Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Shifting gears (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/)

-   -   My Fishkeeping hobby (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/169664-my-fishkeeping-hobby-2.html)

Where do you get live worms?
I've had gold fish, mollies, swordtails, etc for the past 30 years. But have failed to get live worms in the past 15-20 years.
I'm in North Bangalore.

My 3 feet live planted tank. I have been in the hobby for four years now.

hi, nice setup and a good fish to have.

But, Cichlids are territorial and aggressive in nature. While they are small, they are OK, but once they grow up close to 3 inches or so, they show their true colors. I am sure with suitable guidance from your aquarist, you will be able to manage it. I had cichlids for close 18 months and they died fighting - sad.

Infact, i gave them lots of crevices and caves to hide and mark their own territory, but still.. Just thought of alerting you if you are not aware off. All the very best.

BTW, my tank is dry and empty now and I am going to re-start it - 4 ft x 1.5 x 1.5 with hand made background decor and substrates.

Swami

Nice writeup buddy. I was very fascinated with Cichlids and bought a lot of them during my 6 years of Fish keeping.

I had a pretty big tank (5/2.5/2.5 Feet) and had only 2 Pair of Oscars (Albino & Tiger Oscar). Boy those are really gorgeous and equally aggressive. When I bought them they were around 1 inch within a span of 3 years they were huge. (Around 13 Inch)
Later I gave away my beloved pets to one of my very close Friend who is a fish lover too.

Issues I faced:
1. Power cuts for long duration in Bangalore. Me and my wife used to sit in-front of the tank for hours even manually try to feed oxygen to the water.
2. Visiting my native for more than 2 weeks. The automatic feeder I had was not reliable and my Fishes were very moody.

I still love my fishes but during the last period when the fishes grew I felt that I am caging a certain species who has all rights to see the world they belong too (The Amazons).

How to start the fish keeping hobby -

1) First need a tank -->

Type of the tank: Assembled Glass / Acrylic Moulded: There are two basic types of tanks, one assembled by glueing the glass together and another all in one acrylic fibre moulded glass. The All in one comes now a days with touch interface also. Popular companies are Sun Sun etc ( Chinese companies) but sold by local suppliers.

The all in one acrylic tanks meet the european safety standards. Hence they are best prefered when you want to start the hobby. That does not mean the assembled tank wont meet the safety standard. But you need to be careful with the assembled tank. ( Especially newbies).

My tank costed by 7500 at Angels Tropic Aqua, BTM Layout, 098451 24374, Rajesh there is quite knowledgeable, help me with quite a few things and offcourse will guide the newbie. I am happy with his service and i am endorsing him. And my personal experience with GulmargAqua in kormangala is its very expensive and they would sure take me for a ride.

Size of the Tank: For starters 18inch width tank is a minimum requirement. 5litres of water can house one 1.5inch fish. Hence an 18th inch tank is suited to keep not more than 8 inches total length of fish. (Means 6 gold fish of 1.5 inch length etc)

Tank setup: Just having the tank would not suffice, you would need air pump and a filter. There are two types of filters : The bottom filter and a top filter. Top filter is already fitted in the all in one acrylic fish tank. Hence you would need additional filter or so. The bottom filter is most suited in large tanks. But bottom filters are tricky to maintain at the same time bottom filters will help in good bacteria growth. (Does not mean the top filter will not).

Also one would need a temperature sensor. The new setup of fish tanks now already come fixed with the temperature sensor and an indicator for the same.

Heater: It is suggested to have a heater. Fish thrive between 25 to 30deg temperature as per my reading. My fish ended up with a big family of sorts in this temperature and added to it, they were in rain water. Both fuelled major love between the mollies. And the picture actually shows the
rests.

Stand: The assembled tank offers great flexibility in terms of size and shape. But it needs to have a sturdy stand to support that mammoth weight of water. So be careful in choosing this. Usually the seller should help one out.

Fish: there are two major categories of fish for newbies.
the category is primarily territory oriented. Otherwise most fish would end up hurting / eating each other. Some chiclids can blind some fish.


Other accessories:
Substrate: gravel really provides good media for conversion of ammonia. The good bacteria live in the gravel. they convert ammonia to nitrates. Darker gravel is even more suited as it makes the fish show up rich color on their skin. Many cleaned and treated gravel is available in the market.

I simply used the round jelly stones from the left our river sand used in the house construction. Just a caution, while using this way, one needs to clean the gravel many many times. Else the tank will be murky for few days. (Although the tank will be murky for initial few days anyway, untill the good bacteria develops in the tank). Till the good bacteria develops it is not advised to keep the fish. usually it takes three to five days. The fish tank should run IDLE for the initial "run-in" period. :)

Landscape:
Landscaping adds life and there are tons of stuff available for purchase. And even huge assortment of plants and fertiliser etc available.
I simply used the stones which me and my daughter collected from our road hike trial to Chunchi falls. There are many such beautiful stones which can be directly picked... washed properly and used for landscaping. I skipped plants for the reason of maintenance etc.

Food:
Wide variety of chine process food is available, i am using color hi and hi grow. Both are very common.

the tank has two big mollies, two gold fish and many baby mollies. result of the love between the papa and mama mollie. :)



Wishing you all a wonderful time with fishy.

Since this thread is "alive" - my question for all other aqua keepers, how do you clean the white colored water marks left over at the top of the glass surface ? The white colored marks on all 4 sides depending on the level of water which was present in the tank ?

Hi,

For guys who are already into aquahobby or want to start, this forum will be very helpful. http://indianaquariumhobbyist.com

Regards

Uma Shankar

I have been into fish keeping for about 6 years now and gradually moved from a mini tank to a 2ft tank currently. Aiming for a 3 or 4 feet tank in the next 6 months. Took me time to get a hang of things with fish dying very frequently earlier and experimenting with different types of fish.

My current tank has 4 sharks, 2 cichlids, 1 angel fish and 1 sucker. replace 20% water every 10 days or so and do a complete tank clean up once in 3-4 months.

Attaching some pictures, apologies for the reflections that appear on the tank.

Nice setup you got there. Specially the light. Can you provide further details about - the make, cost and where you bought it ? Also is your tank open at the top :eek: or it just looks so in the photograph ?

Thanks Goswami.

Yes, it is an open tank, however to keep the fish from getting adventurous and jumping out, I have placed a glass piece on top.

Regarding the cost of the light, it is a Sun Sun Model - HDD-600B comes with 24 watts x 2, 10000 kelvin tubes, silver color. I buy most of my stuff from Varsha Aquamax which is located in Kalyan Nagar as I have found they have the best choice of equipment and fish and also provide the lowest price. The lights cost more than the tank and mine cost about Rs.4,500.

Really informative thread. I had kept fish long time back in a small tank. But never had a filter attached. The periodic cleaning of the tank made me stop keeping the fish. Question I had: If a filter system is attached, does one still need to totally empty the tank and scrub it clean..? How often do these filter rotate the water in the tank per day.

Nice thread.

I've been an aquarist since the year 1993 and have kept nearly every kind of fish.

I had a huge tank at home which i finally gave up in the year 2008 because every time there was painting at my house it ended to be dismantled and shifted plus cleaning took nearly two hours every other week and was getting difficult due to time issues.

In my clinic we have a huge marine tank setup and it's maintained professionally and we've got really exotic fishes like lion fist to sea anemone.

At home i've now maintained a small aesthetic bowl with tetras. I love a planted tank rather than an empty one. Plants in my opinion bring out colours in fish.

I'm learned a lot by trial and error and i'm open to helping the new hobbyist.

Some pics of my current home setup up. My marine tank pics later.

What is the size of that bowl? I guess it would be needing a water replacement of at least 50% daily in the absence of any filter?
How do you clean it?

It's small. Probably 2 feet high and wide at the widest point and 8 inches thick.

Cleaning is dependent on the following:

- number of fish
- amount of food given

My tank is self sufficient because i have very small fish that are adequate for the size of the tank.

The biggest cause of fish death is over feeding where the excess food rots or in case of a goldfish they die due to over eating since they forget after a minute that they have eaten.

In my tank the fish excreta is good fodder for the plants which are growing rapidly and need trimming once every alternate week.

Every alternate week i just top up water lost due to evaporation.

I clean the tank using traditional suction with a pipe to siphon off the excreta and remove water till 1/4 tank and then top up. This i do once a month.

No need for emptying tank. Probably once every six months.

I've added a sucker type fish (not catfish but looks like a loach - yellow colour - forgot it's name). It takes care of an algae on the glass and doesn't harm the tetras.

There is no need for aeration since the plants release oxygen. The light is kept on for nearly 14 hours a day. It's a small LED light.

@Petrol power: nice tank. decent size. good enough for most african cichlids.

Just a few tips:

Lose the flowerhorn from that group. Does not belong there. They are best left alone.

Frontosa's can grow very big and will need a bigger tank.

African cichlids like sandy substrates and you could also set up a few caves and crevices. Google search for african cichlid tanks for reference.

Maintenance of sandy substrate/fine gravel is not an issue. You can use a gravel siphon to dredge out sludge if any from the bottom. If going for sand, use a fork to ensure it does not become anaerobic. Go for a thin layer if you are really concerned.

You could go through these:
http://fish-etc.com/fish/cichlids/re...eping-cichlids
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/article...lake_setup.php

Also remember there are multiple sub species of African cichlids requiring different tank setups :)

Properly set up, an african cichlid tank can rival even marine tanks for colour and splendour. Good luck :)