Episode: 3227
Title: HPR3227: Fresh water Aquarium Basics
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3227/hpr3227.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 19:10:34

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This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3227 for Tuesday, 15th of December 2020, to main show
in entitled Fresh Water Aquarium Basics.
It is hosted by Anigma and in about 26 minutes long and Karima next visit flag.
The summer is, Anigma discusses the high level basics of getting into the aquarium hobby.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
At Universal Access to All Knowledge, by heading over to archive.org, forward slash donate.
Welcome to another episode of HPR, I'm your host Anigma and today we're going to be talking
about something a little bit different, we're going to be talking about fresh water aquarium
basics and how I got into the hobby and kind of a high level of what you should be concerned
about getting your first aquarium and we're going to be talking through some challenges
I've had from an aquarium keeper perspective.
So I got into the hobby, my dad was really into larger fish tanks and he got me my first
tank when I was 12 or 13, I had a smaller tank, first I got a 10 gallon or about a 38 liter
tank and then I got larger tanks as I got older but basically my teenage years we had
a fish tank and I was super into some of the larger fish and fish that were a little bit
more aggressive in nature and we'll talk about pitfalls there and kind of my perspective
on that maybe in another show.
Anyway so as I became an adult and when I bought my house about five years ago I wanted
a larger tank, larger display tank in my dining room and I ultimately chose a 55 gallon
or about a 208 liter tank that was going to be my display tank and I wanted to replicate
what I did as a child and kind of get some of more and more of my aggressive fish and
again I'll tell us another story about that whole experience and choosing the wrong thing
maybe in another show but anyway so the first thing that you need to decide and some things
that I didn't do very well when I first got into the hobby were picking the fish before
I picked the tank meaning you should choose what you're going to store in the tank and then
kind of determine everything else based on that because people get into a habit of buying
too small of a tank for the fish that they're going to store so you end up with a scenario
of either the fish just dies because it's not cared for well because it's too big or you
get a scenario of having one fish in the tank because it eats everything else because you know
it's very territorial and blah blah blah so size and the type of fish are very important when
deciding you know what you want to do and and kind of your budget on everything else that comes
after that the next thing you should probably decide is what kind of substrate or what's going to
be on the bottom of your tank so there are options such as gravel sand there's clay there's
even some people have dirt bottoms where it's it's literally like potting soil
those those type of things you normally would put on the bottom of your tank and there's pluses
and minuses to each of those things if if I was going to recommend something for a new new person
that was getting into the hobby probably would go gravel unless their choice of fish dictated
differently again do your research on your fish see what it will handle or what what it will
like the best most of your starter fish really don't care too much so a gravel tank is perfectly fine
next thing you should really worry about is your filtration so you have some options here whether
it's a hang on the back or hob filter hob is short for hang on the back a canister or a sponge
filter and there's some other options that are more advanced but we'll stay those three or three
main options hang on the back is primarily what most of the aquarium kits give you they're the cheapest
option and and for most part those work the best most of my tanks I think all of my tanks right now
have a hang on the back filtration I have a couple of canisters that I'm going to install
and that's one of the projects I'm going to be working on when I'm on vacation next week
and I might do a video of that and or even an audio podcast for HBR to kind of talk through
how that works might be an interesting thing but anyway so hang on the back is probably going to
be your choice and again unless you're looking to a specific use case or looking to do a little
bit different so your canister filters are you have more control over what type of media you use to
filtrate basically how the canister works is the the water comes out of the tank goes into this
little container which is called the canister and then filters back into your to your tank through
you know it's a pump mechanism it gives you the ability to a it looks better because you can hide
most of the of the the intake and outtake but it also gives you the ability to control what type
of media that's filtering your water and they have lots and noodles of different options there
but again that requires a lot more research kind of your specific use case and it potentially
could be drilling your tank depending on if you want to hide the the the intake and the the outtake
so if you're going to go that route make sure you do your research a sponge filter is basically
just essentially a sponge with a with an airline attached to it now this is good for if you're
breeding fish or you're have some fish that are really small that might get sucked up into either
a canister or hang on the back sometimes people do this with like freshwater shrimp or other
smaller creatures the problem with a sponge filter is you don't get the filtration that you get with
the other options basically all of the the bacteria and all of this the stuff gets attached to the
sponge and but it's still within the tank with the hang on the back option and the canister filter the
the fish waste and other things other particles get actually pulled out and into a filter medium
a cartridge or in the case of a canister it's completely removed from the tank in the actual
canister itself so with sponge filters water chemistry does become a bit of a problem depending
on how dirty your tank is and some of the other some of the other ammonia level pH level things
like that might be affected if you go strictly sponge and you would just keep an eye on it there's
test kits and things you can do with that next the next two things that you should probably consider
are heater heaters and lighting and I talk about these because I feel as a new hobbyist they're less
important than some of the other things that you'll run across so heaters to again depending on
your use case of fish certain fish like hotter water than other fish other things you could you
could technically not use a filter at all in my tanks at home I think I have 11 or so and most
of them are small on the smaller end they're what we call nano aquariums they're less than 38
liters or 10 gallons and I'm growing like or I'm breeding like shrimp and some of the live bears
like guppies mollies and such I don't have any heaters on them I live in Florida so the water
does not get chilly enough where it really affects my fish at all so I'm not really worried about
a heater I do have one tank and I have a couple of blood parrots that just like the heater so
that's how I put in a heater and they're they're happy so again your mouth may vary depending on
what type of fish you keep so on the lighting side again this is more of an aestheticly pleasing
item unless you're doing live plants most of my tanks have live plants in them I could go into a whole
rant and and episode on live plants alone it's definitely a science in a in a water chemistry type
conversation when you're talking about plants because you're you're talking about nitrates
and you know them having the right fertilizer and and how what type of planet is and all of those
those things you need to consider if you're starting out in the hobby I wouldn't recommend live
plants or get something that's pretty robust because you're going to go through live plants pretty
quickly just doing trial and error the benefits of having live plants though is it's a natural filter
for your for your water so you don't necessarily have to worry about a nitrate spike and nitrates
basically are due to fish waste and there's nitrates and nitrites and both at extreme levels
are harmful for the aquarium life my tanks the reason my tanks all have live plants is because
again natural filter takes care of it however I've went through a significant number of live
plants because if you don't have enough nitrates in your water and you don't and you don't have enough
lighting what happens is the plants die and if you have plants dying on you then you're automatically
going to get those nitrate spikes because decaying matter at as a whole messes up water chemistry
so you know again as I'm going to put a big disclaimer on this do your research
with my lighting I usually get fairly inexpensive lighting you can go to the extreme
there are things out there where you can lighting options where where their Bluetooth enabled
Wi-Fi enabled where you can control them all from your your smartphone you know an app like that
I may get into that and may try some options with some of my tanks with
a project that I've been trying to try to get on on board it's basically controlling your
entire aquarium from Raspberry Pi I may do that in the future at this point for this particular
episode I'd say go with the lighting option that visually appeals to you normally with the kits
that you'll buy the aquarium kits like the 10 gallon options and even the larger tanks they're
going to end up giving you an LED light that isn't really visually appealing so more than likely
if you buy a kit you're going to be replacing that lighting eventually I say that but I have
two tanks in my in my house that have the original aquarium lighting that I have not replaced yet
so again I would I would say do what makes you happy there and pick the light that works for you
so when you have your tank and you have it all set up you know you also want to put this tank
in a place that's not around a window you're going to find if you put it in an area that has a lot
of natural light you're going to have trouble with algae trouble with getting your tank balanced
you set it up in a in a good place you get it on the stands you make sure your stand can hold
the weight there's places you know on the internet that you can look up the weight restrictions
there's kits out there that come with stands I have a a hardware store basically rack
for my for my tanks in my office it they hold about a thousand pounds per shelf and I've got
probably five tanks on that but I did my my homework and I made sure that each shelf had the
appropriate strength to hold not only the tank but the the substrate and the water that's within
the tank and there's calculators out there on the internet that you can do for that so make sure
your your tank or your stand is strong enough for the tank and it's not going to like fall through
or bow or whatever don't put it on a TV stand you're more than likely going to it's going to fall
through don't put it on you know some some rinky dink stand that can hold 50 pounds because I can
guarantee you unless it's a two gallon aquarium or a very small aquarium it's probably not going
to hold the weight so make sure you do that you're going to fill you're going to put your substrate
in recommendations here is always wash your substrate unless it specifically tells you to not
so if you're going to buy like your gravel for example you want to put that in a bucket and rinse
it really well with water before you put it into the aquarium what will happen if you don't do that
is your your tank will be very cloudy um straight out the gate and I particularly um would rather that
dirt and that debris that comes on the gravel to be out of my tank rather than in my tank it just
delays the process it's not saying everything's going to die when you're um you know if you don't
do that but best practice wash your gravel so you can get that set up put in your heater put
if applicable put on your light um and then you're gonna you're gonna let that tank cycle oh
put your filtration in you know let that tank cycle for probably a week to two weeks um and just let
the filter run let the you know turn your light on and off just give it a good cycle
before you put any fish in it um you're also going to put in a declorinator most of the places
in the US um that you have uh chlorine naturally in your water um and there's a couple of
good products out there I recommend prime um again I'm not sure overseas
um outside of the US if that that is a brand that uh you would use but in the US um I pick up a bottle
prime it's uh for a decent sized bottle it's about fourteen dollars um and that's going to be your
declorinator and anytime you do a water change you put water in your tank you're gonna want to put
a whatever dose of prime that it recommends and it's usually per gallon or per liter
into the tank to essentially take the chlorine out of the water and this is to project the fish
make sure that you don't have things going into your tank that um would be um damaging to your tank
so then well after a couple of weeks that it's set up and cycling and whatever um you're gonna
go pick out your fish and hopefully by this time you've done your research and um really
determined what type of fish you want to get and you don't go in and pick out the uh the cutest
fish or the one that you know speaks to you in the in the store do your homework make sure you
know what you're going in for don't just go off the cuff um a couple of recommendations here if
you're just starting out try the live bearer out uh guppies mollies um things like that would be
a good choice they're pretty hardy um they're they're pretty stable it's not gonna be a huge dollar
number if if they perish or you know you you have some issues right out the gate um but I would
go something pretty inexpensive at first um because you're gonna make mistakes going into this
so once you've picked out your fish you get them home you um either go one of two routes you're
gonna either drip acclimatum or you're going to uh essentially float the bag on the top of the tank
most um if he most places recommend a drip acclimation route where you're basically
dripping a little bit of the water into a container with the with the new animal in it
to kind of get their chemistry right floating the bag means literally floating the the bag that
they came in on the in the tank to get the the temperature right and the idea of both methods
is to make sure that the fish aren't shocked going right into the tank um in this method I almost
always recommend drip acclimation for hardier fish it's probably not gonna make much of a difference
but getting good habits there's places on the internet that you can uh get the little valve for
the drip acclimation um I might leave a little note in the show notes for this particular process
and I'm gonna also put in a couple of kits that um aren't bad for starters in the show notes
so once you've gotten the fish into the tank and it's all happy and you're you know
you get what you're looking for now how do you maintain it so a couple of things here
and and we've gotten a little longer than I wanted so we'll leave it at this is um your tank
maintenance is a number one priority for you so if you get into the hobby and you get your tank set
up um most people fail when they when they're not doing their tank maintenance um and there's
lots of chatter on the internet on what tank maintenance looks like I feel it's a tank by tank
basis meaning one tank you may go a year and not have to do anything to it other tanks you have to
you have to touch every um week and typically your larger tanks so if you get up in that 208
liter range or even bigger because there's there's bigger tanks than that you have to do less
to them and it makes sense because you if you have more water the water chemistry is more stable
the it takes a lot more uh fish waste and and food to um to damage the water chemistry
so bigger that usually the bigger the tank the less maintenance however when you do maintenance it's
more work so I don't know if there's a balance um smaller tanks if you get under that size that the
38 liter range uh 10 gallon range you're going to be doing maintenance pretty consistently because
you have less water to deal with thus the water chemistry can be uh go wonky on you in a hurry pick
up a good test kit i'm going to leave a test kit in the notes uh there's a master kit it's like $30
US um not real expensive and you get a lot of use out of it check your water uh regularly um also do
your research on what type of food your fish like um typically you can get away with most live
bears and and other um common fish you can get away with flake food um that's not necessarily
saying that flake food is the best for the fish but it won't you know damage your fish too too much
now if you get more exotic fish you're going to have to um get different types of food whether
that be uh live food whether that be um frozen food those type of things and I may do uh if folks
are interested I may do a show just about the different types of fish food and kind of the
pluses and minuses on tank maintenance um because certain fish food are dirtier or can do more
damage to water chemistry than other types of food um and then other types of fish food have other
downsides so it depends mileage may vary um but get the type of fish food that works for your fish
and make sure you know just about what um how often you should feed your fish uh most people when
they get into the hobby they're going to overfeed the tank and that's going to damage water chemistry
and make you do more maintenance to the tank so no kind of your fishes habits um and and kind of what
type of feeding regimen you want to put in place and the biggest thing on tank maintenance is water
changes and and most people debate on whether you should do a water change or not and what I mean by
water changes literally taking water out of your tank um potentially vacuuming the bottom of your
tank getting all of the fish waste out of there and all the debris out of there and then putting
new water back in um my recommendation is that you should you know tank maintenance is the the best
way to correct problems that you have in your tank and if I notice that I've gotten you know
some algae on the tank or I've got some some things growing in the tank that I didn't really account for
I'm going to do a water may water change in my tank and that doesn't mean take out all the water
because again you've got to worry about the actual fish balance and then being used to the
water chemistry that's in the current tank you want to make sure that your fish is happy that
you um take out enough water to make a difference and this is usually less than 50% of your water change
you can get uh extreme with it and and take out more um and usually be okay but I recommend usually
anywhere between 25 and 30% at a standard interval whether that be weekly whether that be biweekly
whether that be monthly you know and I've had tanks that I haven't touched in six months um
typically what I try to do on the majority of my tanks is a biweekly schedule where I'm taking
out about 25% of the water and replacing it with new and I'm also doing uh vacuums on
the bottom of the tank and I'll leave a vacuum that I use um in these show notes it's called a
Python um not the programming language um but it's it's really good and you can hook it up to your
um water speck it or your your water um your sink and you can uh push water into the tank and
also siphoned uh water out of the tank all in one shot so it's really nice um most people in the
hobby use it and it works out for for us pretty well and on that note I think I've talked at a
high level about all the topics I wanted today so I'm going to leave it with that um if you guys
have questions you can uh come see me in in IRC on uh hashtag uh augcast planet on free node
or um I've got a new channel called um hashtag hacker exchange and I have a show that I'm
going to be releasing that explains uh the hacker exchange concept um or you can email me at
eth zero enigma at gmail.com have a great day guys and I'll talk to you soon
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