Hi Klona
Like you I'm also very new to this hobby - in fact I don't even have any fish yet!
Can I offer some advice from a newbie perspective?
water changes
1) this is best done using a syphon - we just ust a lenght of tube pushed into the tank water so that it fills up, put your thumb over the end sticking out of the tank and pull it down to the floor / bucket and release your thumb. Water will then flow through the tube until you cap it with your thumb and lift it above the height of the tank. You can buy any number of gadgets to help with syphoning however this is the cheapest way.
2) when doing water changes you can clean up all the fish poo etc. which both makes the tank nicer to look at and improves the water quality making your life easier and the fishes life nicer and longer. The method of cleanign varies a little depending if you've got sand or gravel. If sand use a basic tube (as in 1 above) and swirl it around above the poo to suck it up without taking too much / any sand. If you have gravel you are best of buying a tool which is part of the syphone and has a wide end which you stick into the gravel and move around a bit. You'll see bits of gravel caught in the resulting flow and then drop down but the poo goes up teh tube.
3) There are an amazing number of You Tube clips showing this - God only knows why!
water testing and cycling your filter
1) You really need to get yourself a liquid testing kit - basically a miniture chemistry test - which will allow you to monitor the Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate levels in the tank. Of these three chemicals Ammonia and Nitrite are toxic to fish and should only be present in your water at levels of 0.25 parts per milliion (PPM). I rather suspect that your tank is somewhat more toxic than this. Fish swim in their own excrement and pee until it is removed by your filter.
2) If you hve a look through the begineers section at the top of this forum there is a wealth of information on cycling however it is basically the somewhat boring process of growing two seperate colonies of bacteria in your filter. The first turns fish pee (Ammonia) into Nitrite. The second turns this Nitrite into Nitrate which is not toxic. If you are doing a fish in cycle (i.e. what you're doing now) you have to be part of the process of keeping your fish alive by doing
daily water changes to remove the Ammonia and Nitrite until such time as your bacteria colonies come up to strength. This is a hassle and hence the process of Fishless cycling is available where you pretend to be a fish and put Ammonia into and empty tank (making fish sounds and actions is optional I understand). Again there is lots of information about this in the begineer's section.
3) Once your tank is cycled you can go to a full bio load of fish (at or slightly above 1" of adult fish for each US Gallon of water) - people here will be able to advise on numbers etc as many fish have specific needs in terms of minimum numbers or groupings of Male and Female.
choice of fish
1) There are many fish out there that you've not seen. A bold statement given I have no idea how many you've seen but all the same a pretty safe one as there are so many! Your local fish shop doesn't have even the majority!
2) When we started out I wanted made a whole list of fish we'd really liked - then people on here recommended some more. Then we found that our water is too hard for them (wimpy souther sofies etc) and we were upset - started looking at RO warter etc etc to get the fish we wanted. Then we decided to do some looking around for hard water fish and suddenly another world opened up. Have a search on mty posts to see some of the things we went through. Like you I don't really want "ugly" fish and I think that we've got some cracking ones (tiger barbs, Gourami, chain loach)
This place is pretty nice and very open with advice however you would be well served by reading the Begineer's section (I know there's a lot of stuff but it's all good) and then people can help out with the stuff which doesn't click with you straight away. People here really care about their fish (in a way that seems quite passionaate until you've started to get into them) so will not be supportive of someone who doesn't really care about the welfare of the fish....
Oh by the way - look out for "disco" fish - ones which have been painted or dyed - I had no idea what this was about until I looked into it. This is a process which produces some stunning looking fish however it involves sticking a ruddy great needle into them and injecting dye. The majority of fish die and the ones that remain to be sold are liable to suffer infections and the dye fades with time. But by then you've spent the money!
Hope this helps
Good luck and keep asking the questions
Miles
