher than the night time unit rate, normally its only people that are all electric , have no gas or have immersion / main electric heaters) that have an economy 7 electricity supply, The cheap rate is from 23:30 - 07:30) as need 2 calculations 1 for day cost one for eve cost and add together.

With regards to the weekly water changes i would say YES but it will take you no more than 1 hr a week to do a partial water change thats 1hr out of 168hrs a week (i spend more time on the toilet per week than that !!) so a weekly water change is still LOW Maintaience and your fish will much appreciate it as you'll be keeping the water nice and fresh and all the ammonia, nitrites, nitrates at the correct levels, (guess you could compare it to you sitting in a room full of smoke not being able to have any fresh air, soon enough you would be overcome by the toxins, feel and look like crap, just wanting to curl up and die.

You need to remember fish are a living thing that your looking after I'm sure you would spend more than an hour a week keeping your own living environment nice and clean and healthy for you to live in.

Not only that you will find that when its all set up and running it looks fantastic and compliments any room in the house & you wouldn't want to have a lovely tank with fantastic fish in that you begrudge looking at because the water looks nasty the fish have lost their superb colour and all look like they're unwell and soon to die. You get so much more joy looking at good healthy fish going about their business without a care in the world and is good for you too. my tank is in my room, never been so relaxed to be able to just lay on the bed stare at the fish and fall asleep, nice and relaxing.

Please you read up on fish less cycling in the pinned topics too theres lots of great info on how to get everything up and running from the start.

Hope this is of help to you and good luck with the fish keeping, there great to sit and watch !!!

Scott

 

[OM09]

Thanks for the replies Scott Paul and Meds

That's really useful information

I am prepared to put time into keeping the tank healthy ......It'll be well worth it.

Regards

Steve

 

[ollyhtafc]

I'd advise to do what i did before i stocked-lurk on here for a bit

 

[confusion]

The key will be to understock the tank to keep the maintenance down. a word of warning - live plants are quite complicated and require a good bit of maintenance.

 

[tetraqueen]

I would not be put of by what you have to do as unless you go in haste you will manage.

Advice is by the biggest tank you can afford and home knowing you cannot move a large one easily.

DO cycle your tank and don't be rushed into buying fish.

Remember that fish have characters and are the worst at getting along with each other.

A bala shark looks like a small finger and ends up like the fish you lied about catching very quickly.

The costs are as high as you make them. One can buy expensive food plants fish etc or one can keep the cost down.

The main thing to remember is there is a lot of doing nothing. The times that the fish are left to relax and thrive is important. Water changes are important but too often and you will disturb the nitrogen cycle too little you'll kill the fish. Its all about balance.

My advice would be research look at the posts on here and try to make it work for you. We are all different some like the monsters of the deep some like the least liked fish ever.

Welcome and Goodluck. Hope you get started soon. Looks like you have made and informed start by visiting already.