The Beauty Of Tropical Fish

Having become a keeper of tropical fish roughly about 3 years ago I was surprised to find such a wide variety of fish available in local stores, there really is something for everyone.

I grew up watching my father keep fish, and although not really understanding what went into keeping the fish I loved them. I loved the colour, the variety and the way they relaxed me.

So when I decided to start my own tropical fish keeping journey I started with a 50 litre tank, soon of what I would want to replace with a larger tank. However, I needed to learn my trade so to speak, so kept that for over a year before upgrading.

Now I am running 130 litre tank complete with a fluval filtration system. And so the story goes...

Some things to consider for keeping fish:

• Sand or Gravel substrate
• Live plants or ornamental plastic variety
• Filtration system and heating system
• Can you maintain the water changes needed to ensure the fish have the correct environment and correct water conditions?
• Are you aware of how to cycle the tank before adding fish?
• Have you considered what types of fish you want and what types of fish will live peacefully together?

Firstly, many people rush into fish keeping without carrying out some research, but research and time spent learning about fish and their environment is invaluable.

You need to be sure that you can maintain the water condition needed by either carrying out weekly or two weekly water changes and carrying out checks of the water for nitrates, nitrites and the ph of the water not to mention other possible issues that could arise.

You will need to ensure that the filtration system you choose for you tank is powerful enough to filter the tank size and for the amount of waste that is to produced by the chose fish you will be keeping. Never over crowd a tank, this will lead to poor water quality, disease of the fish, death of fish and stress of fish.

You will also have to consider what types of fish you wish to keep, tropical fish keeping offers a wide variety of fish but not all are going to live peacefully together, as a beginner it is a good idea to set up a community tank with fish such as neon tetras, guppies and mollies, a pleco to help keep algae at bay and some other fish such as sword tails, sucking loach, and there are many other fish that fit into this group of which you could be given advice from your local pest store. You will also need to take into account where in the tank this fish like to be, bottom, middle or top dwellers, whether they like to be amongst live plants, whether they like sand, such as cory's do.

My pleco is fairly large now and comes out of an evening, during the day he spends all his time within a large ship located in the middle of the tank, this is his home and he does not take kindly to others intruding!

So you see, there are various things you need to think of and the more time you spend doing so and the more you pay attention to the small details the healthier and the better quality of life your fish will have.

I first started my fish keeping experience with the eye catching black and white gravel, which looked great, but at that time I didn't know that it would not be the best for my tank or chosen fish. I decided to start keeping Cory's, (Corydoras). These are very playful fish which like to dig their heads into the gravel and search the substrate for anything that may have ended up there, how ever gravel was not allowing them to do so, and was in fact to sharp and heavy for them. I decided to change over from gravel to sand, which with some good advice from a well known fish keeping website got me through the change, however I would not want to do so again so I urge you to think carefully when choosing your substrate whether you want a natural look and feel such as sand or whether you prefer the eye catching variety of colours available in gravel. Also again, what type of fish you will keep and what is best for them.

Fish keeping is fun, relaxing and rewarding, I wish you all the best on this wonderful hobby and hope you gain as much satisfaction as I do on your journey of fish keeping. Come back again in the future for more on tropical fish and breeding, temperatures and more.

Here are my top ten favourite fish I like to keep.

• Neon Tetra
• Neon Cardinals
• Angel Fish
• Corydoras
• Guppies
• Sword Tails
• Gouramis
• Pleco's
• Sucking Loach
• Clown Loach