Father’s day weekend seemed like the perfect time to start getting equipment for the 30g. When I was selling the idea of this hobby to my wife, I tried getting her involved by telling her that I’d love her help with aquascaping the tanks. She has much more of an eye for fashion and such, so I figured this was a win-win situation. 1, the tank will look better with her doing it and 2, she’d be bitten by the fish keeping bug, too!
To continue this story, a little background is probably needed. This whole hobby started because last weekend (6/7/2008), I took my son to the local pet store (LPS) to look for frogs. I figured we could get a little aquarium and some frogs and boom, my son would have a little pet and hobby to have while he was here for the summer. My son is 8 years old and comes for the summer every year. I figured while he was at home in Idaho with his Mom and Step-Dad, I could take care of his frogs.
Well, my wife hated the idea and the sales people at the LPS didn’t figure it would be a good purchase either, so they suggested that I sink some money into a little Betta home (little meaning 1 liter of water little). Well, I figured, no problem! Fish have to be easy to take care of! So, we bought the little kit (Betta box, water conditioner, Betta flake food, ornament, gravel [substrate]) and a beautiful red and blue male Betta (not sure the specific type).
After reading the instructions and getting the kit all set up (note that the instructions obviously did not include any information on the Nitrification cycle whatsoever), we tossed the Betta in, named him Masahari Morimoto, and enjoyed the fish. Wee!
The next day I walked into work and in my spare time I began reading up on Betta’s and fish keeping in general. That is when I found Fishlore and many other sites that provided a plethora of information. Ammonia? Nitrites? Nitrates? Power filters? 1 in. of small fish per GALLON?!? It was all very shocking and a lot of the information was contradicting itself!
I figured the best way to get GOOD information was to look through a site, find one that wasn’t trying to make a profit and that had a good forum, and use that as my foundation. That site was Fishlore. And by reading as much information as I could throughout the week, by the time this blog entry came around, I figured I was better suited to actually being a keeper of aquatic life.
So, there were two goals this weekend while shopping:
1. Find a new home for Masahari Morimoto that actually suited his needs.
2. Buy all of the correct equipment for our new 30g tank that we were setting up as a community tank.
The idea of this blog is to make the hobby as accessible as possible for a beginner like me. So, with that in mind, below is the list of equipment that I was looking for to go with the 30g tank and tropical fish setup.
1.
Magnetic Algae Cleaner
2.
Python No Spill Clean N’ Fill
3.
Coralife Digital Thermometer
4.
Visi-Therm Stealth Heater (150W)
5.
Penguin BIO-Wheel Power Filter (200)
6.
Flexible Bubble Wand (24”)
7. My 30g tank already came with an air pump. Would suggest something like
this, 5500.
8.
Air Check Valve
9.
Plug-in Timer
10. New Hood – My tank came with a hood, but the light was not built in. I had serious fears that the light would fall right into the tank while I was cleaning, so I needed a
new one.
11.
Substrate
12. Conditioners (Various, at least water conditioner)
13.
Testing Kit – Liquid! The dip strips aren’t very accurate sometimes
14.
Decorations – Various
Long, I know. Sorry. But I know I would have loved to see a basic setup for a 30g tank before I went shopping. Also, for me in my locale, it wasn’t worth the time or money looking locally. I ended up buying everything online at
Drs. Foster and Smith. It should be here at the end of the week
Along with all of this, I also got Masahari his new home: a Tetra 5g, acrylic, hex tank with a built in light and a top mounted BIO Wheel filter. Also got him a small submersible heater. He finally has a new home (pics included)!
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