Help me design an idiot-proof aquarium set-up!

In My Humble Opinion
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Now that my life is stable enough that I can plan on being in the same place for the next year or two, I’ve been wanting to set up a small aquarium in my bedroom. I’ve owned an aquarium in the past, but I managed it badly and it was more hassle than it was worth. I passed by a big benefit garage sale today and snagged a ten gallon (20" by 10" by 12") tank, with some equipment to go with it. I’ve got gravel (which I may throw out because I don’t like the color), a small net, a bottle of “Amquel Plus” ammonia detoxifier, and some sort of filter that hangs over the side.

I’d like to try to set up this aquarium so that it takes a minimum of effort to maintain. I understand that having lots of plants and fewer fish can help with that. What else can I do to help create a simple, stable tank that’s attractive but relatively simple? What sort of a filtration system is best? In the past, I nearly gave up on plants because I couldn’t keep them anchored and they wound up floating around. What sorts of fish are easy to care for? I had in mind a betta and a small school of something, possibly neon tetras. What else should I know?

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Moved Cafe Society --> IMHO.

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Hey! For once I get to be an expert!

Allrighty. Let’s start at the beginning.

Your ten gallon tank qualifies as a “nano tank”, and thus will be subject to a more serious level of fluctuations then a large, more stable system. Understand that small changes in this small environment can have BIG repercussions. I’m not saying this to scare you, but rather so that you understand the reason WHY I’m going to suggest what I do.

Filtration: Your tank probably came with a small Hang on Back (HOB) filter. If you can tell me what kind and how big it is that will be a big help. It is almost certainly too small. A stable tank should have at a minimum, double the filtration rating to gallons of tank. So your 10 gallon should have a 20 gallon rated HOB as a minimum standard. This will provide a good flow rate, turn over the tank many times an hour and ensure sparkling water and happy fishies. Your filter is life support for your fish Without it they will quickly perish as waste builds up in the system.

Now your filter has some parts you should understand. The filter pad catches debris and waste and provides a home for beneficial bacteria that break down the waste into harmless components. It is better to occasionally rinse these out with ONLY hot water (no soap!) and replace them back in than throw them away when they get mucky. That is where all the good bugs live!

Lighting: In a freshwater tank it is not critical to have superiour lighting, but if you want to grow plants, you will probably have to invest a little money into a good lighting system. You will also need a Co2 injector of some sort, (more on that later) I suggest you look at your options, there are flourescent tubes, power compacts, LEDS and other solutions. At a minimum though you will need to have enough light for your plants to photosynthesize. If this is scary then forget the live plants; skip the next paragraph, with a good filter you don’t need them anyway.

Co2: Live plants need Co2 to eat and your fish won’t feed them enough. A good DIY solution is to take a 2-liter soda bottle fill it with sugar water and yeast and run a tube from the bottle cap to the bottom of the tank and let the yeasty-beasties do their thing. You will have to refresh it every week. There are store solutions but they are expensive.

Stocking the tank: Your new tank is SMALL. A good general rule of thumb is no more than one CUBIC inch of fish per gallon. That is important to remember because your neons are much smaller in mass than say a lionhead goldfish. Get it? You could pack in four neons into a one inch cube, but only a small part of one of those goldfish. So remember to do your math when stocking.

Slowly is better. introduce a few fish at a time to allow your bacterial colonies time to grow and adjust to the extra load. If you don’t your tank will “crash” and your fishies will die. So introduce your neon school together and then wait a couple of weeks for anything else you might consider.

DO NOT DO THE FOLLOWING:

Buy an “algea eater” to clean the tank. Plecostomos fish (plecos) will eat algea, but only after they’ve devoured everything else in the tank.

Operate under the misunderstanding that fish “grow to fit their tank”. They do not. They will either die of skeletal conditions or outgrow the tank. Don’t buy a cute baby oscar and be surprsed when you could eat the bugger in six months.

Freak out and change all the water in tank. No more than 50% for novices.

DO THE FOLLOWING:

Research a little bit on your fish before going to the store, you will be well rewarded for your effort.

Try to shop at a local fish store (LFS). They have better knowledge, stock, and will give you correct information over the big chains.

Enjoy your fishies! I will always answer any questions you might have by PM if you need it.

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I’m interested and pleased to hear the “one CUBIC inch of fish” part. Everything else I’ve read just said one inch. And I was like, so a ten gallon tank only holds ten neon tetras? Daggone, how boring.

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A little more detail:

The “cycle”

As your tank is set up, the water will go through a period of wild chemical fluctuations called the “cycle”. Basically, ammonia is being broken down into other chemicals and these levels can cause issues before the even out and all is well. Remember those bacteria? that’s their job. It is common for tanks to go cloudy, or have other issues in the first few weeks. Here are a few tips to help you out:

WASH YOUR GRAVEL. Whatever you chose to use as a substrate, wash it well before you add it into the tank. Put it in a bucket and run the hose on it, swirling it around until all the dust is gone. this will help your tank stay beautiful, and speed up other processes. It also will keep your filter pad free from unhelpful crud.

SET IN ALL YOUR PLANTS AND FIXTURES BEFORE YOU FILL THE TANK. Add your gravel and sit all the accessories deeply into the bed before filling. It’s easier to aquascape this way.

GRAB A COUPLE OF POUCHES OF LIVE BACTERIA CULTURES AND USE THEM. This will take your cycle time down to near nothing as you are adding a helpful boost of good bugs into your relatively sterile system.

ADD ONLY A FEW FISH AT FIRST. You need fish to feed the bacteria, but too much will crash the tank. So add a few in and just wait. Don’t give in to temptation.

DON"T OVERFEED THE FISH. At first feed them only a small amount of food every other day for at least two weeks. Then you can go to small daily feedings. No more than they can eat in two minutes is a good rule. No extra waste keeps the tank clean and allows you ease into the cycle.

Trouble shoot:

My water is all cloudy! Help help!

  1. Did you wash your gravel? if so go to 2. If not wash the damn gravel or wait for the filter to clean it all out and settle. It’s going to take 48 hrs.

  2. Has it been a few days or a weeks? go to 3. If not your water is gunky and you will need to add a clarifier product of some type.

  3. You are experiencing a nasty cycle effect. cease feeding the fish, do a 50% water change and wait. It will clear up in a few days. if it does not clear in 48 hrs or so then change water again and wait. It WILL clear in time.

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PH for idiots:

PH should be around 7.0 which is neutral. This is adequate for most fish. Some species like discus or african chiclids have special needs. If you need to adjust your water to keep your target species, you will need little dip strips and the appropriate ph up or down product. Generally this will not be an issue unless your local water is absolute rubbish.

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Acid Lamp’s pretty much covered it, but I have one or two nits to pick:

Hot water?!
It’s much much better for the filter bacteria to rinse the filter sponge in tank water, taken out during a water change- use water that’s too hot and you risk killing 'em all.

Speaking of temperature, do you have a heater in the tank? Not been mentioned yet.

This is necessary for a lot of aquarium plants; however, you can grow a few slow growing species without a CO2 unit -and with quite low light- perfectly successfully. I don’t add CO2, but just chose to get Anubias and Java fern/moss, which all grow tied with cotton thread to branches or rocks, not rooted in the substrate, so won’t come loose (okay, the moss probably will regardless, but the others won’t). The Anubias especially is looking great!
Personally, I think that’s a lot safer than messing around with adding CO2, especially as a beginner with a small tank. You can effectively poison your fish if you get the dosage wrong.

I’m going fish shopping tomorrow, helping my housemate finish setting up her tank, yay!

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I recommend doing a “fishless cycle” in the weeks before setting up the tank. I’ve had much better outcomes - i.e. far fewer new fish deaths - since learning how about ten years ago. Not only that, even usually messy goldfish tanks required very little cleaning because the bacteria colony ate the poop. Here are some directions on that.

Since the OP is interested in neon tetras, and I’m planning on starting a tetra tank myself now that my goldfish died, can we talk about filters? It’s been a very long time since I’ve had tetras, but I seem to recall a few dying because they got sucked by the filter, and got fins trapped in the slats that filter tubes end with. How do you best avoid that?

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That the tank is sensitive because it’s small makes sense; there’s little buffer or cushion for error. I’ve done enough chemistry that this is pretty intuitive.

The filter is a Whisper 10-30i, which the internet suggests is a filter designed for a 30 gallon tank, which seems sufficient. However, I’m having a little trouble figuring out how to assemble the filter pads into the filter and it makes a horrible grinding noise when I turn it on. I don’t want to run it more than briefly out of water for fear of burning it out, but I’m not hopeful. Filters don’t seem to be that expensive, especially for small aquaria like this one. If I do need to buy a filter, what should I look for beyond size?

There is a tank-top florescent light. It seems pretty bright and the label suggests that it’s 19 watts.

As to CO[sup]2[/sup], I am well in favor of anything that I can do cheaply and on my own. A yeast-based system seems good.

Where do I get bacteria culture pouches?

Looking at heaters online, they seem pretty straightforward.

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Heaters are straightforward, just noticed every other bit of equipment got a mention and thought they might feel left out :wink:

Seriously though, be careful with a DIY carbon dioxide kit, especially with such a small tank! Definitely not idiot-proof…

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I second the fishless cycling recommendation; it gives you an intro to water testing and keeps you from having initial discouraging failures. Ammonia without surfactants can be hard to come by, but it’s imperative that you don’t get detergents on anything that comes in contact with the water.

It’s probably a good idea to pick up a test kit. pH is unlikely to be a problem if you get fish kept locally, but it’s still nice to know if something goes wonky. You want to keep an eye on ammonia and nitrates (nitrites if you’re interested in how the cycle progresses). You’ll learn more about the theory of fish tank maintenance from doing one fishless cycle than you will from a ton of trial and error without testing. Also, remember that even in a lightly-stocked tank, nitrates and fish poop build up. You want to make sure to do consistent water changes to get that crap out of the water.
I wouldn’t worry about CO2 unless you’re planning to go into a “planted tank.” In my normal tanks, I keep Java fern, anacharis, Java moss, anubias, and aponogeton without CO2, and they grow nicely, if more slowly than plants supplemented with CO2. I do, however, think decent lighting is worth the investment if you’re planning to have plants at all.

For a 10 gallon, stocking is going to be your big concern. You can’t keep many fish in that space, and even with small fish you want to choose fish that are compatible with a limited amount of space. For example, fish with complicated feeding requirements, fish that breed, fish that need to be in larger groups, and fish with aggressive tendencies are all things you want to be conscious of when stocking your tank. Personally, for a 10 gallon setup, I like a single betta with a snail or two (I actually am running this setup in my upstairs hallway). Then you won’t have a huge bioload, and I think bettas are pretty with a lot of personality. I’ve had guppies (one sex only! Males only unless you know you’re getting virgin females. [In a pet store, 99% chance you aren’t.]) in a 10 gallon with no issues, and there are other fish out there that will work, but you’ll want to do plenty of research. There are a bunch of aquarium forums online, and some of them have some interesting and unique stocking suggestions for 10 gallon aquariums.

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Hot, not scalding or boiling, just hot. The heat loosens up the crud and waste mass more efficiently and having run over 100 tanks at one point when I owned an exotic pet store I never had an issue with this. Different strokes for different folks.

You are absolutely correct, and I was deficient to not mention the low Co2 requirement plants. Most people see, and mimic the Amano scapes though, and that requires an injector. Happily, the yeast/sugar water unit doesn’t produce copious amounts of gas and tends to chug along nicely without major complications.

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Okay, The grinding can be one of two things. Either it’s simply noisy when run dry. (most likely) or there may be crud in the impeller chamber. Take everything out of the unit and flush out the little chambers really well, re-assemble without the pads and fill it up and run it. It ought to run quieter and create a little whirlpool in the impeller chamber.

Bacteria culture pouches can be purchased at any LFS or even petco/ petsmart in the refrigerated aquaria section.

Your light will not be sufficient, but you should be able to buy a same size replacement bulb in the correct spectrum. It will be obvious.

If you need a new filter, I like marineland HOB’s, and canister style filters are quite nice for a super clean ten gallon. You can avoid fish getting sucked in by placing a coarse sponge, or other guard over the intake. Just remember to double or triple your 10 gallons and you’ll be fine regardless.

Re: Fishless cycling:

I don’t recommend this for new owners because while efficient, it is both boring and doesn’t teach the bumps, scrapes, and lessons learned that fish in cycling does. It also (usually) takes a considerable while longer which can seriously impact enthusiasm in the long run. Particularly so when you do not have cycled filter media to seed the new tank with. YMMV of course. Ask a hundred aquariaists and you will get a hundred different answers!

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You shouldn’t *put *an idiot into an aquarium. He will drown.

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One inch per gallon. But remember the little fish you buy will develop more inches after a while.
A ten gallon is too damn small.

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Oh I don’t know about that. Check out what I did with Just 6.

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Acid Lamp, that is gorgeous! What is that pretty little fish?

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Holy shit. I’m in love.

Seriously, as someone who has really never kept fish, and is borderline petrified at the idea… how hard is that to do? I have this thought that it’s really, really fucking hard. Am I wrong? Is it intense to keep? How much did it cost to set-up, etc.?

This thread is awesome!!

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You will likely be very sad if you attempt to build and maintain a 6g nano-reef without a lot of experience. Actually, almost any real reef tank for that matter. In fact, steer clear of all saltwater until you know what you’re doing with freshwater, or can afford someone to come and maintain the tank for you (at least weekly).

10g is still pretty small. My main advice (also, acid lamp was mostly spot-on):

  • overfilter. preferably with at least 2 filters of at least sufficient size for the entire tank. gives you the possibility of slightly overloading the tank, and is easier to maintain without destroying all the fauna.
  • read read read. tons of useful stuff on the 'net for free. don’t buy any fish without knowing if your water is OK for them, if they’ll get along with their tankmates, how big they’ll get, etc. local fish store guys are marginally useful for this but your own research is typically more reliable. also libraries usually have at least one or two decent starter books on aquaria.
  • go slow. it’s difficult to be patient, i know… but you’ll have a better experience if you cycle the tank slowly, add fish slowly, and make other changes slowly.

best of luck!

(btw i currently have ‘only’ a high-tech planted 60g tank, i.e., co2 injection, high intensity light, fertilization, and mostly plants and shrimp, only a handful of fish!)

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papsett, That is a Mandarin Dragonet, they are beautiful little fish, but can be fussy to keep because normally they only feed on copepods which require a lot more space to breed then my tiny tank can provide. Mine is trained to east baby brine and cyclopeez so we do fine with feeding. If you can’t find one trained onto other foods they usually starve in nano-tanks unless you build a copepod reactor to feed them daily.

Miss Elizabeth, There have been a LOT of advances in the technology in this field in the last ten years and it is now far easier than it used to be. In fact the mere idea of a 6 gallon reef that long ago would have got you stares, snickers, or outright hostility. It STILL requires more care and attention than freshwater does, and you have to concern yourself with additional chemical parameters, but it is not difficult to monitor these. I’m a lazy reef-keeper and that tank runs itself because I took the time to ensure it is actually a working ecosystem. If you think you are up to the challenge of being meticulous with your tank for a few weeks, you can do it too, but it is important to understand that they are more delicate than fresh tanks and more prone to crashing unexpectedly. If you’d like to copy that sort of tank, I can post the particulars and modifications needed.