 Setting up your first fish tank is a lot more work than you'd think. I'm glad to have done it once with a "starter" tank before I went to a slightly larger 16 gallon bowfront beauty. Over the course of time I'm going to discuss critical items I had reconsidered when creating my new aquarium and share them with you. Hopefully this will help you do it the right way and your fish and plants will live, hopefully a long time!
Let's start off with the first golden rule of aquarium building. Do NOT go into a pet store with the expectation that you are going to be leaving with fish. You aren't. If you do, your fish are virtually guaranteed to be dead within 3 weeks because of a lack of "tank cycling" as I'll explain below. If you do it the right way, you might be able to cut this time down to 1 week, even though some products claim 48 hours. If I were you, with the exception of a product called Biospira (and I wouldn't trust it so quickly), set your expectations to that period of time and don't worry - the pet store will very likely hold your fish for you and store them there.
So what is "cycling?" What I first learned was that a fish tank is actually a little ecosystem. You may remember from creating terrariums that the environment, with a proper mixture of water and oxygen levels, creates a small sustainable world of its own. In the case of the fish tank, there are small "good" ammonia-eating bacteria whose job is to reduce the waste of the fish into non-toxic substances (nitrites) which, in turn, are also detoxified further. There are 4 (actually 5) primary elements that need to settle down in a new tank which are ammonia, pH, nitrite and nitrates.
Tomorrow I'll explain more on how to do the ultra-quick one week fishless cycling method.
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