spanishguy111
Fish Fanatic
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- Sep 12, 2005
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These are the most common newbie mistakes I've heard both in my experience working at an LFS (Fish store for you new people) and personally. I'm not going to mention cycling and filtration, because I think that's covered fairly well in this board already. These are some of the mistakes I hear about all the time that newbies make that you never really hear get talked about.
Ever notice how newbies have more disease out breaks than "pros"? Ever notice how they have a hard time spawning their fish, or getting a tank to break in properly, or getting them to grow out fast enough, or fill out properly? That's because of a plethora of common mistakes that people just don't think about.
________________________________________________________________
Firstly, lets talk about your environment. Or rather, or fish(s)' environment, as it is the most important of all factors. By now you probably know about cycling, and that it takes around 30-40 days on average for a colony of bacteria to establish to properly oxidize Ammonia via nitrite into nitrate, which is removed by frequent water changes. And you probably know your pH and temperature should stay very stable to provide an unstressful environment. However, you need to take into account a couple of other factors:
1: Biological exclusion. Think of a coral reef, where live corals thrive built up on a bed of coral skeletons several layers thick. The same thing happens in what we call "biofilm". You may have seen biofilm on an impeller that hasn't been cleaned in awhile. It is an opaque yellow or brown and occasionally clear substance and feels viscous (slightly slick). The longer a tank is set up, the thicker biofilm will become, much like a coral reef. This thicker biofilm, covering an ever increasing area, makes it more and more difficult for disease causing bacteria and pathogens to establish themselves and grab a foothold in the tank, as the massive pre-existing colony of bacteria will out compete them. It also provides increasingly efficient Nitrification, allowing for the addition of more sensitive fish.
Example: Your tank finishes cycling on the 35th day. You go out and buy an Angelfish. It survives, but isn't entirely happy or growing at its full rate until about the 60th day. That's because you should have waited atleast this long before adding the Angel. This wouldn't happen if you added a Blue Paradise, a three spot gourami, or an other less sensitive fish on the 35th day. Therefore it is important to understand and consider the susceptibility to stress and poor conditions of each animal you add, as a highly stressed animal is much more likely to get sick and spread that sickness on to your other aquarium inhabitants. Aquariums are not for impatient people.
DONT KILL YOUR OWN BIOFILTER!!!: So many newbies do this it's almost an epidemic. You're a newbie. You're bound to get ich. Either that or fungus. Its almost guaranteed you'll make a mistake somewhere near the beginning and be beset with one or both of these diseases. They can both be dealt with using natural plant extracts and temperature changes. I'm not going to devote eight paragraphs to explain how to kill them because again, thats well covered in the board (I'm also happy to provide this info if you PM me). However, keep in mind that medications in fish tanks often do as much harm as good. Malachite green kills a great many parasites- but it also kills most or all of your beneficial bacteria. Only use heavy medications in the most extreme cases. Even comparatively harmless medication like metronizadole should be used with caution, everything has a side effect.
------------------
2: Tank Setup: There is no rainbow colored red green yellow purple white black and fuschia fluorescent painted gravel in nature. Fish don't really like it. They also don't clams that open and close and shoot bubbles out, or little scooba diver men, no fishing signs, or little statues. Fish like to be in a habitat similar to the one they come from. An Angelfish will feel most comfortable in slightly tanin stained water with lots of branchy driftwood, large rocks, and a couple of sword plants. Small neon tetras will feel safe in a dense forest of caves and plant life. A Pear Gourami feels safest in slow moving calm water with a large mat of floating plants to sleep and spawn in. The list goes on. Almost all fish prefer darker gravel. A dark brown is very attractive and makes most fish more comfortable. If you must go artificial color, go with black. Fish like that too. There are also natural black gravels. More importantly than the color, make sure of the material the gravel is made from. Many gravels buffer your water and thus raise your pH. This is great if you're keeping African Cichlids for example, but not so much if you have tetras. Try to make your tank more comfortable for your fish, not for your personal tastes. Remember, this isn't your house you're decorating, its your fish's house, and you have the priviledge of observing it.
Interior stresses- Interior stresses, being those occuring inside the tank, are often not considered by the begginer. I would often have people complain that their "Two black phantom tetras" seemed spooked. Of course, tetras like to be in schools, the more the merrier. Your fishs' environment and tankmates directly affect their health. If stress impoverishes human health, it is 100 times more impactful on fish. Make sure your fish get along. You don't want fish to be going back and forth attacking eachother all the time. This should be fairly obvious. What isn't obvious to newbies often is the necessity for what are called "dither fish". A pair of Angelfish will feel more comfortable in a tank with smaller, slow moving schooling fish. This is because they use the smaller fish as warning markers. If they dart off and hide the angels assume their is danger nearby and become frightened. Similarly, if you use overly agressive or jumpy ditherfish, such as danios, with an overly timid fish, the dither fish themselves will frighten the larger fish, which now either fears attack from the little fish, or believes they are in a constant state of panic and so assumes the same state itself.
--------
3: Exterior Environment: This is all too often ignored by the beginner. The happenings on the outside of the tank greatly influence the inside. Running past a tank will spook your fish. A bunch of people they dont know coming up and pressing their noses to look at them will spook your fish. New fish to your tank will of course spook more easily than older residents. You should make an effort to limit activity in a room with newly introduced fish, and keep the exterior light low and the tank lights off if possible for the first 12 hours, gradually raising them afterward.
If you turn the lights right off in the room where the tank is, use common sense, and dont walk in and blast them with full lights in the middle of the night to get a glass of milk or something. Fish get shocked very heavily by sudden changes in light, and this can in rare instances shock a fish so badly that it rockets into the glass and sustains head injury. Sometimes fatally.
Smoking large quantities near your fish tank, burning incense, applying nail polish, staining a stair case, painting, etc. All these things get into the water and affect your fish. Some really badly. This effect is worsened if you are using an air pump as it greatly increases the frequency and pressure of the contact of these elements into water- and many of them diffuse into water much more easily than oxygen. Remember. They don't have the entire world to diffuse noxious wastes into. They have as many gallons of water as you keep them in.
And (of course) NEVER bang on the glass. And if you must use a hammer near a fish tank observe the fish for fear or stress reactions, and if you see any, don't use the hammer. Fish aren't Hamsters. You really need a much higher degree of finesse and discression and common sense to deal with them well.
--------
4: Food. If you only have a little jar of flakes on hand, get ready to go to the store after you read this
. Sure, this will keep them alive, but it will not provide them with optimum nutrition. Even if you feed the highest quality flakes in the world its not really enough. A Convict Cichlid, for instance, although a very hardy fish, still needs a varied diet, which, to provide an example, could comprise of the following:
Hikari Cichlid Complete pellets
HBH Veggie 8 Veggie flakes
Hikari frozen Mysis shrimp and Blood Worm and Krill
Omega 1 Freshwater Flake
Although expensive, buying the proper mix of high end food for any fish and feeding it properly will give you a nicer fish. Also, properly fed animals are much more likely to breed. Remember that a fish doesn't digest well without fibre, just like you. So, if you feed a fish bloodworms first, which have almost 0 fibre, you'd want to follow it up with something with a lot of fibre, like the mentioned veggie flake (which has a crazy almost 8% fibre). A good way to tell if you are feeding properly is to look at the fish's stool. It should come out quickly, in small solid pieces, and fall away immediately. Long, skinny, translucent poop that doesnt want to fall off is a sign of a lack of fibre. Many people assume disease or parasitism in the gut of the fish when the problem could just be a lack of proper nutrition and fibre. Try to find out what a fish eats in the wild and immitate it as closely as you can. Never feed anything that isn't fish food to your fish. People who REALLY know what they are doing can buy certain kinds of frozen fish from the fish market, prepare it properly, and feed it to their fish. Don't worry about that yet. Also, if you are using feeder fish, be cautious of your source, as these often carry disease.
---------------
5. Fish Selection: Newbies tend to pick up some pretty ratty looking fish. You can always spot if someone is a newbie just from the look of their fish. If you're a newbie, and the fish looks ratty at the store, you're not going to magically cure it and make it all better. More likely, it will introduce a disease into your tank or be succeptible to one because of its poor condition. Learn to look for signs of a healthy fish, and ALWAYS select your own fish. If a store doesn't let you pick, tell them to pick something of their own, and leave. A fish shouldn't have visible ribs, or depressions in its body. Its eyes should be alert, and not look bloodshot or overly uneven in color. Pupils should be bright and a very dark black. Most fish will be curious about you. Be weary of a specimen of a very curious species which is not being curious. Learn the fishs' behaviour, and try to select a healthy fish to start with. This atleast doubles your chances of fish keeping bliss and success.
Things that should immediately turn you off of a tank you're looking at, and ALL the fish in it.
If any or all of the fish:
-Have raised scales
-Are clamping their fins to their body and not swimming with them
-Swimming improperly, unable to stay down in the water, floating to the surface, unable to get to the surface
-any discolored, white, fuzzy spots or patches, white or blackish dots on the fish
-Missing eyes, missing fins, signs of recent injuries
-fish "glancing" off of rocks or glass (this is how fish scratch themselves, they swim up to something then rocket themselves off of it to scratch the affected area. Any fish will do this once a week or so. Animals get itchy. But that should be it. If it is happening constantly something, likely a parasite, is irritating the animal
-Learn your fish store employees' names. Ask how long a batch of fish has been in the store and whether any have died. Someone you know by name is less likely to lie to you.
-Find out if they use an open or closed system (Are the tanks interconnected) as this can spread diseases from one tank to the next.
DO NOT:
-Get fish that will not get along. Don't know? Do research
-Get a fish without knowing if it needs to live in groups, its behaviour, its adult size, its water preferences, and whether you can meet them, its food requirements, etc.
-Get fish that will out grow your tank. You probably won't want to get rid of it, or worse, will make the common newbie mistake of keeping it too long. An angel won't fit in your ten gallon by next month. Why bother. Fish DO NOT grow to their environments. This is called stunting a fish. Its not cool. Don't do it.
-Don't always trust your store. If I was going to get your money by lying to you I might just do it. Be thoughtful and don't trust anyone implicitly. If you get the same answer to one question from five different sources- it might just be true. But always ask around.
-Don't get fish that eat radically different diets. If you have a bunch of heavily herbivorous fish with one carnivorous fish they are likely to mix up their foods and eat the wrong thing and become malnourished or sick. Fish aren't incredibly intelligent. It hurts me to say that but its the truth.
-Assume a fish will act the same way at home as in the store. think about how fish will act and get along THEN, not now. If you have a huge tank, and you add a bunch of 1" neons and a couple of 1" angelfish, everythings going to be fine for quite some time. But then one day the angels have grown to a nice 8" tall, and a neon fits in their mouth. All of a sudden every time you wake up a couple of neons have mysteriously dissappeared into thin air. Many fish change their dispositions as they get older. Also, many fish act differently when kept singly or in small groups, compared to in a tank filled with the same species. Highly aggressive fish packed tightly don't bother to be aggressive, because there's no point trying to hold a territorry of 4" squared of water.
-Don't trust your "gut feeling". You don't have a gut feeling. If you're a newbie you know fish need water. That's where you should draw the line. Your gut feeling tells you that oscar and that green terror will get along just fine in a little 35G "cuzz they're tiny"- or that the Tinfoil barbs over there SURELY can't grow over 3", or that surely- that appistogramma cichlid MUST be easier to care for than those little Amano shrimp. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. You don't know jack fish. Do reasearch.
Ever notice how newbies have more disease out breaks than "pros"? Ever notice how they have a hard time spawning their fish, or getting a tank to break in properly, or getting them to grow out fast enough, or fill out properly? That's because of a plethora of common mistakes that people just don't think about.
________________________________________________________________
Firstly, lets talk about your environment. Or rather, or fish(s)' environment, as it is the most important of all factors. By now you probably know about cycling, and that it takes around 30-40 days on average for a colony of bacteria to establish to properly oxidize Ammonia via nitrite into nitrate, which is removed by frequent water changes. And you probably know your pH and temperature should stay very stable to provide an unstressful environment. However, you need to take into account a couple of other factors:
1: Biological exclusion. Think of a coral reef, where live corals thrive built up on a bed of coral skeletons several layers thick. The same thing happens in what we call "biofilm". You may have seen biofilm on an impeller that hasn't been cleaned in awhile. It is an opaque yellow or brown and occasionally clear substance and feels viscous (slightly slick). The longer a tank is set up, the thicker biofilm will become, much like a coral reef. This thicker biofilm, covering an ever increasing area, makes it more and more difficult for disease causing bacteria and pathogens to establish themselves and grab a foothold in the tank, as the massive pre-existing colony of bacteria will out compete them. It also provides increasingly efficient Nitrification, allowing for the addition of more sensitive fish.
Example: Your tank finishes cycling on the 35th day. You go out and buy an Angelfish. It survives, but isn't entirely happy or growing at its full rate until about the 60th day. That's because you should have waited atleast this long before adding the Angel. This wouldn't happen if you added a Blue Paradise, a three spot gourami, or an other less sensitive fish on the 35th day. Therefore it is important to understand and consider the susceptibility to stress and poor conditions of each animal you add, as a highly stressed animal is much more likely to get sick and spread that sickness on to your other aquarium inhabitants. Aquariums are not for impatient people.
DONT KILL YOUR OWN BIOFILTER!!!: So many newbies do this it's almost an epidemic. You're a newbie. You're bound to get ich. Either that or fungus. Its almost guaranteed you'll make a mistake somewhere near the beginning and be beset with one or both of these diseases. They can both be dealt with using natural plant extracts and temperature changes. I'm not going to devote eight paragraphs to explain how to kill them because again, thats well covered in the board (I'm also happy to provide this info if you PM me). However, keep in mind that medications in fish tanks often do as much harm as good. Malachite green kills a great many parasites- but it also kills most or all of your beneficial bacteria. Only use heavy medications in the most extreme cases. Even comparatively harmless medication like metronizadole should be used with caution, everything has a side effect.
------------------
2: Tank Setup: There is no rainbow colored red green yellow purple white black and fuschia fluorescent painted gravel in nature. Fish don't really like it. They also don't clams that open and close and shoot bubbles out, or little scooba diver men, no fishing signs, or little statues. Fish like to be in a habitat similar to the one they come from. An Angelfish will feel most comfortable in slightly tanin stained water with lots of branchy driftwood, large rocks, and a couple of sword plants. Small neon tetras will feel safe in a dense forest of caves and plant life. A Pear Gourami feels safest in slow moving calm water with a large mat of floating plants to sleep and spawn in. The list goes on. Almost all fish prefer darker gravel. A dark brown is very attractive and makes most fish more comfortable. If you must go artificial color, go with black. Fish like that too. There are also natural black gravels. More importantly than the color, make sure of the material the gravel is made from. Many gravels buffer your water and thus raise your pH. This is great if you're keeping African Cichlids for example, but not so much if you have tetras. Try to make your tank more comfortable for your fish, not for your personal tastes. Remember, this isn't your house you're decorating, its your fish's house, and you have the priviledge of observing it.
Interior stresses- Interior stresses, being those occuring inside the tank, are often not considered by the begginer. I would often have people complain that their "Two black phantom tetras" seemed spooked. Of course, tetras like to be in schools, the more the merrier. Your fishs' environment and tankmates directly affect their health. If stress impoverishes human health, it is 100 times more impactful on fish. Make sure your fish get along. You don't want fish to be going back and forth attacking eachother all the time. This should be fairly obvious. What isn't obvious to newbies often is the necessity for what are called "dither fish". A pair of Angelfish will feel more comfortable in a tank with smaller, slow moving schooling fish. This is because they use the smaller fish as warning markers. If they dart off and hide the angels assume their is danger nearby and become frightened. Similarly, if you use overly agressive or jumpy ditherfish, such as danios, with an overly timid fish, the dither fish themselves will frighten the larger fish, which now either fears attack from the little fish, or believes they are in a constant state of panic and so assumes the same state itself.
--------
3: Exterior Environment: This is all too often ignored by the beginner. The happenings on the outside of the tank greatly influence the inside. Running past a tank will spook your fish. A bunch of people they dont know coming up and pressing their noses to look at them will spook your fish. New fish to your tank will of course spook more easily than older residents. You should make an effort to limit activity in a room with newly introduced fish, and keep the exterior light low and the tank lights off if possible for the first 12 hours, gradually raising them afterward.
If you turn the lights right off in the room where the tank is, use common sense, and dont walk in and blast them with full lights in the middle of the night to get a glass of milk or something. Fish get shocked very heavily by sudden changes in light, and this can in rare instances shock a fish so badly that it rockets into the glass and sustains head injury. Sometimes fatally.
Smoking large quantities near your fish tank, burning incense, applying nail polish, staining a stair case, painting, etc. All these things get into the water and affect your fish. Some really badly. This effect is worsened if you are using an air pump as it greatly increases the frequency and pressure of the contact of these elements into water- and many of them diffuse into water much more easily than oxygen. Remember. They don't have the entire world to diffuse noxious wastes into. They have as many gallons of water as you keep them in.
And (of course) NEVER bang on the glass. And if you must use a hammer near a fish tank observe the fish for fear or stress reactions, and if you see any, don't use the hammer. Fish aren't Hamsters. You really need a much higher degree of finesse and discression and common sense to deal with them well.
--------
4: Food. If you only have a little jar of flakes on hand, get ready to go to the store after you read this
. Sure, this will keep them alive, but it will not provide them with optimum nutrition. Even if you feed the highest quality flakes in the world its not really enough. A Convict Cichlid, for instance, although a very hardy fish, still needs a varied diet, which, to provide an example, could comprise of the following:Hikari Cichlid Complete pellets
HBH Veggie 8 Veggie flakes
Hikari frozen Mysis shrimp and Blood Worm and Krill
Omega 1 Freshwater Flake
Although expensive, buying the proper mix of high end food for any fish and feeding it properly will give you a nicer fish. Also, properly fed animals are much more likely to breed. Remember that a fish doesn't digest well without fibre, just like you. So, if you feed a fish bloodworms first, which have almost 0 fibre, you'd want to follow it up with something with a lot of fibre, like the mentioned veggie flake (which has a crazy almost 8% fibre). A good way to tell if you are feeding properly is to look at the fish's stool. It should come out quickly, in small solid pieces, and fall away immediately. Long, skinny, translucent poop that doesnt want to fall off is a sign of a lack of fibre. Many people assume disease or parasitism in the gut of the fish when the problem could just be a lack of proper nutrition and fibre. Try to find out what a fish eats in the wild and immitate it as closely as you can. Never feed anything that isn't fish food to your fish. People who REALLY know what they are doing can buy certain kinds of frozen fish from the fish market, prepare it properly, and feed it to their fish. Don't worry about that yet. Also, if you are using feeder fish, be cautious of your source, as these often carry disease.
---------------
5. Fish Selection: Newbies tend to pick up some pretty ratty looking fish. You can always spot if someone is a newbie just from the look of their fish. If you're a newbie, and the fish looks ratty at the store, you're not going to magically cure it and make it all better. More likely, it will introduce a disease into your tank or be succeptible to one because of its poor condition. Learn to look for signs of a healthy fish, and ALWAYS select your own fish. If a store doesn't let you pick, tell them to pick something of their own, and leave. A fish shouldn't have visible ribs, or depressions in its body. Its eyes should be alert, and not look bloodshot or overly uneven in color. Pupils should be bright and a very dark black. Most fish will be curious about you. Be weary of a specimen of a very curious species which is not being curious. Learn the fishs' behaviour, and try to select a healthy fish to start with. This atleast doubles your chances of fish keeping bliss and success.
Things that should immediately turn you off of a tank you're looking at, and ALL the fish in it.
If any or all of the fish:
-Have raised scales
-Are clamping their fins to their body and not swimming with them
-Swimming improperly, unable to stay down in the water, floating to the surface, unable to get to the surface
-any discolored, white, fuzzy spots or patches, white or blackish dots on the fish
-Missing eyes, missing fins, signs of recent injuries
-fish "glancing" off of rocks or glass (this is how fish scratch themselves, they swim up to something then rocket themselves off of it to scratch the affected area. Any fish will do this once a week or so. Animals get itchy. But that should be it. If it is happening constantly something, likely a parasite, is irritating the animal
-Learn your fish store employees' names. Ask how long a batch of fish has been in the store and whether any have died. Someone you know by name is less likely to lie to you.
-Find out if they use an open or closed system (Are the tanks interconnected) as this can spread diseases from one tank to the next.
DO NOT:
-Get fish that will not get along. Don't know? Do research
-Get a fish without knowing if it needs to live in groups, its behaviour, its adult size, its water preferences, and whether you can meet them, its food requirements, etc.
-Get fish that will out grow your tank. You probably won't want to get rid of it, or worse, will make the common newbie mistake of keeping it too long. An angel won't fit in your ten gallon by next month. Why bother. Fish DO NOT grow to their environments. This is called stunting a fish. Its not cool. Don't do it.
-Don't always trust your store. If I was going to get your money by lying to you I might just do it. Be thoughtful and don't trust anyone implicitly. If you get the same answer to one question from five different sources- it might just be true. But always ask around.
-Don't get fish that eat radically different diets. If you have a bunch of heavily herbivorous fish with one carnivorous fish they are likely to mix up their foods and eat the wrong thing and become malnourished or sick. Fish aren't incredibly intelligent. It hurts me to say that but its the truth.
-Assume a fish will act the same way at home as in the store. think about how fish will act and get along THEN, not now. If you have a huge tank, and you add a bunch of 1" neons and a couple of 1" angelfish, everythings going to be fine for quite some time. But then one day the angels have grown to a nice 8" tall, and a neon fits in their mouth. All of a sudden every time you wake up a couple of neons have mysteriously dissappeared into thin air. Many fish change their dispositions as they get older. Also, many fish act differently when kept singly or in small groups, compared to in a tank filled with the same species. Highly aggressive fish packed tightly don't bother to be aggressive, because there's no point trying to hold a territorry of 4" squared of water.
-Don't trust your "gut feeling". You don't have a gut feeling. If you're a newbie you know fish need water. That's where you should draw the line. Your gut feeling tells you that oscar and that green terror will get along just fine in a little 35G "cuzz they're tiny"- or that the Tinfoil barbs over there SURELY can't grow over 3", or that surely- that appistogramma cichlid MUST be easier to care for than those little Amano shrimp. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. You don't know jack fish. Do reasearch.
But I was 12 then. Can't believe it's been that long! 
I reckon it should be pinned too! 
