Hey there!

[FishGuest5123]

You'll regret telling me that haha, the amount of questions that are building up inside me is unreal. I just don't want to sound stupid, I try to research everything before hand, but there are so many contradictions out there!

If questions make stupid, then I’m the stupidest person alive. You will find we have many members who specialize in certain areas. @Colin_T is a good resource for diseases. I try to help him out in that area too. Goldfish and bettas are my specialty. @Byron is great with plant information and cories. He and @essjay are mind blowing with their knowledge of chemistry. There are many others and we are all here to help you out. We holler for help when we need it too.

 

[Shiverz]

If questions make stupid, then I’m the stupidest person alive. You will find we have many members who specialize in certain areas. @Colin_T is a good resource for diseases. I try to help him out in that area too. Goldfish and bettas are my specialty. @Byron is great with plant information and cories. He and @essjay are mind blowing with their knowledge of chemistry. There are many others and we are all here to help you out. We holler for help when we need it too.

Excellent, I'm gonna jot down everyones names so I can harrass ask questions to them. I'll try and do the bulkload of work first so I keep the questions to a minimum.

 

[FishGuest5123]

I'll pick up some Safe start tomorrow whilst I'm grabbing a test ki, probably some sand (possibly some plants after a little research). Then I'll start cycling and monitoring the water. Hopefully it's all going to be good.

Super excited, but I really don't want to rush anything. Trying to pace myself.

Tip: best sand is Quickcrete Play Sand. Less than $5 for a 50lb bag. A lot of us use it if you can get it in UK.

 

[Shiverz]

Tip: best sand is Quuckcrete Play Sand. Less than $5 for a 50lb bag. A lot if ya use it.

Thats actually helpful, I just went on google to look at substrates lol, nice timing. Going to look at an underlayer for plants (I think thats how it's done anyway)

 

[FishGuest5123]

Under layer is not necessary although some use it.

 

[Shiverz]

Ah so just some plant feed in with the sand? or on top? and that'll take care of that?

I thought it was going to be alot more complicated lol

 

[PhantomCarp]

You can just do sand and fertilizers if you want. You can also do root tabs if you have plants that are rooted(root tabs and fertilizers aren’t needed but help)

 

[Shiverz]

That sounds awesome, now just to find plants.

Though that quikrete stuff is quite expensive over in the uk. I'm not finding decent prices on it, I could go to pets at home and get sand there for £8 which seems reasonable from what prices I'm seeing.

 

[PhantomCarp]

That sounds awesome, now just to find plants.

Though that quikrete stuff is quite expensive over in the uk. I'm not finding decent prices on it, I could go to pets at home and get sand there for £8 which seems reasonable from what prices I'm seeing.

Pool filter sand is also good and cheap

 

[PheonixKingZ]

Pool filter sand is also good and cheap

Although, it is usually to white/bright for fish.

As @Deanasue said, play sand is the best.

 

[Shiverz]

Although, it is usually to white/bright for fish.

As @Deanasue said, play sand is the best.

Any playsand? I was just looking at poolfilter sand along with the quikrete, over here it's pretty expensive, for 5kg it's anywhere between £25-£30 ($32-$38). Though I just found some play sand in argos for £5 ($6.50) for 15kg, so I'm guessing thats my best bet so far. Thank you for all the tips and helping me find my sand. Now to find if I can have a hillstream loach in my 17gal... I have a feeling I can't.

 

[Retired Viking]

Play sand is good, I try for a darker brown sand and avoid light or white sand, it reflex too much light and stresses fish. I also avoid adding any of the soils for plants they sell. After a year or two it wears out and you have to replace it-what a mess. Root tabs works just fine for rooted plants. I use Seachem Flourish Comprehensive and flourish root tabs.

 

[FishGuest5123]

I use Seachem Flourish too.

 

[Shiverz]

so seachem flourish sounds like a good one. I'll relay it my partner, she says if I do the landscape it'll look like a jungle. I've let it in her capable hands and if she has questions I'll relay them to you guys!

 

[James7]

Lots of responses on here so I’m sure all of this is covered but I would say a few things:

If the filter media has been dry for over 15 minutes the beneficial bacteria (B.B.) will start to die.

Even if it is wet you are still going to be cycling a new tank. Tetra safestart is very good at this, with the B.B. you will speed up the process quickly.

Add your fish a few at a time (what I mean by this is don’t go all in with 10 neon tetra, 6 dwarf cories, 1 honey Gourami, etc (sorry easy examples to pick).

Keep the 5g tank for quarantining new fish and plants if you can get additional equipment (while this might seem like extra cost nothing will be more expensive than wiping out all of the fish in your tank by introducing 1 diseased fish).

Plan plan plan, what fish do you want and can they all go together, choose what suits your water parameters, otherwise you will be spending more money on pH buffers or RO water.

So you want a planted tank, with a sand substrate - one of the cheapest ways to do this is with kids play sand, and for the plants to grow healthily you can put potting soil underneath, otherwise you will be buying root tabs and hoping that the plant roots manage to grow through the densely packed sand. (Maybe look into the walstad method).

Keep up with your water changes and checking the parameters to make sure that your fish stay as healthy as possible.

Some people will agree, some will disagree. I’m just giving you some advice on my first 7 months of fish keeping. Good luck!