Adding Your First Fish
Phil Anderson from http://www.geocities.com/abear27


When you are ready to start adding your first fish to your aquarium, it is best to choose an inexpensive variety that is hearty, easy to feed, attractive, and able to live in a broad range of water conditions. These include barbs, danios, and rasboras. Schooling fish should be kept in a group of at least six, although 12 would be much better in most cases. How long your fish live, your potential to breed the species, and your ability to keep aquatic plants will depend on the types of fish you choose, and how you care for them. It's best to start with hardy fish matched to yor local water conditions before attempting to keep the more exotic and rare varieties.
When shopping for your fish, remember to take an overall look at the stock the LFS or Super Pet Store is carrying. If fish in many tanks look sick, are diseased, or contain dead fish, you are best to go looking elsewhere since it's very likely all the fish have been contaminated or infected. Many Super Pet Store's have a central filtration system for all their aquariums that results in diseases or parasites spreading from one tank to all tanks very quickly. Never purchase fish from a tank that contains several dead fish, or any other fish that visibly look diseased, or that are otherwise showing obvious signs of stress. Also, be careful with fish that are "just in", since you have very little idea of the quality the fish are in as soon as they arrive at the LFS. Don't be afraid to tell the LFS employee exactly which fish you want, or don't want, from their tanks. Choose only healthy looking, active fish with good color and full fins. Try to avoid mixing Goldfish with tropical fish, unless you have a plan.

Remember that the LFS is not your only source for fish. Members of your local Aquarium Society can help you. Also check your local newspaper's classified ads for breeders or other hobbyists that will provide you with fish. There also also many on-line and mail order comapnies that can provide rare fish that you may not be able to find or order through your LFS.

Acclimating Your New Fish To Your Aquarium
Transport your fish from the LFS to your aquarium as quickly as possible. Although it is possible for the fish to survive for more than a day in the bag, it causes them a great deal of stress to be confined for that long. Once you get the fish home, open the bag. Float it in your aquarium for at least five minutes with the open end loosely hanging over the side edge. Add some water from your aquarium to the bag and let the fish sit another 5 - 10 minutes in the bag. After 10 - 15 minutes, use a fish net to scoop out your new fish from the bag into your aquarium. Try not to get the fish store's water mixed with your own. You never know what disease or contaminants may have travelled in the water from the LFS.

Some hobbyists have said they prefer to just scoop the fish into their aquariums straight from the LFS bag. Others want to extend the process over a couple of hours before finally releasing the fish into the tank. I think both of these methods are extreme and risky. The fish is under enough stress from transport, a sudden change in temperature, pH, hardness, and meeting new tank mates. Introducing the fish to these elements to quickly can cause shock and kill the fish before it has a chance. Doing this process to slowly leaves the fish in the tiny bag, with no waste removal, surface agitation, or ability to move into thier new home and establish their place in the aquarium. All things considered, I believe 15 to 20 is adaquate time to introduce the fish to your tank.

Feeding Your Fish
Fish should only be fed once or twice a day. One day every week should be a fasting day. Fish should only be fed what they will eat in the first few minutes. Fish are very efficient at converting food to energy and muscle, and don't have to expend energy fighting gravity or heating their bodies like mamals do. Most fish can survive for several weeks without being fed at all because of their low caloric burn rate (Although if your fish were to stop eating for a few days, you probably are seeing the start of some problem in the tank!).

Overfeeding is a common problem for hobbyists. Food that remains un-eaten in the tank will rot, causing ammonia levels to rise and reducing your water quality. The rotting food also makes your tank look messy. Bottom dwelling fish will also be forces to swin through this rotting decay, which is not good for them in the long term. Watch the fish closely to make sure you do not let alot of excess food float around the tank un-eaten.

Some fish, like goldfish , have no "brakes" on eating and can literally eat themselves to death. In the wild, fish go for long periods without eating, and therefore have a tendancy to eat everything they can, while they can. In an aquarium environment, this leads to overweight fish. Don't be tempted to constantly feed your fish because "they were begging for more". This results in the "killing them with kindness" syndrome.

You will eventually have 3 to 6 different foods on hand. It is not recommended you purchase this many foods outright when you first add fish to your aquarium, but gradually you will add different foods as your fish population grows. These foods will likely be in the form of flakes, pellets, powders, freeze-dried, live, and frozen foods. Fish should be fed a mix of different foods each day; flakes one day, pellets the next, then powder, and so on. This will prevet the fish from becoming addicted to any one food type. Try not to keep food on the shelf too long. Although bulk food is cheap, it can turn into useless filler if it sits on a shelf for a year. Freezing, or sharing with another hobbyist, is often the best way to go. Also, buying the smallest possible quantities will mean you are often paying alot for fish food when you shouldn't be. There's a happy medium in there somewhere! Visit your LFS. They should have a good variety.

Watch the quality and quantity of live or frozen foods you are feeding your fish. Live and frozen foods can sometimes introduce pathogens and diseases to your aquarium. Tubiflex worms in particular have been known to cause problems. Live foods also tend to have very high protein content compared to processed flake foods. Feeding too much can constipate your fish. It is usually best to add live foods into the rotation of other processed flake or pellet foods you are feeding your fish

There are several good quality foods available. A visit to your LFS or on-line vendor and you will find a wide variety. I personally have found Hagen's Nutrafin Max flake food to be great quality at a great price. I have also had good luck with Tetra, OSI Labs, and HBH flake foods. I also have found most San Francisco Bay Brand frozen foods to be very good quality.

Stocking Your Aquarium
As the Nitrogen Cycle progresses you'll slowly be able to build up the stock in your aquarium.

There's an old rule about how many fish you can have in your aquarium: "One inch of slim bodied fish per gallon at maximum". Slim bodied fish would include most varieties of small tetras, danios, and rasboras. You would adjust this rule logically for how large each fish is and how much space it needs as it grows. Medium bodied fish like platies, loaches, and swordtails would probably make the rule read "half inch of medium bodied fish per gallon at maximum". Truthfully, the total gallon capacity of the tank has little to do with how many fish the tank can support. The physical size the fish grow to limits the number that can live in the aquarium. Filtration efficiency and the gas exchange efficiency between the surface of the aquarium water and the air really determine the biological load the tank can handle. You can usually use a visual estimation of how crowded the tank looks and the behavious of the fish to determine how many fish you want to keep in a tank.

For help choosing fish for a "community tank", consult Gary Kenley's Fish Compatibility Chart for help. You can download this chart as an Excel 95 file (76kb) or as an Adobe Acrobat 3.0 PDF file (19kb). The chart shows various fish's abilities to get along with each other. This is an excellent chart that can help you plan out what fish you want to keep in your aquarium.

You'll be able to tell when your tank is getting over-crowded just by the way the tank looks, and the behaviour of the fish. If the fish in your crowded tank show signs of stress, immediately test the water conditions, and evaluate the stock to determine what factors are affecting the fish and how best to resolve them.

With your new fish in the aquarium, you'll need to continue monitoring the water quality. For the first few months, you may want to test the water weekly or bi-weekly. Once the water conditions have stablized, you can probably drop your testing to once a month without problems. You will probably want to track your fish and water paramters. A simple notebook can be used. You can also download software to assist you in tracking your tanks and fish.