Links to setting up your aquarium:
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Gussie_setting_up.html
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Bridges_Aquarium_Guide.html
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Kumar_Essence_Essentials.html
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Hunt_Setting_Up.html
http://www.aquarticles.com/articles/management/Aquarian_Start%20Right.html

If I had my time again, how would I have done things differently?
By: Andrew Boyd

- I would probably have joined the club before we purchased our first tropical fish. These didn't last too long, and were the first link in the chain of guilt associated with the early demise of so many of our finny guests through the years.
- I would have never overcrowded tanks the way I did. This caused filter breakdown, algal blooms, and death of plants and fishes. You can only keep so many fish, so recognise your limits and work within them.
- I would have always done water changes religiously, 25-30% every single week on every single tank. This would have partially mitigated the overcrowding.
- I would have bought good heaters, and always had one or two spare for the inevitable breakdowns.
- I would have studied diseases more, and bought more cures, thus enabling me to save fishy lives once they are 'under the weather'.
- I would have fed live foods at least once a week to all our fishes.
- I would not have joined the Committee until I knew what I was letting myself in for.
- I would have read more books.
- I would never have tried to keep marine fishes in 'natural' aquaria.
- I would have taken the time to adequately explain the hobby to my long-suffering spouse, Julie. Don't laugh, there are several aquarists that are single today because their 'Significant Other' didn't understand and therefore became hostile towards what is otherwise quite an innocent pastime. (Compared to, say, drinking Scotch before lunchtime or Big Game Hunting.)
- I would not ever ever ever have impulse-bought fish. They invariably died gruesome deaths. Try and confine each tank to one particular type of fishes, such as warm/soft water/small/inoffensive or big/mean/piscivorous, and stick to it while the other inhabitants please you (i.e., it is not yet time to replace the lot. Those of you that have put an inch-long Oscar in a heavily planted Tetra tank will know what I am talking about - it's OK, for a while, but sooner or later the Occy will eat all the other fish in the tank and destroy all those beautiful plants). If you want to keep Rift Lake Cichlids, fine, by all means do so but buy them their own tank and look after it.
- It has taken me several years and thousands of dollars to realise that one hundred tanks are worse than nothing if you don't have time to adequately maintain them. I now keep fewer fish than at any time in the last seven years but am satisfied that everything that can be done is being done. If only I had a few more breeding tanks....
- I would not have tried to spawn every fish that I had at the same time. Patience is indeed a virtue when breeding, and those fry which are today only 2mm slivers of silver on the tank glass will be 2 cm or longer shortly, and they need room to grow properly otherwise they are best left unbred or killed (‘culled’) at hatching time.
- I would have stuck to a couple of worthy species that needed to be maintained, such as Desert Gobies and Peacock Gudgeons. These little fish have all but vanished from the local fish scene because they were guilty, in their day, of being too common, and we were all a bit guilty of neglecting them accordingly.
- I would never have kept tanks strewn throughout the whole house on coffee tables and stands made of planks and bricks.
- I would not have bought a single fish with the motive "I could make some money out of this one," especially where it involved breeding them.
- I would not have sold a fish that I suspected was sterile or ill, even to a perfect stranger.
- I would never have encouraged other fishkeepers to do things that I was not prepared to do myself.
- I would not have ever bought a second-hand tank, or first-hand Chinese Algae Eater.
- I would have learnt not to put Ammogon into the canister of a Fluval 303, or to entrust relatives with the transport of valuable fishes that I had not yet bred from.
- And finally, I would then have no regrets. But we live and learn. All that you can do is learn as much as you can so as to combat the ignorance that kills our fish. n.