Setting up a freshwater aquarium involves making a number of important decisions: the size of your tank, the type of filtration you’ll need, how best to light and heat your tank, what kind of substrate to install, and so on. However, these decisions will all stem from the most important factor: what kind of fish do wish to raise in your tank?

Your available space may limit the size of your tank, and if you are a beginner, a smaller tank might be advisable. Contrary to expectations, larger tanks are easier to maintain than smaller tanks, because they are less subject to sudden fluctuations in water chemistry and temperature; it’s easier to maintain a stable environment in a larger tank. A beginner should probably not start out with a 200-gallon tank, but, depending on your available space, something from 20 to as much as 50 gallons might work.

Then, determine the number of fish your tank can hold. Figure, very roughly, on 2 inches of fish (in length) per gallon of water. And find a reputable dealer who knows what he’s talking about and will back up his product. Look at the display tanks in the shop; are they clean, tidy, and populated with healthy fish? Ask several questions about appropriate fish for your tank and gauge the dealer’s general knowledge. If he is hesitant in answering, you might want to go to another shop.

A popular approach is to assemble a collection of fish and create a community aquarium, housing from ten to thirty fish that are nonaggressive. A community aquarium with, say, twenty-five fish might require a 40-gallon tank. Most nonaggressive fish in such an environment will eat flake or pelleted food, and will thrive in water with balanced, middle-of-the-road pH, temperature, and hardness values. Good community fish include guppies, mollies, swordtails, gouramis, tetras, silver dollars, loaches, and goldfish.

Tetras are active schooling fish that adapt well to a peaceful community aquarium. There are a wide variety of tetra species of different colors; it’s usually best to keep at least six tetras of the same species together, in a well-planted aquarium with moderate lighting. Loaches are more eel-like in appearance and are bottom dwellers, spending much of their time hiding from the light. Pygmy chain loaches, usually less than 2 inches in length, are very active, swimming in schools along the bottom of your tank searching for food.

Swordtails are also active swimmers, so allow for a bigger tank for these fish. Swordtails are tolerant of a broad water temperature range, but appreciate brackish water, so a pH range of 6.8 to 7.8 is most comfortable for them. These striking fish have been extensively bred in captivity and are available in a variety of colors, including red, green, albino, and even neon colors.

Gouramis are another good choice; a chocolate gourami, for instance, is a peaceful fish that is brownish in color with pearly yellow vertical stripes. These fish do well in pairs and can mix with other peaceful fish in a community tank. Gouramis require a bit more care than some other fish families; chocolate gouramis need at least a 30-gallon tank and have delicate constitutions, prone to bacteria and skin parasites. Good water quality, and frequent water changes, are required.

Angelfish, a member of the cichlid family, are common freshwater aquarium denizens, though these fish can grow large (up to 12 inches in height) and can live long (at least 10 years). They do best either singly, or in groups of four or more; smaller groups tend to be competitive. In community tanks, angelfish mix best with silver dollars, larger tetras, swordtails, mollies, some gouramis, and others; as they grow larger, angelfish may eat small fish such as guppies and neon tetras, so be sure to mix these fish appropriately.

For an entirely different aquarium environment, you might want to consider an aggressive aquarium, which houses a smaller number of larger fish. Aggressive fish may attack and eat smaller fish, so an aggressive aquarium should include a mix of fish that are roughly the same size, and your aquarium should include plenty of structure on the substrate (such as rocks, plants, or driftwood), providing hiding places for the different fish to stake out territory.

An aggressive community usually requires a bigger tank, and, because most aggressive fish swim along the length of a tank rather than top-to-bottom, you will need a long (rather than tall) tank. A 40-gallon tank is probably the smallest you should consider for an aggressive community; if you plan to purchase bigger fish, for instance 10 inches or longer, then don’t consider any tank smaller than 50 gallons.

A good aggressive fish to start out with is a cichlid. Convict cichlids are territorial and aggressive, but they don’t get too big; they prefer hiding places and dim lighting. Convicts are also easy to breed, if you have a pair, though a breeding pair of convicts will probably require their own tank. A single convict can mix with other cichlids such as oscars, jack dempseys, and green terrors; females are less aggressive than males.

Oscar cichlids are bigger than convicts, growing up to 12 inches, but they are semi-aggressive and can mix with other semi-aggressive cichlids as well as silver dollars and other families. Because of their size, oscars require large tanks, over 100 gallons for a pair. Yet another cichlid, the green terror, is small (6 to 8 inches) but extremely aggressive; if you mix a green terror with other fish, the tankmates should be at least as big in size, with the capability to defend themselves. Get the biggest tank you can manage, and be prepared to segregate your green terror from his tankmates if he becomes too violent, either by screening off part of your tank or keeping a separate tank.

Piranhas are one other aggressive fish that are sometimes kept in freshwater aquariums; these carnivorous fish do best in schools of several fish, and require lots of room for swimming around. A minimum tank size would be 2 gallons for each inch of fish you introduce to your tank, with a 6-foot length. A school of piranhas should probably be kept in their own tank, though some other aggressive fish, such as various cichlid species, may be able to hold their own. If you do plan to mix piranhas with other species, add the new fish singly, to see how they adapt.

If you have limited space for an aquarium, you can keep things simple by housing a single fish only. Fish that do well alone include goldfish, large catfish, and some of the aggressive species.

Your choices are endless, and if you do research to ensure that you have a compatible community, you can create a freshwater environment that will give you years of pleasure.

If you are fitting an aquarium in your home or workplace, there are a variety of things you need to consider. 1st, what sort of ecosystem do you would like to make: freshwater, saltwater, a reef surroundings, a river surroundings? The scale of your tank, and the equipment you will would like to outfit your tank, all rely on what you wish to stock the tank with. (If you're a beginner, a smaller tank is usually a lot of suitable.) However irrespective of what your eventual aquarium setting can look like, you may would like to light it.

Since your aquarium will possibly be indoors, you would like lighting to be able to view your fish and flora; overhead or ambient lighting that is already gift in the space where you will be keeping your aquarium is never sufficient. However, most important, your flowers and a lot of marine life (like coral and anemones) need light-weight for photosynthesis. Lighting also influences fish behavior and affects the well-being of your aquarium environment.

Aquarium lighting fixtures are generally mounted to a hood or cover that fits over your tank. Obviously, you must have a hood that is appropriate for the dimensions of your tank, and you should discuss your choices with your dealer when you initially purchase your tank. Most aquarium lighting is fluorescent (traditional output or compact) or high-intensity metal halide, and you will want to determine what you will would like before getting a tank and hood, to ensure that they will accommodate the style of lighting, and size and configuration of sunshine bulb, that you'll require.

As a general formula, you may want two watts of lighting for every gallon of water in your tank; a 60-gallon tank would then need one hundred twenty watts of lighting power. But, if you have got dense vegetation with higher necessities, then you may need at least double that -- figure on five watts per gallon -- and reef tanks need even more. Keep in mind that lighting may be a complicated subject, and also the watts-per-gallon guideline is solely the start of the discussion; several other variables will come back into play, particularly as lighting systems become a lot of advanced. The output from a sixty-watt metal halide bulb can differ considerably from the output from a 60-watt floodlight, for instance. Other variables you will wish to think about include lumens per watt, PAR (photosynthetic active radiation), PUR (photosynthetic useable radiation), and even the house the bulbs will occupy in the hood; do some research on the Web and discuss the problem together with your dealer or with an experienced hobbyist.

You want your lights to bring out the colourful coloration of fish, coral, plants, and alternative life forms you may have in your aquarium. Light-weight can have a vary of visual quality with respect to how colours are rendered to our eyes, and this is often measured by the CRI (color rendering index) of a specific kind of light bulb. The CRI of a bulb relies on a scale of 1 to 100, with one hundred indicating how a lit object will seem in natural daylight conditions. Full-spectrum bulbs -- bulbs that emit all the wavelengths of visible light -- approximate natural light-weight most closely, and therefore have high CRI values. But, you'll wish to boost sure colors by using color-enhancing bulbs, that emit light from the "warmer" finish of the color spectrum and accent reds and yellows. Several enthusiasts combine full-spectrum bulbs with color-enhancing bulbs.

Another commonly used measurement could be a bulb's color temperature, measured by its Kelvin rating (K-rating); the K-rating describes the temperature (in degrees Kelvin) and corresponding vary of colours of a light-weight source. The progression of colors from the lower end of the Kelvin scale begins with reds and oranges, to yellows, greens, blues, and indigos, on to violet at the upper end. Oddly, the colours highlighted by bulbs with lower K-ratings (reds and yellows) are thought-about "hotter," whereas the blues and violets highlighted by bulbs with higher K-ratings are considered "cooler."

Sunlight at midday contains a K-rating of five,five hundred degrees Kelvin and contains a mix of all the colours within the spectrum; therefore, a five,500 Kelvin bulb is a full-spectrum bulb. Bulbs with a lower K-rating offer off reddish lightweight, and bulbs with higher K-ratings emit bluish light. Freshwater aquariums usually do better with full-spectrum bulbs, perhaps complemented by some warmer color-enhancing bulbs. Saltwater aquariums, notably reef aquariums, usually need higher K-ratings, a minimum of 10,000 degrees Kelvin. Corals and invertebrates have naturally custom-made to bluer light-weight and will thrive in a cool-lightweight environment.

As for the useful purpose of aquarium lighting, your lighting will be the first, and usually the only, supply of light for your plants, corals, and different photosynthetic organisms. To confirm that this life-sustaining method proceeds smoothly, you must mainly be involved with the intensity of your bulbs; total wattage is the first measure of light intensity. Freshwater planted aquariums require 2-five watts per gallon, however saltwater reef aquariums can need more, as abundant as 8 watts per gallon.

Many reef aquariums are lit with bulbs producing "actinic" lightweight; these bulbs are high intensity and will promote photosynthesis in your coral as well as your reef plant life. However, because actinic bulbs produce light-weight that is strongly blue, they need to be balanced with warmer lightweight, or with full-spectrum bulbs. A "50/fifty lamp" combines full-spectrum light-weight (sometimes half dozen,000 degrees Kelvin) with actinic light in an exceedingly single bulb, and would thus be a resolution if you simply have one fixture in your hood.

Once you have got set on your lighting, be sure to put in the lights on a timer. Most aquatic environments do best with ten-12 hours of sunshine each day, approximating natural conditions; fish need "down time" the same as humans! If you're prone to forgetting to turn your aquarium lights on and off daily, a timer can do the duty for you.

If you're fixing an aquarium for your home, you will presumably would like a heater as part of your basic equipment. Most aquarium fish are tropical, that means that you'll would like to heat the water in your aquarium to stay it above average space temperature. Even if you reside in an exceedingly heat climate, a heater is required to maintain a relentless temperature in your tank. Constantly fluctuating temperatures can be damaging to your fish and plant life.

The required water temperature of your aquarium can rely on what kind of fish and plants you stock it with; a massive reef tank with tropical fish can need higher temperatures than an aquarium approximating a river ecosystem. Consult along with your fish dealer. Once you recognize the specified temperature, create sure that you buy a heater with sufficient wattage to take care of that temperature. If your average room temperature is sixty eight degrees Fahrenheit and you need to heat your water to 78 degrees, then you may want to boost the temperature by ten degrees. As a simple guideline, to raise the temperature by ten degrees, you would like 5 watts of heating power for every gallon of water. Therefore, if you have got a a hundred-gallon tank, you may would like five hundred watts of heating power. There are numerous tables each online and at aquarium stores which will help you calculate the wattage that you will would like for your tank.

Heating units are offered during a broad range of wattages; if you've got a bigger tank (say, 60 gallons or more), it's typically a smart plan to get two heaters adding up to the full wattage required, and to put them at opposite ends of the tank. This will give a more equal distribution of heating power, and ensure that your entire tank is consistently heated.

The foremost basic reasonably heater is an immersion heater, that hangs on the rear of your tank; it's absolutely submersed (with thermostatic controls at the high of the unit, higher than the water line), and consists of glass or chrome steel tubes containing a heating part that is wound around a glass or ceramic insert. These units should be submerged in water when in use; if they are left on whereas outside the water, they can overheat and burn out. Most have a engineered-in "safety" or automatic shut-off switch that turns the unit off if it's not submerged. Immersion heaters require very little maintenance; a mineral plaque may build up over time, but this may simply be removed with steel wool.

Titanium immersion heaters are more sturdy than regular immersion heaters, however they are conjointly a lot of expensive. The heating component is nearly indestructible and can not shatter if bumped. Also, the outer casing is made of metal, not glass, thus it too is a lot of resistant to bumping. The thermostat unit in a very titanium heater should be built into the unit, like regular immersion heaters; some titanium immersion units have separate thermostats, but most aquarium enthusiasts realize this inconvenient.

Another kind of heating unit is an undergravel cable heater, that is a heating part coated in thick versatile rubber designed to be buried beneath your aquarium's substrate. This sort of heating unit is effective if you have live plants; heating the substrate creates a gentle flow of water through the gravel, enabling your plants to absorb a lot of nutrients from the circulating water.

If you have got a smaller aquarium, you would possibly take into account a heating mat, which rests beneath your aquarium. The mats are created of synthetic material concealing a heating element. They are not appropriate for larger aquariums however might be used for a series of smaller aquariums that don't require a lot of heating power, or that are too small for an immersion heater. Such undertank heaters are usually used for terrariums housing reptiles and amphibians. A substrate must continuously be used, and also the heater should be controlled by a thermostat, to stop overheating. Check the heater often for discoloration or wear and tear; malfunction could lead to overheating or even a fire.

A comparatively new alternative is an aquarium filter heater: a heating unit that rests within the aquarium filter unit, usually a canister filter, and heats the water because it passes through the filter canister. These are the foremost aesthetic selection, since they reside outside the aquarium and are fully hidden by the filtration unit. Various models of filter heaters are designed to figure with specific canister filters; consult together with your dealer.

An aquarium heater is only one element among many when you are initial assembling your aquarium project, however you want to be sure to buy a heater that's applicable for your tank size and conditions.